Government Operations committee  I don't believe they ever commented on it.

Government Operations committee  Well, I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I would agree. The task force report was based on Ernst & Young's numbers. We don't actually have access to all that information as to what they based it on. Certainly—

Government Operations committee  I would agree with you. I don't think they were based on the—

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, yes. We came up with a number of plans that we've actually put forward to Canada Post, around service expansion, around greening Canada Post, around a whole number of issues. I believe Mr. Chopra actually pointed out yesterday that every bit of innovation they've done over the last number of years has come from us.

Government Operations committee  Yes, we released a seven-point plan in response to Canada Post's plan, but that's going back to early 2014. Since then, we've certainly put forward a number of documents advocating directions in which Canada Post could go and options it can take.

Government Operations committee  I think we put forward very comprehensive documents to the task force itself and submitted them to this committee a few months ago, explaining the various avenues in which we think Canada Post can go. Of course, we've also had our members participating in the Save Canada Post campaign, discussing with communities, and pushing for options such as postal banking, which has now been supported by over 600 municipalities across this country.

Government Operations committee  As you know, we've just ratified a new collective agreement. Prior to that, as a result of the 2011 back-to-work legislation, we saw a major reduction in the starting wage for new hires at Canada Post. We saw the elimination of our sick leave plan in favour of a short-term disability plan.

Government Operations committee  I personally wasn't in the national office of the union prior to that. The CUPW certainly had a rocky relationship with management. You should perhaps check with him.

Government Operations committee  Unfortunately, we've really seen a pattern of disrespect and misrepresentation by this management team at Canada Post. We're doing what we can to overcome some of these issues that have been raised quite sharply over the last couple of years, but we can't pretend this didn't happen.

Government Operations committee  By the very nature of an employer-union relationship, it's necessarily an adversarial relationship in some regards. That said, over the last year as we've gone through bargaining—

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, through that we need to look for our common ground and for common goals that we can achieve, things that we can work on and so on, but there is necessarily some element of the back and forth between labour and employer.

Government Operations committee  That's all I was referring to. It's certainly been heightened over the past few years, when all the unions made clear that we had felt quite disrespected throughout this process. Certainly, there were increased tensions around our bargaining, but we continue to meet. I met with Mr.

Government Operations committee  We would certainly recognize that the postal industry is a changing industry. We don't think it's a dying industry, but certainly some changes will have to be made. We think that Canada Post should do what other post offices around the world are doing, and have been doing for some time, which is diversifying.

Government Operations committee  Good morning, and thank you very much for having us back to conclude our remarks here today. As you know, my name is Mike Palecek. I'm a letter carrier from Vancouver and the national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. I have with me today our director of research, Geoff Bickerton.

Government Operations committee  Well, as I think we've experienced over the last couple of years, there's very little recourse. Some citizens have gone to extreme lengths, even occupying places and sitting down on lawn chairs to stop the boxes from being implemented. The City of Hamilton went to court to try to get some control over this.