Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to elaborate on that particular case.
UPS is the largest postal courier service in the world today. Canada Post offers a very good service to its customers with its Priority Post courier service. Since that goes beyond basic ground letter mail service, UPS felt that it should be allowed to bid on that work. In fact, UPS is suing the Government of Canada for $160 million U.S. in lost opportunities because it believes it could do the job better. It believes it has a right to bid on that work. It does not believe that the Government of Canada has a right to withhold that.
Imagine the impact of this. It is not just somebody else providing that service. Canada Post offsets the cost of providing regular ground and household mail through the profits it makes in its courier service. If somebody picks the low hanging fruit as we say, or in other words cherry picks the most profitable part of the corporation and takes that away from Canada Post, it will seriously impact its ability to offer ground mail service at the 46 cents or 47 cents that we enjoy today.
It has real, meaningful pocketbook implications for Canadians when we are faced with these kind of challenges by foreign corporations.