In announcing Wednesday a five-point restructuring plan that includes ending door-to-door residential mail delivery in urban areas, Canada Post repeatedly pointed to a Conference Board of Canada report released last spring that documented challenges facing the postal service. That same report included options such as eliminating door-to-door service for urban residential households and increasing postal prices as ways to cut costs and improve the bottom line — options the Crown corporation has now adopted.
Chopra is a member of the board of directors of the Conference Board of Canada.
Canada Post officials said Wednesday there is no conflict of interest in Chopra sitting on the board of an organization that appears to have heavily influenced the decisions of the Crown corporation he also heads.
The postal service conducted its own consultations and crafted its own plan, spokesman Jon Hamilton said.
“First and foremost, all (the Conference Board) did was lay out some options and they talked about the size of the problem, none of which came as any surprise to anybody because the amount of mail in the system has been in decline,” Hamilton said.
“There’s nothing new, but it got people’s attention and we used that as an opportunity to say, ‘OK, you haven’t thought about postal service for a long time, but you are now, what do you need?’ We built our own plan based on that.”
Chopra is also paid the highest salary range among so-called governor-in-council cabinet appointments, with potential earnings of more than half a million dollars a year as Canada Post CEO. Chopra is paid at the CEO 8 level, meaning he receives between $440,900 and $518,600 a year in salary to head an organization that has nearly two dozen presidents and vice-presidents.
His salary range has been bumped up from the $422,500-to-$497,100 range for his job when he was appointed for a five-year term effective Feb. 1, 2011, according to the cabinet order that appointed him.
Along with Chopra as president and CEO, Canada Post has two “group presidents,” seven senior vice-presidents and 12 vice-presidents, according to the management team listed on the Crown corporation’s website.
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: Jason Fekete & Andrea Hill
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