Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak in this debate this afternoon. It is a concern of mine and has been for some time.
I join in the debate to support the concept of periodic reviews of Canada Post Corporation and its proposals to change the postal rates. I believe it is high time that Canada Post Corpora-
tion became answerable in some public way to somebody other than cabinet.
The postal service in Canada has been the subject of much debate and public displeasure for many years. In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was concern expressed over large deficits and accumulated debt in the post office. Then the solution seemed to be to set the post office up as a crown corporation. This was going to bring efficient management to the post office. In some ways it may have brought some form of efficient management but it was a management that did not care about the people of Canada.
The people of Canada depend on the post office, on mail delivery. This is a vast, mostly rural country where mail delivery to the door or to the mailbox at the end of a farm lane is taken as a given in Canadian society.
Not any more. We have superboxes for homeowners in new suburbs to walk to and we have post office closures by the hundreds in rural areas. This has already happened.
Many rural Canadians have been saddened by the closure of their rural post offices because in many of these small communities their local post office was a spot where one could meet and chat with neighbours and their local postmistress or postmaster. It served a real social purpose in the community as well as a postal service.
In Lake Errock, one of our small postal communities in my riding of Mission-Coquitlam, the residents have worked hard over the last two years trying to get Canada Post to recognize the rights and necessities of their part of rural Canada.
To Canada Post I suggest just looking at economics is not enough. The post office is set up to serve the people and it is hoped that the present government will be concerned about all Canadians and continue to recognize rural post offices.
The other problem faced by Canadians was the intermittent, or should we say the regular strikes or work stoppages by the postal workers. Who in the House can forget the regular nightly images on our television screens of the postal workers' union heads, Joe Davidson and later Jean-Claude Parrot, spelling out their ludicrous demands on behalf of their workers while we all suffered with mail delivery shut down?
I used to send out many Christmas cards and about that time I stopped sending out Christmas cards and I have not done so since.
I agree, the post office perhaps more than any other crown corporation needs a watchdog that can review price increases and internal matters to ensure that Canada Post is properly run and that taxpayers are at least in this instance getting their money's worth.
As I said, to this extent I agree with the thrust of Bill C-203. However, set up a new bureaucracy to monitor the post office, a new board supported by a secretariat, personnel and all the attendant trappings? Maybe when there was more money in the treasury and maybe when the public was less cynical about government appointments to tribunals such as this, but surely not now.
The previous government was infamous for the proliferation of boards and tribunals to which it would appoint its friends and supporters. The Canadian people voted last October to stop this kind of practice and we in the Reform Party respect the wishes of the Canadian people.
As I said earlier, the thrust of this bill is a good idea. Surely the types of things that the review board was going to do in this bill can be done by the government operations committee of the House of Commons.
Canada Post Corporation is within the mandate of that committee. The committee deals with the estimates of Canada Post Corporation and if the inquiries are structured properly this committee should be able to do the job of Bill C-203's review board.
I served for a short time on the government operations committee and it seemed to me at the time that after the estimates were reported back from the various departments which reported to this committee, this committee would have sufficient time at its disposal to deal with Canada Post Corporation.
My suggestion puts the responsibility for the post office operations where it belongs, in Parliament. It is the fundamental function of all of us here to serve the Canadian people. One way of serving them is to put the subject of mail processing and delivery in the hands of elected representatives.
To be precise, Canada Post would at least 10 days before publishing a proposed regulation in The Canada Gazette send a copy to the clerk of the government operations committee for review. The committee would have 120 days within which to hold public hearings on the merits of the proposal and make recommendations to Canada Post. The committee's recommendations would be published in The Canada Gazette and the corporation would have 30 days to report to the committee in writing.
The recommendations of the committee and the response by Canada Post would be submitted to cabinet. If cabinet did not act within 30 days the regulation would come into force.
Again, when Canada Post wishes to make major changes in service these corporate plans would be submitted to the government operations committee for review. Surely that is one of its purposes.
Ultimately after a public hearing process the recommendations of the committee would be sent back to Canada Post and then the entire package submitted to the minister in charge of Canada Post for final approval.
With respect to rate increases, while the final decision would be up to the cabinet, a full public hearing process would have taken place on the subject and the rate increases again by the government operations committee. An important issue that the government operations committee in its review of the post office may wish to inquire into is whether, as alleged by the Canadian Courier Association, Canada Post is using the revenues gained because of its exclusive role as a mail courier to subsidize the purchase and operation of courier systems. Such an inquiry would be a good first step in establishing that the members of the House of Commons were serious about holding the Canada Post Corporation to account.
The Canadian Courier Association in a letter dated October 29, 1993 sent to all members of the 35th Parliament set out its concerns about Canada Post. It recited the findings of the Nielsen task force and the inquiry of Alan Marchment carried out in 1986 to support their case. I suppose it was the purchase of Purolator Courier that prompted this outrage by the Courier Canadian Association. Who can blame it? Canada Post used its unique position to subsidize its areas which compete with the private sector so Canada Post can charge less than the private sector.
As I said, this would be an ideal matter for the government operations committee to investigate.
In conclusion, while I support the thrust of Bill C-203, I do not support the means to accomplish the end. I would support amendments to the bill which would put the government operations committee as the review agency and would also support whatever changes would be necessary to the rules of this House to allow the government operations committee to perform this task.