Mr. Speaker, earlier this year I toured the head offices of Canada Post Corporation here in Ottawa.
I found Canada Post to be a thoroughly modern distribution organization, the equal of any in the world. Its track and trace system for managing mail flow is said to be state of the art and Canada Post is selling the technology worldwide.
Ensuring timely and cost effective mail delivery to all Canadians is no small challenge. Doing so in the midst of a revolution in communications and at a profit is the challenge that Canada Post faces.
For a time, closing rural post offices was seen as a way for Canada Post to meet this challenge, but this avenue was closed with the decision by the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to impose a moratorium on the closure of small rural post offices. That decision has proven to be enlightened. It has refocused the energies of Canada Post and allowed the corporation to discover that its more than 19,000 outlets are not liabilities but important assets. Now it is time to broaden the range of services which Canada Post provides, especially to rural Canadians.
As other countries have discovered, the possibilities are endless and endlessly exciting.