Mr. KNOWLES:

I wonder whether the minister would make some further comment about letter carriers and other post office employees. I have been interested in listening to the remarks about service in rural

areas, but I should like to direct his attention for a moment to the conditions of those who work in urban areas. The minister may recall that I had some correspondence with him on behalf of employees in Winnipeg who are concerned about the inadequacy of the pay increases which they received recently, and are also concerned about the classifications of letter carriers, porters, sorters and so on.

In addition, I have before me a letter which happens to be addressed to the leader of this group. It comes from one of the associations in Vancouver, expressing the same concern principally about the salary increases that were given recently when other civil service increases were announced. This letter points out, as employees of the Post Office Department in Winnipeg have pointed out to me, that in some cases these increases, long awaited, long anticipated, amounted to only $3 a month. The suggestion is that letter carriers, for example, surely should be getting for the service that they perform more than the $1,800, which is the amount that some of them receive now; it should be $2,400.

I would appreciate it if the Postmaster General would comment on this whole question of wage conditions and classification of urban post office employees. If it means that representations have to be made to the civil service commission I hope the minister will tell us that he is making these representations just as forcefully as we make them to him.

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

I desire to answer the hon. gentleman's question about the letter carriers. The increase which has been given to all the employees is exactly the same, $660 a year since 1939. The reason why letter carriers have not received in the last increase as much as the postal clerks, for example, is that at a certain time a high cost of living bonus was given. The amount of high cost of living bonus which was given was larger for the lower paid employees than for the higher paid. Later on, these bonuses were merged with the salaries, and the differential that existed in 1939 between the postal clerks and the letter carriers was not the same as it was before. There is a certain differential between the postal clerks and the letter carriers which has always existed. When we gave the last increase to the employees we took into consideration the fact that at a certain time between 1939 and today the letter carriers had received, through a high cost of living bonus, more than postal clerks, and this was readjusted. The letter carriers have

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contended that the increase was not large enough; but the letters which were received were not complete, because we were accused of giving an increase of only $36 to the letter carriers, while others received, let us say, about $120, if I am not mistaken. But if we took into account all the increases since 1939 it would amount to the same, $660 for everyone of them. We put the facts as they should have been put, and the letter carriers have had to admit that it was just. The letter carriers who were in the maximum bracket received only $36, because they had received a larger bonus than the postal clerks, but the readjustment at the end was $660 for every employee.

By the way I may say it is $180 more for the employees of the post office than for the employees of other departments.

Mr. KNOWLES:

Can the Postmaster

General give the present schedule of the letter carriers, minimum, intermediate and maximum rates?

Mr. CHURCH:

Someone took the floor from me before I had concluded what I had to say. I thought the minister was going to reply to part of what I had to say. I wish to point out to him that the revenues of our city are over $15,000,000. I want to find out what the government is going to do about giving us better facilities in the Post Office Department, a great public utility. Compare your post office, that great utility, in terminal A w7ith the following public utilities: the Bell Telephone Company, the Consumers Gas Company, the Hydro Electric, Eaton's, Simpson's and all these other places where they have modem buildings. We have made no progress since confederation. At the head of Toronto street, on Adelaide street there is an old post office, one of the first buildings erected after confederation in that part of the city. I would not call it a post office. I should like to find out what the plan is for the Toronto district, because with a $15,000,000 revenue you are spending hardly any of it there. What is the program for Toronto? We have terminals A, B, C, D, and all down through the alphabet in the city. I wish to know what they are going to do. They said that they would have at the back of the Toronto post office on Lombard street, Church street, Adelaide street and Victoria street a big public square and dominion building. It cannot be done now. I do not expect that. I do expect to have some place where they can sell postage stamps. The staff are magnificent. They work under poor labour conditions. The minister has done a great

deal to improve it. I have said that. He has given holidays, improved labour conditions, and has done things like that.

Another matter I wish to mention is the difficulty of getting postage stamps. With that large revenue, I see no reason why the practice followed in the United States, where they sell postage stamps in the railway trains, could not be followed here. You get off the train coming from Toronto to Ottawa and you cannot buy a stamp at any station. During the time that the troops were demobilized in Halifax and were taken across the country, they had a great deal of difficulty. The civilian population should not have to put up with that in times like these. You cannot buy a postage stamp on the train; you cannot buy one in any railway station in Canada.

Another thing I should like to mention is the airmail service. The average letter dropped in the mailbox goes almost as quickly as an airmail letter out of Ottawa and other places. With regard to the staff in the post office, are the returned men getting the preference in these positions? Will these men get their old positions now that they have come back? In both the first and the second world war the Post Office Department contributed a larger number of men to the service than other public utilities and corporations. These men have to make out application forms, and the wages are not what they should be. It is true they have been increased, but the men have to go to 465 Bay street, where the civil service commission has a finger in the pie, and by the time the soldier gets through running around he is tired of trying to find someone who will give him some information.

One important question I wish to bring once more to the attention of the minister is the fate of the man who happens to steal thirty cents or fifty cents from the post office. The penalty is altogether too severe. We got it reduced from a three-year term after a ten-year fight here. It used to be three years, without any discretion on the part of the magistrate. For a petty offence the employee would be sent to prison and his wife and family would suffer in consequence. I fail to see why these women and their children should suffer when the breadwinner is sent away for three years, now a year in some cases by amendments to the criminal code. I suggest that proper arrangements should be made with the provinces to take care of the prisoner in some better provincial jail, and of the sufferers, the wife and family of any man who is convicted on such a charge.

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Moreover, is it British justice to maintain a spy decoy system whereby someone keeps a watch on a man and slips a decoy into his pocket? Is that a Christian principle for our Post Office Department to adopt? I say no, emphatically. It should have been abolished long ago, and I regret to see indications of this sort of thing in our police courts. Such evidence should be ruled out.

We want a more up-to-date act. We are not back in 1867. We want a British North America Act not for the dead but for the living. The Post Office Act was, until about three years ago, almost an exact copy of that of 1868. I do not think it is at all just to sentence a man to one year imprisonment now for a minor offence and have his wife and children thrown upon the municipality. I repeat, there should be some reform in this direction, and a satisfactory arrangement should be made with the provinces as to a proper place for detention.

There are many other matters that I should like to touch upon, but I have not the time tonight to deal with them. Among these I might mention money order transactions, the line-up at the post office, the length of time it takes to get service, the Canadian parcel post and so forth. Then there is the question of the post office savings bank. That used to be an important function and, with the penny bank being abolished, I hope this particular service will be improved. I would also point out the delay in collecting airmail from the boxes. In some of the post offices there are special receptacles for airmail letters. I hope there will be an improvement in the mail boxes. There is also the question of inspection service. As far as that is concerned, the sooner we abolish the notorious system, which is worthy of Hitler, of trying to induce someone to steal a letter and then penalizing him, the better.

There is also the equipment supply branch to be considered. I suggest that we need a house-cleaning in the city of Toronto, whose contribution, as I have pointed out before, amounts to $15,000,000.

Lastly, I would urge upon the minister that everything possible be done to improve the conditions in the Post Office Department in so far as they affect the returned man. He does not get his job back from the post office, notwithstanding that a law was passed, which was enforced by the deputy minister of labour, calling upon large corporations to give returned soldiers the identical jobs they had before they joined up, or some other occupation suitable to them. That has not been carried out so far as the Post Office

Department is concerned. Promotions should also be looked into for the returned1 men. I do not think the civil service commission knows much about it. The Post Office Department is one public utility which the Canadian people support and everyone likes to see the postman making his rounds. The children like to see him. I trust, therefore, that improvements will be made in the various directions I have suggested.

Mr. LENNARD:

The Postmaster General was about to give me a partial answer to my question regarding overseas parcels when some energetic member jumped up and prevented it. Can he give the answer now?

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

First, in regard to the postal clerk, the maximum is $2,400, and in the case of the letter carrier the maximum is $2,160. The letter carrier's salary of $2,124 was increased by $36 only, but this $36 makes up what the postal clerk received before.

As to parcel gifts, I might take as an example a parcel of fifteen pounds. The handling at the office of origin costs ten cents; the handling at the exchange office, five cents; land transportation in Canada, sixty cents; Atlantic sea transport, ninety cents; British cost, fifty-one cents. We may receive a parcel of that size in Vancouver and we put it on the sea transport for eighty cents. It costs ninety cents on the vessel and fifty-one cents for delivery of the parcel in Britain, where distances are never as long as they are here. We have to prepay all this, because we have to account to Britain for the fifty-one cents. Of course we have to pay the ship ninety cents.

This question came up quite often during the war and it has arisen ever since, but when we compare what we are receiving with what Britain receives, I do not think we can reduce our receipts for this service in comparison with what Britain receives for the service rendered there. It would be really another gift we would be making in addition to the gifts our citizens are sending to their friends in England, because it amounts to only a small part of our total receipts. For one pound we receive 5, 3, 5, plus 8, or 21 cents; 8 cents of the 21 cents is for transport on the ship, and Britain takes 17 cents per pound parcel. Altogether it is 38 cents. What we charge is only 21 cents, and to reduce that would be simply to make a gift, since we are charging just what it costs us without making half a cent profit.

Mr. LENNARD:

The Postmaster Genera! mentioned a fifteen-pound parcel. I understand that the weight of gift parcels is twenty pounds.

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Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

I took the figure "15" because that appears on. the table I have.

Mr. LENNARD:

Were those figures which the minister gave for a twenty-pound parcel?

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

I have not the twenty-pound parcel figures here. My tabulation stops at fifteen.

Mr. LENNARD:

What prompted my bringing up this matter tonight was the letter I had from the Postmaster General's office, signed by the Postmaster General himself, in which I was informed, as I stated previously, that twenty-five per cent additional of the postage is paid for the conveyance of the parcel across the Atlantic. I thought that was a small percentage of the whole, and I felt we should probably reduce it to some extent to give relief to the people who were sending parcels to relatives overseas. If the figures the Postmaster General gave me a few minutes ago are on a twenty-pound parcel, they add up- and I have added them up roughly-to $2.16, which is not $2.50.

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

The $2.16 applied to the fifteen pounds, and we charge only $2 for that.

Mr. BURTON:

I have a question or two I should like to ask, and this is about the only item I can see under which I can properly ask them. Who was responsible for imposing that nuisance tax on the people who make use of post office savings accounts? Some months ago they found themselves confronted with this nuisance tax when they make a withdrawal. I should like to know who was responsible for imposing that tax and what was the reason for it. In withdrawing money from the post office savings account, it is not a matter of issuing cheques on a bank account; because one must appear in person, make his application and withdraw the money there at the post office. He has not the privilege of issuing a cheque against the account, as can be done with a savings account or any other account with a bank. From what I can see, this is only a nuisance, and I should like to know the reason why it was imposed on the people.

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

The savings account branch we have in the postal service is not meant to be a bank in the usual sense in which we use the bank here in Canada. If you withdraw money from that by cheque, you pay three cents or six cents, according to the amount of your withdrawal, as you would on any other bank account.

Mr. JOHNSTON:

What is the rate?

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

The rate is three cents, the same as at any other bank. It is three cents on anything up to $100 and six cents on anything over $100.

Mr. JOHNSTON:

When was that impost put on, or has it always been there?

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier):

I am informed that this was put on a few months ago. But it is the amount that is being charged by any other bank in Canada for the withdrawal of money by cheque.

Mr. BURTON:

I believe it is more than a few months ago. It must be at least half a year, if not more. But what the minister says is only a partial answer to the questions I asked. In the first place, his answer shows that it is only a nuisance tax. The revenue that it brings in does not amount to anything. As to comparing withdrawing money from the post office with withdrawing money from any other institution that you have money in, you are not in the same position with the post office savings account, because with any other bank account you can issue cheques against it. I have no objection to placing my stamp on any of those cheques. But when the individual must appear in person before the wicket, make out an application for a 850 or $100 withdrawal, and then is subject to this nuisance tax, he must fish around to find three cents to pay that little tax. It is not that it brings in any revenue; and it only results in a nuisance for the post office employees when they are making out the application for withdrawal and in their accounting with regard to the moneys handled in the branch.

Mr. TIMMINS:

My plea is for the old fellows in the post office. During the war, as we know, when the soldiers were overseas the older men were brought into the post office and were told that their jobs were simply temporary, that they would have to make way for the returned men when they came back. When the returned men came back, according to my experience, they were given back their jobs, which is only proper and fair. But the old chaps, most of whom were experienced clerks in the urban centres, were kept on for a time. Then, after a while their employment came down to, we will say, four days a week. Latterly they have been getting probably three days a week. Then they have been cut down to four or five hours a day in the city. These men held the fort for us pretty well during the war days. They are mostly men over sixty years of age. They cannot find

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employment anywhere else. They are doing a good job in the post office. They are efficient.

My plea to the Postmaster General is that he direct the postmasters in the urban centres such as Toronto to do what they can to keep these men in employment. The post office is doing fairly well financially. We do not want the post office ever to make so much money that we shall have to take money away from it and use it for some other purpose. I would ask the minister that he direct the postmaster in Toronto, where we have a great many of these men-and they have been efficient clerks during the war and since-to give them something more in the way of employment.

One more thing. In Toronto we have a most disgraceful main post office. It is really just a barracks. This does not come exactly in the department of the minister. He does not construct the buildings; nevertheless, he does make recommendations. Our post office may be in the wrong place. At any rate, I worked there as a boy, when I was going to university, and that is a long while ago. It was pretty much a derelict building even in those days. I am hoping that the minister will not wait until some more Liberal members come from the city of Toronto before he gives us a new post office, because that may be a long time.

Mr. BERTRAND (Laurier); We never have those ideas in the department.

Mr. TIMMINS; No, I know the postmaster has not. But then, of course, he is only one in the cabinet. He cannot have it all his own way. I hope that this year, now that we have expanding revenues, he will tell the cabinet members, the men on the executive council, that we should like to have a new post office in Toronto, and that we should like it to be number one on the list.