Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak in the debate on Bill C-6. We are now in almost the 39th hour of debate on the bill. There are about 46 hours left before mail service could resume on Monday morning. The government does not have to pass this bill to have that service resume. In fact, Canada Post workers have volunteered to go back today. They could go back within the hour if Canada Post, with the support of the government, would take the locks off postal stations and post offices around the country. We could have our mail resumed and postal workers could go back to work if the locks were taken off. We still have lots of time to encourage the government and Canada Post to do what is right and resume our postal service.
I represent the urban riding of Parkdale—High Park. It is a riding with a lot of small businesses and a lot of seniors. Our community cares a great deal about our postal service. It supports it and understands the importance of it.
There is a postal substation in my riding on Keele Street near where I live. I make a practice of going in there periodically and thanking the people who sort our mail and the people who deliver our mail. I know I speak for our community when I say we appreciate their hard work and their efficient service. We get our mail on time every working day, and they do an excellent job.
We have had some demands in our community. There was the threatened loss of a postal outlet in the junction in my riding. After huge community opposition to the closure of that postal outlet, we were successful in keeping it.
There are some new condo developments in my community. The placement of post boxes seems to be lagging behind the condo development, so people in the condo have to organize and push to get a post box.
People support their postal service. They care about it and they are concerned about it.
Our postal service is a success story. Our postal service has pumped profits and taxes into government coffers for more than 15 years. We have one of the best postal systems in the world. It is good value for money. We pay 59¢ for a letter, which is among the best prices in the industrialized world. Our postal service is fast and efficient.
Canada Post does have a top heavy management structure with 20 VPs, as my colleague from Vancouver has pointed out, who I am sure are generously paid. It also has the best paid CEO among any Canadian crown corporations, who receives huge bonuses.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which represents the people who work at Canada Post, has managed to negotiate, through very hard work, a decent wage for the people who work there. It is not exorbitant. It is in fact the average industrial wage for difficult work. Letter carriers are out in all seasons. We get a taste of that during elections when we go door to door, when we run up and down stairs and are out in all kinds of weather. We get a little taste of what letter carriers face day in and day out every day of the year. They do an excellent job. They make an average wage and they get benefits and pensions.
I have been contacted by many members of my community who expressed concern because Canada Post has locked out its employees and not allowed them to deliver the mail. I have also received a lot of support for the work that their elected representatives across the country are doing to try to pressure Canada Post and the government to resume the postal service.
I want to just read one letter from a constituent. She says:
I am writing to you today with a story about my family.
My aunt Diane works at the post office on Eastern Avenue in Toronto. She's locked out and on the picket line in her pink baseball cap. I called her last week and she explained to me what was happening.
“This isn't for me,” she said. “Myself, I'm looking forward to retirement, but we're sticking up for the future”. She explained the big issues in negotiations that concern her. The top three are an attack on pensions, two-tier wages,
which means lower wages for new hires
and outsourcing sick time.
I should just insert here that in fact because letter carriers are out delivering mail in all kinds of weather, their injury rate is actually quite high. It has one of the higher rates of injury in workplaces in Canada.
Canada Post wants to move from a stable deferred compensation of defined-benefit pension, to the crapshoot of defined-contribution pensions. This puts old people at the mercy of the stock market.
We have seen how reliable that has been for people.
My aunt is also out because of the corporation's efforts to create two-tier wages, with new hires making much less than their co-workers. These are co-workers doing the same jobs, on the same equipment. Says my aunt—“Young people today don't deserve good jobs? Says who? I know how hard it is for you guys to find good full-time work with benefits, and that just isn't right”.
Finally, workers at Canada Post don't want their sick time controlled by an outside insurance company.
I'm proud of my aunt. She sorted social assistance and pension cheques as a volunteer. I'm also very proud of her for sticking up for good jobs for young people. I know she doesn't want to be out on the line in the heat and the rain, but I'm behind her all the way.
So—I know the [Prime Minister's] conservative government talks about family a lot. And what do families do? We look after our elders. We look after our kids. We take care of each other when we're sick. These sound a lot like the issues postal workers are concerned with, like pensions for old people, good jobs for young people, and provisions for sick people to stay home and get better. Frankly..., going after my aunt doesn't seem very family-friendly of our government. Could you please talk to them about that?
Yours...Jody Smith.
I want to thank Ms. Smith for her excellent letter. I am so pleased and proud that she, as a constituent of mine, took the time to write.
I have to ask myself, and it is a question really to the hon. members opposite on the government side: Why would they go after hard-working Canadians like Jody's aunt Diane? Why would they go after hard-working Canadians? What is behind this? Why are they attacking the hard-working Canadians who have built Canada Post to provide such a fine service for our country? Is it because they want to privatize Canada Post? We know in other countries, for example, where the postal service has been privatized it is a very different situation. The mail is much less reliable, but also the jobs are very different. These are not the kinds of jobs I described earlier where people have an average income with benefits. They are usually part-time, independent contractors, which is kind of a way for an employer not to be responsible for any benefits or any injuries if someone gets injured or ill.
I wonder why they would want to undermine the success story that is Canada Post, because they are certainly undermining it by poisoning the labour relations climate. I appeal to the members opposite. Let us work together. We are here. We have all been sent here by our constituents. Let us work together. Let us take the locks off the doors at Canada Post. We have 46 hours that remain before Monday morning. My constituents in Parkdale--High Park, and I believe all Canadians, want to get this great mail service at Canada Post moving again. Let us work together and get it done.
