Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to follow-up on a question that I asked in December. It was prompted by some shock at an article that appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press where some of my fellow MPs from Winnipeg, who belong to the Liberal Party, were saying that post-election, having gone to their constituents, a lot of them were now expressing that they were just fine with having lost their home mail service and that they were not looking to have it restored.
It goes against my experience. In Elmwood—Transcona, throughout the campaign and indeed after, I hear from many people who are concerned about losing their home mail delivery and are disappointed in the government failure so far to restore what has already been cut.
Home mail delivery service is important. It is important to many different people. It is important to seniors who are struggling to stay in their homes. That struggle often is what we might call a battle of straws, many things that add up that finally force people out of their homes. Having to walk a block or two to a community mailbox, especially in winter in Winnipeg, is no small straw on the back of seniors trying to stay in their family home and not have to move into an apartment or other facility. These are the people who are very concerned.
There are people living with disabilities for whom having to travel to a community mailbox is no small issue. There are people who may have simply decided that home mail delivery service is an amenity just like any other that we consider when purchasing a home who are now losing it. In that sense it is not unlike the library moving to a different end of town or a community pool closing down.
We know, however, that home mail delivery, even though it is an important service to people, is not where Canada Post is making its most money. We know that parcel delivery brings in more revenue than home mail service, but part of our point is that a public corporation has a mandate to also provide public services.
We believe that is a service worth paying for, particularly in light of the fact that Canada Post has not been losing money. The only time in recent memory that it lost a lot of money was when the employees were locked out by the Conservative government.
We maintain that this is a service worth keeping. We are anxious that the review that the Liberals have undertaken will come to that conclusion for all the people who want to keep that service.
An area of concern, however, is around the TPP that was being signed today. We know that there are provisions for crown corporations. We know what those provisions say, at least in general terms, that public corporations have to behave as if they were a commercial enterprise.
There is a lot still to be studied with respect to the TPP, but surely the Liberal government, in its desire for good governance and understanding the policy implications of major decisions, has done an analysis, surely, of the effect that signing the TPP may have on a review of Canada Post services, and the effect of a requirement that public corporations act as commercial entities may have on the outcome of that review.
I am hoping that the parliamentary secretary can shed some light on the government's understanding of what those provisions in the TPP may mean for home mail delivery in Canada.