OGGO Committee Report

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT

OF THE

NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF CANADA

Postal Service in Canada’s Rural and Remote Communities

Canada’s New Democrats agree with many of the findings and recommendations of the Committee’s report on issues facing postal service in Canada’s rural and remote communities. The NDP is especially pleased the Committee included recommendations to ensure postmasters are fairly compensated and the government provides sufficient resources for the operation of rural post offices; expand services provided by rural post offices to increase revenues and develop community hubs; and increase community and union consultation to identify and rectify deficiencies in rural postal service.

This supplementary report aims to highlight further witness testimony detailing the structural issues with Canada Post’s approach to operating and financing rural postal service. Specifically, we believe Canada Post should fundamentally reform the postmaster-provided model for rural postal services and ensure rural communities do not bear the burden of meeting its government-imposed self-financing mandate.

While the Committee did recommend that the government and Canada Post review the postmaster-provided model for rural post offices to ensure equitable service delivery, this recommendation neither gets to the heart of the issue nor provides a bold enough direction.

The postmaster-provided model for rural and remote community post offices is failing communities. This model leaves postmasters, who are federal employees doing vital work, on the hook for all expenses related to operating their post office, including expenses such as rent, snow clearing, utilities and much more. Stipends meant to compensate for these costs are woefully inadequate.

To illustrate, Mr. Dwayne Jones, National President of the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association (CPAA) testified that the annual leasing allowance provided by Canada Post for a Group 1 postmaster to operate a post office is only $1,357 per year. Mr. Jones also noted a CPAA survey of over 300 postmasters that showed together they are paying a total of $32,000 per month out of their own pockets to operate their post offices. Meanwhile they are being paid a starting salary of only $18.44 per hour. The combination of low wages and insufficient cost reimbursement is making recruitment and retention of postmasters difficult, with serious implications for the continuity of rural service. This model is plainly unfair to both workers and communities. As such, we believe the Government should scrap the postmaster-provided model, and instead focus on providing Canada Post retail facilities in rural and remote communities.

In its recommendations, the Committee acknowledged postal service is vital to the quality of life in rural and remote communities. Despite this acknowledgment though, the Committee failed to articulate how Canada Post’s self-financing mandate leaves these communities behind. According to the Canada Post Corporation Act, Canada Post has a dual mandate: to operate on a self-sustaining financial basis while providing high-quality services that meet the needs of Canadians across the country. Yet, too often Canada Post, in seeking to meet its self-financing mandate, turns to lower-revenue rural and remote services as opportunities to cut costs. This is evident in the number of rural post offices it has managed to close across Canada since the 1992 moratorium was established. Our conversations with community leaders and former Canada Post employees suggest a clear trend from postmaster-provided post offices, to contracted-out services (franchises), to so-called “community mailboxes.” Low postmaster wages and stipends fuel this erosion of rural service.

By contrast, we agree with Mr. John Anderson, who told the Committee:

“Certainly, the government has to guarantee postal services to everybody. That has to be a guarantee whether Canada Post makes a profit or not.”

It is not enough for the government to attempt to improve its fundamentally broken model for rural postal services. Instead, Canada Post should do away with the anachronistic postmaster-provided model entirely and provide properly funded retail post offices in rural communities, staffed by appropriately compensated, unionized postmasters. Full stop.

RECOMMENDATIONS

That the Government of Canada ensure equitable service delivery for remote and rural communities by scrapping the postmaster-provided model and focusing instead on the establishment and protection of Canada Post retail facilities in these geographies.