Mr. Speaker, this gives me the opportunity to tell my hon. colleague that it goes much further, since it affects all urban environments. My colleague does not understand what Canada Post is doing at this time. There is a moratorium on post office closures in rural areas, but not in urban areas.
So in urban environments, they are trying to give contracts to private enterprise. Of course, when the time comes to renegotiate the contracts, since Canada Post has lower revenues, fees are not increased, nor what is paid to dealers for providing the service. More and more dealers in urban areas are not interested in the service.
Now Canada Post is forced to centralize in post offices that are further away because there are no more dealers, all because Canada Post is broke, and all urban areas are going to be affected.
The members of this House believe that the measure they are taking is a minor, short-term measure and that Canada Post will recover, but Canada Post will not recover. In order to provide the service, Canada Post will have to rely more and more on dealers in urban areas, for instance, and yet will have a much harder time paying the dealers. So dealers—obliged to provide a certain amount of space, but not paid for the space they are providing even though dealers have rent to pay to the owners of locations—will no longer be able to sign contracts with Canada Post. Worse still, in Montreal, at this very moment, fewer contracts are being signed.
Dealers even say they no longer want to provide the service because it is not worth it. Once again, this does affect rural areas, but hold on to your hats, because it is also going to affect urban areas pretty soon.