Mr. Speaker, there we have it. What we see from the Conservative parliamentary secretary is that this is a zero-sum game; it is this five-point plan or nothing. That is exactly the kind of positional approach that tells Canadians it is their plan. It is not Canada Post's plan; it is the Conservatives' plan.
If I were the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Transport, I would be asking questions like, “Are you telling us Canada Post that it is five days' elimination of mail delivery? Is it possible that we can get mail delivered every second or third day? Are you telling us Canada Post that you actually do not have the analysis to talk about the distributive effects on our small and medium-sized companies? Why haven't you?”
It is not worth rising to the zero-sum game of the parliamentary secretary. We need to go back to the drawing board. I have confidence that the management of Canada Post, the good officials at Transport Canada and the good people in our unions and labour movement can do better than this. They can come forward with more creative possibilities.
I often hear the Conservatives, as I heard the minister moments ago, dismiss outright the idea put forward by labour about postal banking services. I am not prepared to dismiss that outright. If someone had told Canadians 15 years ago that a major food retail outlet in this country would be selling mortgages at a store where one buys milk, they would not have believed it.
There are many options for us going forward to make sure that we maintain our postal services. However, the plan to eliminate door-to-door service and to raise the cost of stamps, in my view, is being done because the corporation has been given four corners of parameters to operate within by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transport which is hamstringing their creativity.