Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you to the chair and to the committee members for inviting me to join you today. My name is Louise Chayer, and I'm the general manager of customer experience at Canada Post. I'd like to start by outlining our long-standing commitment to delivering major mailings and the c

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certainly. That's a good question. As you mentioned, we supported the New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and British Columbia elections. On the New Brunswick side, it was smaller in scope, and things were handled without any issues in terms of the mail-in ballots. Saskatchewan was

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. The election date remains unknown at this time and we work very closely with Elections Canada in order to be prepared. After the last federal election, which resulted in a minority government, there are certain things we have to make sure are prepared with Elections Canada,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Things went very well. We got very good feedback from elections officials in both of those provinces. There were no major issues that I'm aware of. We have very open communications with elections officials and we look forward to any feedback they would have for us and to learn fr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Every mode of delivery should be secure. Whether it's a rural mailbox, a community mailbox or at-the-door delivery, mail should be secured. There could be some isolated issues and when those are brought to our attention we certainly investigate, but overall, we feel confident tha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have had several cases. Some isolated cases were believed to be from workplace transmission—very, very small in number—and we worked with the local health officials in those cases. The majority of the cases have been community transmission.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the kind words. Our people have been working very, very hard. I will pass on your comments to them, for sure. Thank you for that. Yes, when it comes to mail-in ballots, I don't think we have any concerns with the capacity. Five million votes, when we have

Procedure and House Affairs committee  For sure. Saskatchewan and British Columbia used what we call “business reply” mail. It was one centralized address that it was going to, so that was a product that it was easy to do that with. With a federal election, we are looking at 338 different addresses that these votes w

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We are using regular Lettermail, so there is no ability to track that particular piece within our system to say that we have received this particular piece from this particular person. We do not have that ability. We do have that ability for parcels, which you can track and see

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, that would be a question for Elections Canada; I agree.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In terms of problems, I wouldn't necessarily call them problems per se. There are challenges in delivering an election, challenges that we've been able to meet each and every time we deliver a provincial election or a federal election. We've been very successful in delivering the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The peak season, which is what we are in right now, is certainly a high-volume season for us. In 2021, something that we do need to take into account is that it is a census year. In May, we will have added volumes there related to the census, so that is something we need to keep

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If Elections Canada approached us with such an option, we would certainly take a look at that and discuss it. We can certainly discuss it with Elections Canada and see how that would work.