Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand to speak in support of Bill C-216, introduced by my colleague for Nanaimo—Alberni. I will contain my remarks primarily to one aspect, the impact of the bill on the Canada Post Corporation.
It seems absolutely bizarre that the Canadian military should be open to access to information and Canada Post should not. The Canada post office is a monopoly. It has no competitors. There is absolutely no justification in terms of its stamp-mail service not to have it open to public scrutiny.
There are many provisions of Canada Post that we should be able to look at to see if in fact it has any justification when certain actions are taken. For example, there is supposed to be criteria for the home delivery of mail in many communities which are not getting it.
Canada Post argues that it cannot afford to do this, that it is not feasible. Yet there are many groups including postal workers who say that it is feasible, that they could certainly do it but Canada Post is covering up a lot of the facts. That may or may not be true but we will never know that if we are not allowed to get certain information from the corporation.
Any information we get, whether it be from the Canada Post Corporation or anywhere else, has to be subject to a lot better access than we are currently getting in many areas. Many times people apply for access to information and the government chooses to cloud the documents they seek by calling them protected by cabinet security and thus completely protected for the next 20 years.
This happened to me recently with a request for information on certain studies done on Canada Post. It is very interesting that they would release certain ones if they agree with them, but anything that disagrees with the government or with what Canada Post is doing, or is critical of them, they seem to want to cover up.
In one specific area we have had a lot of complaints from the private sector with regard to the Canada Post courier business. Canada Post operates one of the largest courier businesses in the country. It is a puzzling how we say to the courier businesses that would like to go into the stamp-mail delivery business that they cannot do that. Yet we protect Canada Post in its business and let it go into the courier business in direct competition with them.
Canada Post is not supposed to cross-subsidize, using profits from its stamp-mail business, a protected business, to subidize the cost of running its courier business. It says that it does not have to give access to information on that or have the auditor general go into that. In its financial statement is a statement by the auditor that says it meets all of the requirements to show it did not subsidize its business.
There are two problems with that. The first problem is that the statement only comes about as a result of information supplied to the auditor by the Canada Post Corporation. Right away that leaves one to wonder what kind of information it might happen to choose to deliver to the auditor.
The second problem is there is still a question of what exactly is a cross-subsidy. Most businesses have only a small portion of business expenses that are not related to a specific expense. When Canada Post came out with its latest annual financial statement for the year it indicated that almost half of all its expenses were not directly accounted to a particular department. That leaves a whole pile of money, some 40% of all its expenditures, that have not been related to a specific expenditure.
If we take the profit that its courier business is reputed to have made and we weigh that against the expense of those profits and allow the same ratio, instead of making $50 million it would have lost something in excess of that.
It really is necessary that we have access to books for this purpose to allow a proper review even by the auditor general which currently they are protected from.
It seems this government has a responsibility to the public to ensure things are being run appropriately. The Canadian public is captain of Canada Post. Because of its monopolistic situation people have no alternative. Some may send e-mail, some may send faxes, but when something has to be physically delivered through the mail and people want to do it with a stamped mail service, which they should be entitled to in this or any other country, they should be able to ensure that it is being done effectively and that it is being done on a cost efficient basis. We have absolutely no way to tell this whatsoever.
The government will ask why we are complaining because at least Canada Post is not subsidized right now. Maybe not, but it has sure been subsidized to a pretty penny in the past. It still owes a tremendous amount of money to the government, hence the Canadian taxpayer.
We have to question the price of the stamp at any given time because sooner or later Canada Post will come to the Canadian public with an increase to the price of a postage stamp. Is it justifiable? We only have the word of Canada Post because we are not allowed to look at its books to see if realistic and effective costs justify the increase in that postage rate.
I ask that all members of the House start questioning why they may not support this bill. The Liberal member who just spoke is not going to support this bill and it really puzzles me why a member of the government, not just a member of the House, would stand up in this place, look the Canadian public in the eye by way of the television camera and say “I will not support your having access to information about how we spend your tax dollars”.
It is absolutely bizarre that a member of government would do such a thing because we are not elected to rule people, we are elected to represent people. We take that very seriously on this side of the House. I certainly hope the hon. member does as well. I am sure that was her intention when she ran for Parliament and I am sure that is her intention as she goes about her day to day business. When she says she will not support all these crown corporations that are able to operate with impunity, without accountability through public scrutiny, it raises a question as to exactly what her motivation is.
All other parties in this House are supporting this bill. As NDP members said, even as much as it galls them to support something Reform came out with, they have to admit this is a good bill. When it starts crossing party lines that broadly I hope the government will endorse it as well.