Government Operations committee  There's the one on Australia.

Government Operations committee  Jim will answer pursuant to our answers.

Government Operations committee  That is a delicate question. Our committee is independent. We could not cover everything under the sun in four months. So we stayed within our sandbox and did not uncover the Caramilk secret. In our latest considerations, you can see what we profoundly believe. We were saying that there is no magic formula and that a realignment is needed, but no recommendation you will make could be followed without collaboration from all the parties.

Government Operations committee  We present that option in our report. The idea is that, in the absence of alternatives in rural and remote areas, the post office remains important for the people living there. As I mentioned, in densely populated areas—be it in Halifax or in Moncton—people told us in the survey that the advantage of a franchise is that the hours of operation are longer.

Government Operations committee  The option proposed here is not to put an end to the moratorium, but rather to review it. Maybe you want to talk about it, Jim, because you know those areas better than I do.

Government Operations committee  Let me remind you that in this analysis and this mandate, we had no interests. We're an independent committee. We worked really hard to understand the business and to really try to pull on everything we could in order to describe to you the facts. We were not trying to push any idea.

Government Operations committee  No, it was—

Government Operations committee  Well, with—

Government Operations committee  Yes, it wasn't that site. I think it's very important that we understand that e-commerce is rising. It's not reached it's potential. Regarding the solvency problem of the pension, it is not in our hands to present a solution. What we've presented are the options that you have to consider, but it is a big weight that you can for now forget.

Government Operations committee  It is not up to us to decide for the government. We already said in our report that it could be the 2017-2018 fiscal year. We have established a number of hypotheses. A Morneau Shepell document resumed the entire table. The document talks about completely forgetting the issue of solvency in favour of overcapitalization, as we have seen in some regimes, and to move toward other solutions we have brought up.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. We worked very rigorously in a number of respects. First, basic figures come from Canada Post and its data. We also have figures that have been checked by an extremely responsible and recognized firm, KPMG. Ernst & Young, with whom we worked, analyzed those figures.

Government Operations committee  All of the above, sir. Definitely the pension issue is an important one because the amount involved is very substantial. However, it's also understanding that what seems to be the saviour, namely parcel delivery, is subject to increasing costs because we are changing our way of buying now.

Government Operations committee  No. From what they bring in as revenues, they don't contribute as much as the transactional mail was contributing. The mail is really in decline, and it has in the last few years, and it will keep on declining. With the parcel business, which has kept up with the marketplace, you cannot play with it in a way where you would lose market space, because then you will have a problem of not having a real equilibrium between the two.

Government Operations committee  Definitely.

Government Operations committee  We've heard it, we questioned it, and we investigated it. It's not something that we had a preconceived idea about. We really dug on that one. We heard the Canadian Bankers Associations, callers, and stakeholders. We spoke also with organizations from France and from Great Britain that have those postal banking services.