Western Standard - December 12, 2024


Canada Post must change its scope and business model.

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau
It’s time to wind Canada Post down Ex-Government Whip Jay Hill on Federal Parliament’s Next Steps

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

234.74

Word count

956

Sentence count

63

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Let's talk about where things are sitting with the postal strike, and why it's time for Canada Post to scale back its size and become a Crown corporation, or risk going broke, and maybe even get rid of Canada Post altogether.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.700 So let's talk about where things are sitting with the postal strike.
00:00:03.100 I mean, what if you went on strike and nobody cared?
00:00:05.980 You know, it's kind of like an ex who walks out the door and then, you know, okay, you shrug.
00:00:10.760 And a month later, she phones you because she's all pissed that you didn't call.
00:00:13.100 Hey, you walked out. It's your problem.
00:00:15.040 Found out that you didn't really wander that much in the first place.
00:00:17.780 Well, postal workers are learning that hard lesson right now, that their service, yeah,
00:00:20.820 it isn't as essential to people as they thought it was.
00:00:22.920 Nearly a month on the picket lines and all they've managed to accomplish is to lose public support
00:00:26.740 and speed up Canada's transition to a paperless society.
00:00:30.000 They can't hold Canadians hostage during the Christmas season any longer like they used to.
00:00:34.540 Their strikes don't cripple the nation. All they do is annoy them.
00:00:37.460 Demand for letter mail is not going to come back.
00:00:39.600 And the only people who appear not to know this are the postal workers in the union.
00:00:42.900 Canada Post was given a monopoly on letter delivery, but even with that, they can't fund themselves through it.
00:00:47.880 Letter mail has dropped by over a half in volume since 2016, and it's still dropping.
00:00:51.960 Canada Post has lost $3 billion since 2018, and the losses are mounting faster.
00:00:56.240 They might be on track to lose $1 billion in 2024 alone.
00:00:59.840 This hemorrhaging can't continue, and unless something dramatic changes, Canada Post is going to go broke.
00:01:05.000 Now, as a crown corporation, it's supposed to be self-funding.
00:01:07.940 They love constantly saying, hey, we're not taking tax dollars.
00:01:10.120 Well, yeah, actually, if they go broke, we get to pay for it.
00:01:13.900 So taxpayers are liable for the debts incurred, and Canada's already in a rather dire economic situation with massive government debt, low productivity, and a rising cost of living.
00:01:22.620 Adding billions more to the debt load if Canada Post goes under won't be doing us any favors.
00:01:26.440 Not only should Canada Post refuse to give in to the union demands for raises, it's got to commit to scaling its size and scope dramatically down to face contemporary reality.
00:01:36.920 The route to solvency for Canada Post might be harsh for its employees, but it's actually pretty simple.
00:01:41.840 With 68,000 employees, labor is by far the biggest expense with Canada Post, and that's where the cuts are going to come.
00:01:47.060 We've got to stop all direct-to-doorstep letter delivery.
00:01:50.860 It's ridiculously expensive and labor-intensive.
00:01:53.380 Over two-thirds of Canadians have already had their mail coming to some form of community mailbox or another already.
00:01:58.440 The only reason the transition didn't fully go to community boxes was because Justin Trudeau cut a deal with the Postal Union back in 2016.
00:02:04.720 Well, that deal's got to end, and the community boxes have got to go everywhere.
00:02:07.840 One worker can cover the ground of dozens of carriers by just traveling from box to box to deliver mail rather than walking house to house.
00:02:14.420 And delivery no longer needs to be daily.
00:02:16.920 If a person has a pressing immediate need to have a document delivered to their door, they can pay Express Post or a private courier to deal with it.
00:02:22.960 Postal workers deliver a little more than flyers daily these days anyways.
00:02:26.020 There isn't enough demand to justify going out five days a week.
00:02:28.600 Once a week will suffice.
00:02:29.980 Twice tops.
00:02:31.580 Canada Post should also just get out of the parcel delivery business.
00:02:34.380 I mean, they had a near monopoly on it a few years ago, and they blew it.
00:02:37.060 The private market has filled the parcel void with superior service, and now has a majority market share.
00:02:42.340 Canada Post might as well just divest from it.
00:02:44.260 At most, all Canada Post should be doing is providing some subsidized service to remote regions, but that's about it.
00:02:49.580 By ending home delivery, ending parcel services, and cutting to one day a week, Canada Post should be able to shed tens of thousands of positions.
00:02:56.380 I mean, they'll still have a legislative monopoly on letter service, and even if it manages to lose money in that size, at least the losses will be smaller than the current ones.
00:03:02.420 And yes, lots of jobs are going to be lost.
00:03:04.060 That's unfortunate, but that's life.
00:03:05.380 You know, there's not many milkmen delivering any longer either.
00:03:08.400 Is Canada Post supposed to be providing mail service anyways, or is it a social welfare program?
00:03:12.300 It's not...
00:03:12.980 It's...
00:03:13.400 The only point is whether, you know, to provide jobs.
00:03:16.700 Well, then maybe we should just start a crown corporation to hire thousands of people to dig holes and fill them back in again. 0.97
00:03:21.260 It'll serve the same purpose as using Canada Post as an employment program, but it won't contribute to as much traffic on the streets.
00:03:26.500 Some postal workers would find employment in the private courier sector as that industry expands.
00:03:31.160 Others are just going to have to retire or find new trades.
00:03:33.520 And hey, they get a hell of a pension, guys.
00:03:35.380 The strike has taught Canadians that losing Canada Post as we know it is an inconvenience at worst.
00:03:39.880 We don't need a huge national postal service.
00:03:42.400 And with the strike driving millions of people into converting to electronic finances and communications, Canada Post must shrink.
00:03:48.580 Let's cut it with a plan to transition workers as painlessly as possible, but let's get on with it.
00:03:53.280 It's no longer work for film processors, record store employees, or barrel stave makers either.
00:03:58.520 The world changes and the workforce must adapt to deal with it.
00:04:01.880 Postal workers had a good gig, but the run's over, guys.