Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to appear today.
I have with me my colleague, Mary Traversy, our senior vice-president of employee engagement. Issues surrounding all matters concerning employee occupational health and safety, and in fact the entire labour relations file at Canada Post, regardless of where that file touches--delivery, post offices, whatever--is Ms. Traversy's responsibility. She's here with me to help elaborate what we are doing on this issue of rural route delivery, which I know is very important to many of you and to your constituents.
I know that the committee members have heard about the recent concerns regarding health and safety raised by certain employees of Canada Post who deliver mail to mailboxes along rural routes. Canada Post explained the situation to those members whose ridings are affected by this issue.
As for the members who have not yet been informed about rural conditions, it would be useful, no doubt, to give them some background information.
First of all, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I'd like you to know that every day Canada Post delivers 40 million pieces of mail to 14 million addresses in Canada. It's a huge logistical exercise to do that. We do that on time 96% of the time and we're very proud of our delivery record. We are a delivery company and we want to deliver the mail. We know the importance Canadians attach to receiving their mail on time, and we know that's the basis of our business going forward.
We would do everything humanly possible to avoid any disruption whatsoever to delivery anywhere, but especially we know to rural Canadians who are at some distance from other points of service. Rural mail carriers deliver mail to approximately 843,000 stops through roadside rural boxes, but our rural mail carriers, and there are about 6,600 of them across the country, deliver mail in a variety of ways, not just to the rural box at the end of the lot line, but also to other collective forms of delivery--to post offices, community mail boxes, and the green boxes that many of you have seen in cottage property areas, for example.
You might find it important to understand that Canada Post employees have not always performed this work. In fact, this work has been done for Canada Post for many decades by independent contractors. Sometimes these were small family businesses, businesses that would bid to Canada Post to have the right to deliver for a particular area. In 2004, however, as a result of the collective bargaining that I think happened about a year and a half before that, the rural route delivery agents, formerly independent contractors, became employees of Canada Post. Of course this had been the subject of some discussion well before that collective agreement. As many of you recall, there had been a private member's bill on this even before the discussion.
The law in Canada is now pretty clear and it has evolved in the area of safety over these past few years--in fact, even over these past two years. The law in Canada rightfully, morally, legally, clearly places obligations on employers in the face of a hazard, any kind of hazard in the workplace. Under the Canada Labour Code employers have a legal responsibility to ensure that the health and safety of employees is protected and we have to be proactive in the discharge of that responsibility.
In addition, as many of you will recall, there was the debate two years ago on the horrible Westray mine disaster. That prompted a great deal of discussion and in fact changes to the Criminal Code of Canada to augment the responsibility that employers have in this country with respect to occupational health and safety. Now, according to the Criminal Code, not only do corporations face fines if they know about a safety hazard and they do not respond, but employees of the corporation, including the CEO and any employee who is in a position to direct other employees, may face a criminal penalty, in fact a jail penalty, if we fail to discharge our obligation in that regard.
In the past six months a number of things have happened. Close to 300 of our 6,000 or so rural route carriers have raised health and safety concerns to the company. Some of the 300 people have actually exercised their legal right under the Canada Labour Code to refuse work. In those situations the Canada Labour Code has occupational health and safety officers, decision-makers, who will review the action taken by employees and decide on the spot whether or not it was a valid refusal to work. In that case the company, Canada Post, has a legal obligation, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, to immediately respond.
It's important to understand that our employees have raised two separate quite distinct categories of safety hazard. One is road safety. In Canada, and you will understand because of many of you live in these areas, patterns of urbanization have changed. With urban sprawl we have much more traffic on what were five, ten, or fifteen years ago quiet country roads. In fact, if we take our advice from the traffic safety consultants at the National Research Council, we understand that probably as many as 20% of the points of call on rural routes are probably experiencing dramatic changes in the traffic patterns, such that anybody working on those routes would have to manage their way around.
The second safety hazard is quite different. It's an ergonomic hazard. That means it is a hazard relating to a repetitive movement of the body, which may cause a repetitive stress injury down the road. In the case of the delivery to rural boxes, you can understand that if all you had to do was to reach over one or two times a day to put an envelope in a box, that probably would cause no problem. But in the case of rural routes, sometimes we have 150 or 200 points of call. Our experts are telling us that this kind of repetitive reaching over a long period of time can indeed cause problems down the road. These are serious issues.
No one in Canada Post wants to require any Canadian to change what is a satisfactory and convenient way of receiving their mail. I can assure you that is not something that Canada Post wants to do.
Our systems are big systems. There are huge logistical exercises to get the mail out. Any change to those systems and any change to delivery is a change transformation exercise that is incredibly large and cumbersome for a company that has 71,000 employees across the country.
We are not looking to do this, but when a safety issue arises and someone refuses work, we have a responsibility, legally and morally, to respond immediately and in the least disruptive way, to do whatever we can to keep the mail going to our clients.
Mr. Chairman, let me assure you that Canada Post is fully committed to the safety of all its employees. This is why the corporation immediately implemented a series of measures to address these concerns.
I have asked that various experts be engaged to guide us, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
This is new ground for many of us. What was not even thought of as a safety hazard 20 years ago now is. Remember, 25 years ago we didn't even have to wear seat belts—just to remind you of how the world has changed in relation to safety.
So we have asked the National Research Council to advise us on, and help us evaluate, the working conditions of our rural mail carriers.
We have also retained specialists in the area of ergonomics. This is not an area of expertise for us, but we are becoming more expert in it by the day. Together with lawyers who specialize in workplace safety, we are coming up with a much broader appreciation of what it takes to keep our employees safe.
We have met with senior officials of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada—the department responsible for the occupational health and safety—who make the decisions about workplace refusals, to take advantage of their expertise and experience.
As an additional step, Canada Post is now providing flashing yellow lights to our rural carriers and reflective signs, so they can be better seen in different kinds of traffic conditions.
Committee members are aware that there are only a handful of safe alternatives to the delivery of service, to the way in which our clients now receive their mail. These might include delivery to a central point: to a post office, if it's not too far, or to community mailboxes that can be put in a location—not as good as receiving at the lot line, I understand, but one that is both safe and reasonably convenient to our clients.
As I know you know, millions of Canadians across the country are already receiving their mail through a community mailbox. Every single new subdivision in the country for the past 15 years has received their mail that way, and Canada Post knows how to do this. Certainly we don't like to change anything for people, and we are working with communities to make sure that change is the least intrusive possible.
Where Canada Post has received a direction from HRSD related to road safety or where the delivery is clearly unsafe—we can see it ourselves and don't need to wait to get the direction—immediate action is required. In these cases, I'm very sad to say that customers have been inconvenienced for a few days, as we try to get a new delivery system under way.
Mr. Chairman, when someone refuses to work for safety reasons, at that moment I have two choices: I can suspend mail delivery or try to find an immediate alternative. Sometimes the immediate alternative that's available to me is to deliver to a post office. It then takes me two or three weeks—sometimes as many as six—to get out to speak with the community to find out what is a reasonably convenient alternative location to get mail. That is what we have been doing.
We have been managing the refusals to work issue since November. Given all of the complexities surrounding the issue, I think we've done fairly well. Again my apologies, Mr. Scott, to you and most importantly to your constituents, my clients, who may have been inconvenienced earlier in the week.
We have implemented these emergency measures as stopgaps, Mr. Chairman. We also have a large community outreach and communications program, which we've had in place since I came to the company. This allows us to get in front of the people who are actually inconvenienced and seek their thoughts on what's the next-best reasonable alternative, and that's what we're doing.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, Canada Post takes the concerns of our employees very seriously. I want to assure the committee of that. I know that you are as concerned about this as we are.
Needless to say, we do not want to inconvenience any of our clients, whether they be rural or other Canadians. Mail delivery will continue, I promise this committee, without interruption to all Canadians. Some changes in service may be required, and where that is so, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I promise that these changes will be ones that are the best reasonable alternative, all of the circumstances combined.
We are committed to ensuring that you are fully informed. Any of you who have constituents in rural areas, where I could have a safety problem to address, will know that we have been quite proactive in making sure you and your staff have been briefed on the complexity of the issue and the steps we are taking to resolve it.
I thank you very much once again for giving me and my colleague Mary Traversy an opportunity to be here today. I look forward to your questions.