Post, like several other services, should probably be considered an essential service that’s government-operated. Especially since there’s broad swathes of Canada that are absolutely unserviced by the likes of UPS or Amazon’s minions.
I may be in the minority when I say that i want my bills and notices delivered in paper format. Email is absolutely not a secure nor guaranteed-delivery service, no matter what people think. Bill payment portals and email are 100% “out of sight, out of mind” for me. When there’s a piece of paper that I can write on when I deal with it, there’s less chance of missing things.
Funny thing is, I live in a rural setting, ALL of the courier companies (including Amazon) will deliver to my house EXCEPT Canada Post.
Canada Post says part of the reason it can’t compete is that it doesn’t deliver on weekends, while many private companies do. It wants to hire more part-time staff to work those days, but the union says that amounts to gig work, and won’t accept it.
So… hire more full time workers and distribute their day off throughout the week?
Is basically what the union suggested. In fact I think they suggested doing it with existing employees.
We need a national, public carrier that provides a baseline, perhaps subsidized mail and parcel service that facilitates trade by everyone who isn’t Amazon or Walmart. Looking at parcel market share today is meaningless given that Amazon is the largest player in online orders by far and they use this market position to operate their own parcel services at rock bottom prices. We need everyone else to be able to ship reliably and cheaply. Like the coffee equipment store in Alberta I order from. Or some store on the other side of that GTA. Canada Post does this today and it should continue to do it tomorrow while providing well paying jobs. I hope Carney has similar thoughts on the issue and recognises CP as a necessary economic growth infrastructure for Canada.
In addition this would keep what FedEx and UPS can charge lower as well as keep their workers’ salaries higher. Also the major private carriers are American and FedEx is already using gig subcontractors to deliver. Many of those FedEx trucks have a small subtext saying something like “Operated by ACME Shipping Ltd”
Why can’t they reduce deliveries to every other day, or twice a week. Would we even notice? Most of the mail is advertising anyways. Just stop delivering those and reduce your operating costs.
Most of the mail is advertising anyways. Just stop delivering those and reduce your operating costs.
Admail pays enough to subsidize regular postal mail.
Without it, stamps would have to triple in price.
Let it. The post is a service. It should be free for Canadians and paid through taxes. Charge only for parcels.
If a postal service needs to make money, it should do what Canadian Tire, Rogers, Loblaws all did - start offering banking services.
They used to already.
