I'll take that as a yes.
A Chinese seller pays just 99¢ to send a package to Canada. Conversely, a Canadian seller has to pay $10 or more, depending on how much the product weighs, to send a package to a neighbour with the same postal code. As I see it, that's a huge problem. At least, you recognized it was an issue that required the Universal Postal Union's attention.
I hope it does change. You mentioned the compensation model between posts, but I don't think that's enough. I'd like the committee to study the issue at some point, given how blatantly unfair it is.
Now I'd like to turn to another unfair situation. Mr. Howlett, you talked about how companies are treated from a tax standpoint. We can use my China example again, although where the company is registered matters little. Whether companies are registered in the Cayman Islands or Barbados, they are treated differently than merchants on Wellington Street, in Sherbrooke, say, since those businesses have to pay taxes. In a town like Sherbrooke, or any other Canadian city, merchants have to pay taxes, rent, and all the other overhead costs that go along with running a brick-and-mortar business.
Can you give us an example of measures other countries have taken to rectify that problem, things we could do to make e-commerce companies play by the same tax rules as Canadian companies? What actions did they take to make sure the point of sale was taken into account, as opposed to the foreign location where the transaction was conducted?