Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-9, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010. I brought in my own copy of Bill C-9. As you just heard, my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé, who is doing excellent work, spoke about Canada Post. I am the Bloc Québécois critic on Canada Post. One of the major challenges in the past two years has been the remailer issue. Two bills were introduced by the Conservatives on this issue. The elections in 2006 and 2008 ensured that these bills never passed. When Parliament was prorogued most recently, another bill introduced by the Conservatives died on the order paper. I want to show how sneaky the government can get with a bill. As we have already heard, this bill has 880 pages, and the section that applies to Canada Post is summarized in a quarter of a paragraph. It is in part 15, which takes up seven lines out of 880 pages. It states:
Section 15 of the Canada Post Corporation Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (2):
(3) The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14(1) does not apply to letters intended for delivery to an addressee outside Canada.
It is important to note how the Conservatives slipped this into the bill. The Bloc Québécois is opposed to the budget and will therefore oppose Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill. But we will be doubly opposed to this bill because the Conservatives, who campaigned on a platform of transparency, are using the tried and true tricks Conservatives and Liberals have used for 140 years in this country, and by that I mean burying major reforms in a bill. This represents a significant change to Canada Post.
Why did the government previously introduce two bills that went nowhere? Because putting an end to Canada Post's exclusive privilege gives rise to a great deal of debate. Canada Post is the only service the Government of Canada provides for the public. The Government of Canada does not look after health, education or transportation, even though it tries to tell us that it invests a lot of money in these areas. These services are delivered by the municipality or the province, at least in Quebec.
The only hospital that belongs to the Government of Canada is the veterans hospital in Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue. Yet the Government of Quebec will likely take over running that hospital in the near future under a memorandum of understanding. So mail delivery is the only real service the Government of Canada provides for people.
For purely partisan reasons and obviously under pressure from lobbyists, the government is siding with a whole industry that has sprung up alongside Canada Post: the remailing industry. I am talking about companies that serve large businesses by collecting mail going outside Canada, even though collecting letter mail is an exclusive privilege of Canada Post. Canada Post has tolerated this, because there are businesses that turn all their international mail over to private companies because postage rates differ from country to country. In my riding, there are aeronautics and aerospace firms that have clients all over the world.
The problem is that the companies that offered this service, which was tolerated by Canada Post, decided that, as long as they were collecting mail going abroad, they would collect all the mail, handle all the mail, offer services, do home delivery and everything.
On account of Canada Post’s exclusive privilege, the burden of proof was on the private companies offering this service. They lost in the courts, and Canada Post obtained an injunction to have certain operations of its competitors who had procured this service stopped, because Canada Post had the exclusive privilege to collect lettermail.
Obviously, the remailer lobbyists have succeeded in convincing the Conservatives—and I would even say certain Liberals—that the service they are offering has to be maintained, even if they collect some mail for inside Canada. The remailers will try to revise their methods and focus on mail collected for outside Canada. The snag is that, in amending the law, it will now be up to Canada Post to prove that these companies are in non-compliance. How will it be possible to prove that, when a private company decides to collect a business's mail, it is not at the same time collecting mail destined for inside Canada? So the burden of proof is being reversed, and Canada Post has tallied this at $80 million in lost revenue. The president of Canada Post, Ms. Moya Greene, told us that the corporation was going to lose $80 million because of this.
This week Canada Post sent me some of its executives, who explained that Canada Post will be experiencing some difficulties in the years ahead and will have to cut back its services, modernize its operations and try to recover what it can. Tens of thousands of jobs will be lost at Canada Post over the next five to eight years because the corporation will have to recover some money. But a portion of the money to be recovered will include the $80 million that Canada Post is going to lose because the government has just allowed private companies to have a share of this market.
The fact that jobs will have to be cut means that services will be lost. What poses a problem is service in the regions. Every citizen, every taxpayer, has the right to have their mail delivered. Whether they live in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix or Lac-aux-Sables, whatever the municipality, everyone has the right to have their mail delivered. The reality is that this is being worked on now.
Canada Post tried to argue that there were safety concerns, that they had to be careful and that routes were dangerous and should be cut. Members of the Bloc Québécois took up the fight and put an end to this idea. The routes were maintained. Some safety studies were done, but ultimately the president just wanted to reduce and eliminate rural mail delivery. That is what she wanted. She wanted to concentrate the mail in boxes very close to village post offices.
I was told today that safety had cost Canada Post more than expected. That is for sure because our members were vigilant and managed to let everyone know that Canada Post was trying not to have to deliver the mail any more. The government evidently issued directives to Canada Post indicating that it should maintain this service. If we look closely, though, at the delivery protocol drawn up by the minister responsible for Canada Post, a lot of escape hatches have been included: if a postal worker becomes sick and Canada Post cannot replace him, it can close his post office, or if the post office is located on the premises of a private company and the contract cannot be renewed, the post office can be transferred. The purpose is to succeed some day in centralizing postal services in major cities.
Once again, in a bill that is 880 pages long, we see them introducing a part 15, just seven lines in length, that puts an end to Canada Post’s exclusive privileges. The Conservative members do not even realize the harm they are going to do to mail delivery, but they are not Conservatives for nothing. It is hard to hold it against them. As soon as they get up in the morning, the boss issues the orders. They cannot think for themselves. In actual fact, the government is trying once again to avoid discussion in committee. It did not table a separate bill. As a result, there will not be any discussions in committee about Canada Post, and all the towns and the citizens of Quebec will suffer the consequences.
The Bloc Québécois will vote against this bill.