Canada

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.

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.

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/

How to make Canada post profitable again:

1. Force Amazon to follow the fucking law and pay all of their contractors-but- not-really as either actual contractors(they'll make far more money), or as employees(they'll make far more money)
2. undo everything Stephen Harper and his cronies did.

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.

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.