Now is the time to draw inspiration from wherever we can, and stand with workers while they fight the employer-led race to the bottom.
Mail services are, in my opinion, a worthwhile endeavour. People in remote parts of the country deserve to be able to get their bills on paper too.
It’s when they’re considered to be a standalone, for-profit corporation that problems really crop up. Especially when they’re competing with and for Amazon’s race to the bottom delivery rates.
I say this as someone who resolutely avoids electronic billing. It’s a FANTASTIC way for my ADHD brain to forget about bills until the power is cut off.
ETA Germany sold off Deutsche Post but that’s a terrible example because Germany doesn’t have 90% of its population on 10% of the land mass and still need to serve that 10% population.
I don’t think Canada post needs to be profitable, I agree that it’s a service and should be run like one rather than a business.
But just because it’s a government run service doesn’t mean we need to toss money away either. If problems have been identified and they can be more efficient, why not?
I don’t see why mail needs to be delivered every single day, especially if it’s only junkmail that day.
I don’t see why door to door delivery is necessary either now a days. I lived in an area where I had to drive 20 minutes to pick up my mail, I survived. Maybe there’s a scenario I’m missing that my life experience hasn’t exposed me to yet, but if there are cases like that, maybe disabled people, let them apply for door to door delivery on a special case by case basis.
I agree with all those points. Door to door mail delivery was a postwar job creation program in USA as far as I know, maybe it’s the same for Canada, but it is a luxury unless it’s super high density.
I have a recycling bin next to my mailbox. Almost everything goes in there. I can check it once a week.
It is a luxury, but I don’t think we’re wrong to want luxuries. I think the frequency issue is intentionally disregarded. And it shouldn’t be. I’d rather have weekly delivery to my door than daily to a community mailbox. But what I’d really like is choice. What if we had both a community mailbox and weekly door-to-door delivery? Need something urgently, pick it up at the community mailbox where it gets dropped off daily, but if you’re not religiously emptying your community mailbox, a postman still comes by once a week to deliver any mail from your community mailbox to your home?
I suspect this could potentially save a lot of money AND provide actually better service to the significant majority of people. To the point that we could even start expanding door-to-door delivery again instead of removing it, we’d just expand it to areas that currently only have community mailboxes but do it on a reduced frequency, like garbage and recycling services. If they can do it weekly in most places, why can’t the postal service?
Most people don’t even get door to door delivery it is a luxury for a small percentage of people. Why does a small percentage get special treatment? Because they have always had it? That’s not a valid reason.
Not to mention the people who have it are generally wealthier because it’s mostly for detached homes at this point.
Did you miss the part where I suggested expanding it? You know, being progressive instead of regressive? Instead of taking away the luxury, let’s find a way to give more people the luxury? So that it’s not special treatment, it’s everyone’s treatment?
It might make sense to continue it as a service but attach a substantial surcharge to cover the pay of the mail carriers, just like you would normally pay extra for other luxuries. We might even set the price to subsidize the service for mobility-impaired people for whom going to a community mailbox is a genuine obstacle.
Mail services are, in my opinion, a worthwhile endeavour. People in remote parts of the country deserve to be able to get their bills on paper too.
I really liked the idea I saw in some interview where Mail Services could be switched up to being ‘Federal Services’ or Community Services…
We have all these buildings,
Why can’t they be Passport Services, Taxes Services,… I even liked the idea that Mail Carriers could be wellness checkers.
Need something notarized? Need to do a proof of identity? Photo taken, Etc. Pay them well, Train them well, Make them more than just dropping of a letter. Expand them to be more than that.
Keep the hard earned infrastructure, and adapt it.
I don’t really agree that you have the right to paper bills. It’s a waste all around and should be subject to additional fees. We live in a digital age, time to adapt.
I do think that remote areas deserve to receive mail for other purposes, but bills aren’t one of those.
I understand why you say it’s an environmental waste, and that has some merit, until we consider the impact of junk mail, flyers, etc. There are many areas of modern society we can economize and improve upon before we get to the impact from paper billing.
What is your alternative to a pile of paper on a desk? It needs to be persistent, timely, and reliable. Online billing portals mean I need to log in on a regular basis to multiple portals in order to check for notifications and invoices, which simply doesn’t work for my brain. Having a bill sitting out, on which I am able to write the payment amount and date, permits me to keep track of the bill throughout its lifecycle at a glance from across the room.
An email inbox? What online billing doesnt have the option for an email notification?
Can your bills not just be direct debit?
They may want to actually review the bills for errors before they pay them.
You can still review it prior to it going through.
Same problem as paying the bill online in the first place: you have to remember to take an unprompted action at a certain time.
All my paperless bills come to one of my email addresses, I look at it and then delete it. I have yet to see an error. I make sure that the money comes out of my account when it is supposed to.
You heard it here first folks. The people who don’t have internet, don’t need to pay for bills.
Sell public-option banking and cell phone services at post office branches and you’d turn instant profit. Bigger branches could also carry dry grocery goods. There is so much more they could be doing other than trying to out-Bezos the mail.
Yes and yes.
I’ve been mentioning France’s efforts to modernise their postal services, that also includes services aimed at helping older folks with daily/weekly interactions / home visits, and I think that would be a great thing to add to Canada Post rural offerings.Public option cell and Internet I’d be very down with, especially if they reclaimed the lines they paid bell and Rogers to lay
Any solutions as to how NOT to lose $1,000,000 per day?
Didn’t think so. Let’s keep delvering junk mail door-to-door!How much money is the military losing per day? As far as I can tell they aren’t bringing in any income at all!
Maybe they can deliver the junk mail!
The junk mail is one of the profits for Canada post, I personally put a sticky in my mailbox saying no junk mail. I have done a lot to avoid ads, it has not been inexpensive I have paid a lot of money to set up a system where I get very few peaces of junk mail, spam, or auto phone calls. Even though if you asked me I would have to tell you I have paid somewhere in the high hundreds (maybe $1000+) over the past ten or so years and I continue to pay lots of money (less now that I have started the buy Canadian thing) to keep me away from all the junk mail and spam the results have been priceless, Canada Post could help people with this.
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We’re all being misled here raging over CP’s reform and its losses because ‘all I get is trash mail’. Why isn’t the management of Canada Post on the hook for this? Yet we’re here blaming the union of their mismanagement? After all, they’re the ones that are making the big bucks, so they know what they’re doing right? Right? Why aren’t any of these c-suite or board stepping down/let go from doing such a terrible job? 6 straight years, 24 financial quarters. Who let this ‘experiment’ run for so long? Did this never make a blip in some federal minister’s portfolio? Well at least we know who to blame for inaction during this time for this policy failure.
- As many other have pointed out, it’s a service, not a for-profit.
- The corpro Amazon contractor-undercutting wages problem
- The Libs aren’t willing to do the hard work to actually transform CP into a cost-recovery model and fix the point above. They’d rather just do the classic ‘cut services’ while only looking at a spreadsheet without really carefully considering what they are really doing. It’s a cut to peoples jobs which means less money flowing into the economy as a whole - especially given CP’s reach. Plus, wages paid out, the federal government still taxes it. You see what I’m seeing? The ditch isn’t as big as people make it to be. Again, the Libs are pissing away a crown corp jewel again.
- CP has so much more potential with what it can do with its storage, delivery, network and database without even doing major expenditures.
I just want to take a moment to enjoy that the Canada Post thing is one of our country’s big political conversations. There’s a problem, and people have different solutions. Some of the solutions rely on false information or bad reasoning. Some of them are well-reasoned, but have different priorities to each other. The government will have to make a decision, and some will praise it, and some will criticize it, and it will make some peoples’ lives better, and some peoples’ lives worse.
But nobody’s using the Canada Post situation as a vehicle to hurt people they hate. People don’t seem to be moving in lockstep based on ideology and propaganda. Nobody’s been called a fascist over it because nobody’s been being a fascist over it. This is what politics should be like. It’s refreshing.
In an unhelpful, though unfortunately lawful, end-run around the union, the Liberals had granted Canada Post’s request to put a “final offer” directly to members in May. To no one’s surprise, nearly 70 per cent of voting postal workers rejected the proposed contracts. With the government again putting its thumb on the scale for Canada Post management in last Thursday’s announcement, the union had little choice but to escalate to full job action now.
For nearly two years, Canada Post management has been pushing a narrative that the crown corporation is broke and the only solution is to impose the costs of restructuring on workers.I think most of the problems with Canada Post is the commercialisation of it. 95% of my personal mail delivered to my community mailbox is flyers and scam inivitations to MLM’s. I’ve stopped regularly checking it every day because its always all garbage that I imeadiatly throw out. I usually check it every other week now. Plus if I get a parcel its almost always just a slip that I have to take to shoppers drug mart (not the more easily accessible post office). Its literally more convenient to get packages delivered by anyone else, because they will actually bring them to my door instead of waiting an hour in line at Shoppers so that an underpaid Shoppers drug mart employee can get me my package that any other service would have put directly into my hands.
If i have to travel to get my mail, i’ll probably never see my mail.
So you have to walk 5 minutes or drive by it on your way to or from someplace and you’ll never pick it up? I mean I only maybe once a month unless I’m expecting something. Don’t see what the big issue is.
But hey I didn’t even know home delivery was a thing till the last strike.
The Leap Manifesto had some very good ideas about using Canada Post as a vehicle for a green transition: https://rabble.ca/economy/postal-workers-launch-ambitious-proposal-could-redefine-canadas-economy/
@BrikoX Personally think they should transform Canada Post into a workers co-op.
I don’t see why we can’t designate door-to-door mailing in sparsely populated areas and community mailboxes in more crowded places? Wouldn’t that save quite some money while still ensuring that people don’t have to spend ridiculous amounts of time to get their mail? I’d imagine that in more crowded places, because things are a bit more down in scale, people wouldn’t have to drive 20 minutes just to get their mail, and it would generally be a 5 minute walk.
We can do something more creative too. If there’s a nearby cafe or something, make that the community mailbox and people can grab their mail and have coffee. Your parcels would be away from the elements, and the cafe can become sort of a 3rd place. It’s more efficient land use!
We can also make community mailboxes have the ability to notify the people whenever there’s something in the mail, and people can subscribe to that system if they wish to (not everyone wants or can use digital ways of getting information). That way, it’s more difficult for people to forget about their mail. There definitely is a development cost and ongoing maintenance cost, but hey, it’s an option.
For those in sparsely populated areas, nothing much would change, if any. I think they could still have community mailboxes and just opt into it if it fits their lifestyle (eg, they choose to head out to the mailbox every Tues and Fri, for example). They can change their delivery option by going online or just visit a library or somewhere they can get a person to help them change their setting.
Is that a bit more work for postal workers to have to separate mail? It could be, but perhaps we could append some kind of token to the address to clearly distinguish door-to-door vs community mailboxes, making it easier to verify by eye, and also easier to automatically separate via a scanner if needed. Heck, could we just plaster a QR code to mail?
For those who changed their option, you might still get mail either in your community mailbox or your own mailbox, depending on what you’ve switched to.
Just spitballing here. There’s a lot you can argue about each idea, but there are many things we can do to be more efficient, make it less painful for our postal workers but also save out on cost.
I grew up in Cambridge Ontario, we had community mailboxes there since the 80s. It wasn’t until I moved to Toronto in my 20s that I discovered Canada Post does door to door mail delivery.
I mean there was no need to notify anyone. you just checked the mailbox every day. If you had a package there was a key in your regular mailbox that would open the larger boxes at the bottom. then you’d just throw the key in the mailslot at the top of the community mailbox.
I always assumed this was a thing.
