Mr. McLure:

Mr. Warren:

On tender.

Mr. McLure:

On tender. For the longer routes of 30 and 32 miles there is a discrepancy of $865. Surely there must be some other system by which all individuals could receive fair treatment. I know some of these men who tender for these contracts. I am thinking particularly of two of them who have lower paid contracts. They have no fight in them. I went to one man whose contract was coming up again and I suggested that he should not accept such a low price when John Jones ten miles away was getting twice the money for performing half the service. He did not put up the fight he should have and the department now hires him at starvation wages.

Mr. Warren:

On his own tender.

Mr. McLure:

It is not fair. 1 do not think there are any hon. members of this house who would want such things carried on by a government of which they are members. There are other things I should like to deal with but perhaps I can take them up when we are on other sections of the bill

But I do want to refer to the postal rate on newspapers. This was dealt with yesterday by some speakers, but I do not believe the position of newspapers in my province of Prince Edward Island can be compared with the position of newspapers in the larger centres. There is one newspaper in Prince Edward Island with a circulation of 13,000 or more which is a fairly large circulation in a province with the population of Prince Edward Island. Of that total circulation of 13,000, 8,000 are delivered through the post office at Charlottetown for which they pay an average rate of $40 per day.

Under the new legislation they will have to pay 4 cents, which means that their daily cost will be $90 to $100 for every day except Sunday. This is more than double what they pay now as their rate is being increased 166.6 per cent. That is beyond all reason for a newspaper providing news throughout the constituency and to all parts of the island. No newspaper in a province like Prince Ediward Island can accept that. It will have to find some other way of getting their papers to the public.

As a solution I suggest to the Postmaster General that he institute a zoning system for the carriage of newspapers similar to that in effect for parcel post. Such a system would give this newspaper a chance to live. When you consider that a newspaper that distributes 8,000 copies through one post office must pay that office $50 a day, sufficient to pay three or four employees, it means something. To ask 166-6 per cent more for providing the same service is beyond all reason.

I understand that the minister is going to give this matter serious consideration. I advise him to do so before Friday because I understand they are going to come before him. He should adopt something that will be agreeable to these newspapers who are to be penalized by this extra expense. Another item I should like to deal with at some time is the commission paid on the sale of postage stamps. It may not be possible for the minister to reply to the two matters I have brought up, but I would like him to look into them very carefully.

Mr. Rinfrei:

First I should like to deal with the matter of the rural mail couriers. The position of these couriers is the result of the tender system. All the cases that have been cited are under tender. The different routes have different characteristics that must be considered, not only by the department but by the person making the tender. The length of the route is one factor, the number of boxes is another; then the type and variety of equipment necessary to operate the route 80709-22?

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must be considered, as well as the condition of the roads and the volume of the mail; consideration must be given to the time of day when the service is required, to the climatic conditions, to the availability and use of equipment, to the necessity of combining the route with other types of transportation, and to general economic conditions. All these questions have to be taken into consideration by the person making the tender for a particular route. The route immediately next to it might be completely different, but in each case it is the person offering the tender to the department that must make the appraisal of the conditions of that particular route. The department receives tenders from various persons, and chooses the lowest of those tenders. The department cannot be accused of imposing a rate on one particular courier, because he is the one who has made the offer. If his offer is too low he has the sole responsibility for that condition.

A long time ago the department realized that the tender system was not the best system that could be devised. We have been looking at various ways of curing the situation. We thought of a zoning system, but that would be still worse than the situation as it exists today. If we were to level off all the contracts in one given area, that would mean that those which were above the average before the levelling off would receive less than they were entitled to receive, whereas those below the average would get more than they were entitled to get. There would be a discrepancy, and there would be injustice. That was one of the reasons for suggesting section 23 in the postal act. We hope that it will produce the necessary results.

The hon. member for Queens said that in 1945 my predecessor suggested a committee be formed, and after that nothing happened. I remind the hon. member that in 1946 the Supplemental Payments Act was introduced, and bonuses were given to all the couriers who applied for them. In the end, about eighty per cent of the couriers did.

Mr. McLure:

That only went to a few people at first, until we got wise to it and had it applied to all of them.

Mr. Rinfret:

On March 31, 1949, when the law was finally repealed, eighty per cent of all contracts had been re-adjusted.

Dealing with rates on newspapers, the hon. member suggested a zoning system. We have examined the question of zoning newspapers. If a system similar to the parcel post zoning system were adopted, the rates now suggested for newspapers would be applied to the first zone. Any additional zone would involve an extra charge, because we have to meet

Post Office Act

the deficit that we have. The purpose of the proposed rate is to reduce the deficit in handling newspapers and periodicals. Unless the additional zones in the zoning system produced the additional revenue the purpose of the new rates would be lost. The extra charges would fall chiefly on the national magazines, as those are the publications which have dominion-wide distribution. They are possibly less able to bear the additional charges than are the large dailies, distribution of which is chiefly restricted to the province of publication or the adjacent province.

Zoning would involve increased costs to the department, as it would be necessary to segregate newspapers according to zones so as to check the weights and charges involved. It would also mean extra cost to the publisher, as he would have to segregate the newspapers according to zones and calculate the postage at the different postal rates in effect. In the United States, where zoning has been adopted, the deficit for second-class material is over $160 million per year. While it is not intended for one moment to attribute this loss to zoning, there is no doubt that some of it is caused by extra administration and handling costs which the zoning arrangement entails.

There is a final argument against zoning. In my opinion the zoning of newspapers in this country would create a balkanization of Canada. At the present time the Post Office Department is helping to a great extent in the dissemination of news. There is nothing in the rates that would prevent a paper from British Columbia going to the province of Quebec or a paper from Halifax going to Toronto. The rates are the same. It is in that way that the thoughts of the people out west will be known by those in the east, and vice versa. If we were going to make small states of each province, or if we were going to make small areas of about two hundred miles, I am sure that the newspapers of the area would remain in that area. I am absolutely opposed to that because it would be against the unity of Canada.

Mr. McLure:

I suppose the minister is going to do away with the zoning for parcel post?

Mr. Rinfret:

That is a commercial proposition which has nothing to do with the dissemination of news.

Mr. McLure:

We know that, but you could have zoning for newspapers in certain localities. Mention has been made of the large publications from Toronto and Montreal. They are sent all over Canada, so to speak, but why put the same regulations into effect for the smaller ones? For instance, in our province you do not even give us the same

number of officers to look after our affairs as you do in the other provinces. We will leave that out of consideration for the moment, though, and deal with that later.

When the Postmaster General mentioned these contracts, and the fact that consideration had to be given to road conditions, weather conditions and so on, whether it was a turnpike road or a hard-surfaced road, the cases I cited which had these great differences had the same conditions.

Mr. Warren:

You pick them out.

Mr. McLure:

Take a look at yourself when you go out, will you? The conditions are the very same. I hope the Postmaster General will consider this when dealing with our province.

Mr. Fair:

May I ask the Postmaster General whether there has been any general increase during the past two years in the cost of rural mail routes? If there has been, what was the extent of it?

Mr. Rinfret:

Does the hon. member mean the tendency?

Mr. Fair:

Yes.

Mr. Rinfret:

The figures I have here are from March 31, 1949, when the Supplemental Payments Act ceased to operate to date and the tendency would be approximately seventeen per cent higher than it was at that time on similar tenders.

Mr. Fair:

Then may I ask what happens when some contractors supply tenders containing increases which the department thinks too high? Do they accept the lowest tender, or what happens?

Mr. Rinfret:

The officials of the department have a fairly good idea of the value of a route. When they think that all the tenders are too high, they go back to all the tenderers at the same time and ask for a revised tender.

Mr. Fair:

If they do not get a tender that is satisfactory, what happens next?