Government Operations committee  One thing we all have to keep in mind is that Canada Post has been around for about 150 years providing a service and doing all these kinds of things including postal banking; none of this is new. I think all of you who have been on the committee for a while know that we did have a postal bank in Canada.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Yes. It would be very viable.

Government Operations committee  Okay. You're going to kick me out when I say this, but I take offence at the “privileged elite” comment. We have working-class wages. We are the working class. We work for a living. To me, the elite are the ones who have no idea about what working for a living is, so that comment I take offence at.

Government Operations committee  Oh, yes, that was it. No. That, to me, is very narrow thinking. A company is in business. If it's one employer and two employees, and it's having a hard time, and if it can't find other things to make money from, such as changing its product, changing the service, or whatever, and its idea is to cut the wages of its employees, then maybe it should cut its own wages.

Government Operations committee  May I make one comment about that as well?

Government Operations committee  What possibly would really help is to get our CEO, the board of directors, and the vice-presidents away from the concept that Canada Post has but 400,000 customers. I think there are a lot more people in Canada than that. Deepak Chopra is on record talking about Canada Post's 400,000 customers, so I think that with a mindset shifts, the service could be greatly improved for all Canadians.

Government Operations committee  I've always been hopeful. I guess that's why I'm still here. However, I can't see that. It was a fight at negotiations. I don't know how much power you have to do that, but I'm hoping you have a hammer—not a real one—to tell it that they it has to do that, that it has to look at different areas to be able to expand and grow.

Government Operations committee  I lived in Hay River. I lived in Yellowknife. I lived in Inuvik. I have lived in a lot of small towns in Alberta. I've been around for 150 years. The post office is the only presence of the federal government in some towns. It's the only place you see the Canadian flag flying. In lots of small towns the bank has moved out and there's no place for people to do banking.

Government Operations committee  I think you're talking about competition in a way as well, because you're saying take it away and put it on the other side. When you first started that, I had never heard it put that way before. Anyway, of all the things I listed—that's not all of them and it's not the end of it all—a lot of these things we did in the past.

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  I went to interrupt, and I apologize, because I'm notorious for that.

Government Operations committee  Canada Post is self-sufficient. The days when the Canadian public paid for postal worker wages are long gone. They've been gone for a long time. I can't give an exact date—maybe David would be better at that than I am—and I should know, but the days of the Canadian public paying for us posties are gone.

Government Operations committee  I was thinking mainly about the cuts to the private outlets, because—

Government Operations committee  Oh yes, they are still opening private outlets.