Canada Post workers on nationwide strike after government demands reforms

"The bottom line is this: Canada Post is effectively insolvent," Lightbound said earlier Thursday.

"It provides an essential service to Canadians, and in particular to rural, remote and Indigenous communities, and Canadians are rightfully attached to it and want it saved. However, repeated bailouts from the federal government are not the solution."

FFS it's a service not a business; profit is not the goal. Paying bills for services isn't 'bailing out' your service provider, it's paying for what you've used.

Mail transit is essential for a modern civilization, and it's not something that should be privately controlled. Having private options is fine, but there should ALWAYS be a federal mail service.

Seeing how we also do this with public transit, hospitals, libraries and other public services, this point of view is disappointing and unfortunately very prevalent. The only thing where we can dump billions without ever asking if it's profitable, is roads. We can expropriate and build a 4 lane highway extension in the middle of a corn field for a little half a billion, multiple times, but funding hospitals, schools, public transit, clean water, the mail... ugh, such money pits!
And it's not like private businesses offer service to the remote parts of the country. I find it odd how you can mandate it serves every address and has to be profitable. Those two things do not mesh. If you want it profitable it well drop serving every address.
- If you want it [to be] profitable it well drop serving every address.
  That's not an acceptable option either. Everyone should have access to mail service and as the private services aren't obliged to provide it, the federal system needs to step up.
  Public services are there to serve the public, not to turn a profit. It's this expectation of profitability that needs to change.
It’s a service that’s mainly used by businesses to communicate with their customers. Why should taxpayers subsidize it? Charge more for postage to businesses and make them pay for it.
Regular people rarely send mail to other regular people. Extremely rarely.

Good. Eliminating all door to door deliveries is not the answer and whoever came up with that rationale needs to removed immediately.

And again, for the people in the back: Canada post is a service. It doesn’t make money. It costs money. Same way public healthcare does.

Why are they trying to spin it as a business that needs to generate profit or undertake cost cutting measures to exist and continue providing services that are still being widely used?

You don’t have to spin it as a business to say that evolving it to reflect reality makes sense. It is not exactly radical to say everybody should get the same level of service that the majority of us get today.
Fewer than 25% of Canadians have door to door delivery. Almost everybody gets delivery to a private mailbox very close to their house. Door to door delivery is down to under 4 million addresses. This is a 10 year plan to finish that transition. Not exactly aggressive.
You can still get delivery to your door if you are disabled.
Regardless of if it is a a business or an essential service, we should be honest about it. We used to send 5 times as much mail when we were fewer people. Why do we have to ignore that?
If 75% of us (like me) are totally fine with super mailboxes, I think the rest can handle it. I know that I could get away with delivery 3 times a week as well. In 2030, how time sensitive is something coming through regular mail. Let’s be real. I could wait one more day.
- I agree with your notion of “evolving it” to fit the needs and requirements of today however I don’t agree with your other points.
  Their plan is to remove door to door entirely, not just limit it to 3 days (which, I wouldn't have any major qualms about at this time if that was the endgame, which it isn’t)
  However I shouldn’t need to be disabled to receive this basic level of service, nor do I want to hobble over to the mailbox or postal office that’s “very close to my house” because the current one is a 15 minute walk on a good day, and a 35 minute trudge through half snow covered roads on a bad one. And if we’re going with this, hypothetically, how would I even know I have any mail? Do I get a call? Do I get a notice at my door? Do I just have to show up every so often and check?
  If it’s option 1, I can assure you that my phone’s functions are set by default to filter and drop any unknown calls. So that’s far from an optimal approach.
  If it’s option 3, I will not be randomly dropping by the postal office or box because currently nowhere near (or on) any common route that I take, and I have no reason to do a random cold check especially if I work primarily from home
  And if it’s option 2, you’re already here to deliver my notice, might as well bring my mail instead.
  Besides the above outlined items, I’m not going to touch the time sensitive items argument because Canada post handles more than just mail, they also handle biological deliveries, medicine, restricted substances, stuff like live bees, all your legal documents, subpoenas, medical, etc. plus a bunch of other services that I’m probably forgetting.
Because lots of rich people froth at the mount trying to get in on the privatization of a public service.
Ah cut door to door delivery. Only a select few get it anyways.
It doesn't need to be profitable, but if it's literally burning billions of dollars a year, it's quite obviously not efficient nor a smart use of our capital.
- It's net loss in 2024 of ~800million which isn't even a single billion. I think 20bucks a year on canada post is pretty reasonable.
  E: Oh and most of that loss can be attributed to the previous strike.
- If billions of dollars a year is a problem, saving $20 million is meaningless. If not 1.5B a year, how much do you think is appropriate to spend so that all Canadians have mail service? How did you come to that figure?
- Best I can find the government gave a $1 billion loan to Canada Post.
  The toal expenditures in the 2024 budget was $538 billion.
  This is having $500 in wallet and being concerned that the $1 you loaned to someone could have been spent better.
Because the service you mention is paid for with postage, not taxes. Their shortfall was 841 million last year. Who is supposed to pay for that?
I have direct to door delivery right now. Every day I get flyers for assholes that want to buy my house for pennies on the dollar, and actual mail maybe twice a week.
Why are we paying for delivery the other 3 days?
The simple reality is that daily direct to door delivery isn't necessary any more, and if I had to go for a 5 minute walk to collect my mail 3 times a week, I'd be fine with that.
- Then charge more for the junk mail?
  why do people continually accept all of our public services getting shittier and shittier every year?
  i'm not here to debate the corporate structure of canada post... whether it is a crown corp, or an arms length private corp, or whatever....
  It's a vital public service for all citizens... period. Make it work... for everyone...
  Your particular use case is just one of thousands... actually, i agree with you. I technically dont need monday-friday service... but some others do and thats fine
- One thing the USPS does well is sending me an email every morning with a picture of every mail piece that's going to be delivered that day. Then I can decide if it's worth checking the mailbox
  I can go weeks without checking it
- Their shortfall was 841 million last year. Who is supposed to pay for that?
  Taxes. It's a government service.
  The Department of National Defence had a shortfall of $28.8 billion last year, who is supposed to pay for that?
  The 2024 Federal budget had a revenue of 498 billion. The Canada Post "shortfall" was less than 0.2% of the budget.
- I haven't mailed a letter in decades, and a guy in cute shorts just brings me junk mail every day.
  Society has evolved. There are no more milkmen or ice deliveries any more either.

Want to know how to get Canada Post back on its feet, financially? Ban private delivery services.

They don't need to turn a profit but the costs need to be financially sustainable. I don't think banning competition is a good move, that's unnecessary. The question should be posed to Canadians at large: what is CP's services worth to us, as a nation? Lemmy's views will certainly be skewed but we need an honest holistic view. Based on @GodofLies@lemmy.ca calculation in this thread I'm cool with the $50 a year 'fee', but that will certainly grow with their losses and they do need capital investment to improve/modernize aspects of the service.
- Oh I am aware that they don't really need to turn a profit. Net zero / cost recovery is more than good enough. And I am in no way implying using government legislation to regulate that market. We need Canada Post to change their business model where they can still retain their currently hired employees. Are they seriously not able to make significant changes to their existing model to be more competitive? It reeks of a non-innovative c-suite and board (and government officials) unwilling to take the hard road of actually working with the employees to make complex organizational changes. They are taking the easy way out via 'standard accounting/business practices' by slashing services and worker layoffs. That's the easy way out.
  What does the hard way look like? How about sitting down with union employees down to the lowest worker level and actually find ways for cost savings and new business opportunities to patch the shortfall? I don't to believe that CP management truly has tried other than finger-pointing at external private businesses stealing their lunch from underneath them or government legislation that's unwilling to change (because the fed gov is really the one in control here - so again, I'm saying they're just taking the easy way out. You think an elected federal government employee is going to sit down and do the hard work to go around talking to a large number of union employees to find a way through all this? My bet is no - they'll take the easy way out.)
- Canada post's costs are less than 1% of the government budget.
  If we're looking to save money there's better places to look.
Compete , optimize operation cost, and don't listen to trump asking to spend 5% on NATO
- Competition divides revenue, which leads to lower wages and benefits. The only people that benefit from competition, are the ones who own the company. And Canada Post is a government service. Its success should not be tied to profits.
- Make Canada post a military division? Heh
- ...you can't compete with Amazon using 'independent contractors' that drive their own cars, work until 10pm, 7 days a week, with no benefits.
- We need to spend more money on defense sorry. The world is changing and we are severally underfunded for defence.
...or at the very minimum crack down on the 'independent contractor' nonsense. Make Amazon pay for UI, vacation, healthcare, car insurance, for all its delivery drivers. Our politicians allow too many scams, and it hurts everyone.
So ban themselves too? Might want to lookup who is the majority shareholder of purolator...
Let's not make an untenable situation even worse. Also government intervention in the marketplace never ends well, and it's time to face the facts. Mail as it was, is no longer viable. That's going to suck for a lot of people, and I mean that sucks for sure, I'm not a heartless bastard. But, it pretty clearly isn't functional.
- Crown corporations hold monopolies in Canada all the time. Canada Post is only losing money, because it's only delivering mail. Instead of that service including packages, the Canadian government allowed them to outsource those services to private contractors. That's when they started losing money. Privatization is how all good services eventually die. They need to take that back, and start providing more than just mail delivery, if they're going to stay solvent.
- Yes the fact that USB c can charge all phones now is horrible how could the EU have done this to the world.
Years of fake colleges bringing in cheap 'independent contractors', undermining Canada Post. This is 100% on the Liberals, allowing fake Canadian colleges to exist. Allowing these jobs to be classified as independent. Everyone knows the scam, it happened under the Liberals. Shame.
- I blame all the parties. You can too!
- Jesus fucking Christ no. It was conservative cuts to the service.
- How do college students undermine Canada Post? Please, be specific.

Stand with the posties and send a message to this government that siding with corporations instead of labour won't end well.

I'm curious to see just how quickly Hajdu will reach for that trusty section 107.
Whenever it happens, we're all in for some pure cinema as the feds realize they've already spent the last magic bullet.
I'm not standing with either side here. This is going to be a case study in how not ever being able to reach a compromise completely destroys the public's confidence in an institution. I just watched a rather large institution say behind closed doors today, that they'll never have confidence in CP and it's very soon going to be codified in their policy that it's never used for any corporate purposes in the future. I'm also on a board that has already reached that conclusion with the uncertainty earlier this year, and now has a resolution out to their membership at their AGM to only electronically send notice for funds collections in the future, as CP can no longer be counted on.
CP is legitimately fucked, in more ways than one, and will never exist in the way it did yesterday morning, no matter what happens here. This is the nightmare scenario, and both the executive and the union only have themselves to thank for it. Their membership should be mad as hell, because not very many of them are going to have the jobs they once did. As a tax paying Canadian, I'm pretty mad at the executive too, how they can burn that much cash is mind boggling. Pretty f'n broken. You can curse me and throw all the hate that you want at me for this viewpoint, but it's the stone cold truth.
- CP has already lost so much business with the first strike and the one last Christmas. People don't bother moving back once the have found and set up an alternative. No another strike good luck getting people to use your services.

It’s crazy how governments across the world are failing their citizens but seem to have unlimited money for corruption

Looking at the loss numbers cited since 2018 come down to $20-30 per Canadian per year tops. This whole hullabaloo, erosion of confidence, economic disruption and more are over that. Mail and parcel delivery is basic economic infrastructure today. Having a public, reliable delivery service that covers all of Canada, that's run below cost, is an economic enabler for Canadian businesses, like water, electricity and roads. I can't believe we're doing what we're doing right now, especially for a government that talks about boosting Canada's economy. Ridiculous.

E: I'm beginning to believe that this isn't about incompetence mismanagement but perhaps willful mismanagement on the part of CP's exec layer who perhaps see higher compensation on the horizon, should CP be privatized. Of course at the expense of everyone else, workers, businesses and individual Canadians.

Support to these workers striking - Mark Carney promised he wouldn't do austerity like Pollievre and hes blatantly breaking that promise with funding cuts for Canada Post. If there's a crisis at Canada Post its because they need to be funded, not have working hours cut in the name of austerity.

I think the angle people aren't looking at more is the financial side of things and actually calculating it out. [https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/financial-and-sustainability-reports/2024-annual-report/our-financial-picture.page](Canada Post's Financials - See the first chart yourselves)

So it seems like 2018 they invested a little and the loss reduced. COVID happened so the big loss there isn't surprising. However, in between the reduced service, someone ate their lunch or their upper management / c-suite / board no longer has the qualifications to lead it's own team. Change the management already.

The monetary part of how much this subscription to Canada Post is going to be..: 841 million/41 million (current Canadian population) ~= $20.51 cents (rough math of ~$52.56 dollars per household based on 16 million addresses in Canada Post's system) Canadian to have delivery/mailbox/post offices/parcel pickups. Now go compare the rates that Canada Post offers versus FedDex, DHL etc. Ask yourself, would you still use Canada Post?

So yeah, let's all be outraged about $52.56 dollars for this service.

Federal government is spending 13 billion on a VW battery plant in St Thomas, Ontario
That's 13 billion dollars / 41.million Canadians = $317 per Canadian
This is projected to employ 3000 people. Canada Post employs 62,300 people.
Canada post employs 21 X as many people as the VW plant hopes too.
CP could lose 1 billion a year for 273 years before it would cost the Canadian tax payer as much per job as the VW plant workers do. And that is if the VW plant stays on target and doesn't end up like North Volt
I don't know what the path forward for Canada Post is but the government narrative is whack. If the government is trying to save money why are they spending so much for 3000 jobs and celebrating that as a huge win?
It seems like they don't value workers or Canadians just corporate profits at the Canadian tax payers expense.
We should expect more from our government.
- The $13B was production based tax credits. No one explains how government funding works, or the milestones.
- Exactly, we should all be outraged at the other expenditures that the federal government is pushing. What good does a VW battery plant do for us as Canadians as a whole when it's for a private foreign company???
  I will also say, you can't compare a battery plant to a postage service. The model to fund CP used to work until it didn't.
  We should be asking what went wrong? Why is that so? Why aren't their executives being fired and the board changed? Did they even ask their own union employees for real feedback on what can be changed other than the tidbits we hear in the news? Because it seems like these days a lot of upper to mid management seem to be trying real hard to justify their own existences - elected government officials included (which we should always keep them to the fire and expect a high level of competence for handling our taxpayer money and good governance for us all equally).

What changed for 2018 to turn gains to losses?

Both sides got what they wanted. Wouldn't compromise, and well, here we are. A crown corp that cannot continue in it's current form because it's totally insolvent, a union thats got itself backed so far into the corner that it's pretty much hopeless and that can't now crawl out of without basically getting hung at high noon by their membership, and the Average Joe Canadian and Canadian businesses who won't ever be confident enough to seriously use their services for the foreseeable future.

Golf claps to all involved.

Why should Canada Post be "solvent"? It's mandated to serve every Canadian address. Have you considered what that means? It means it has to send mail to the furthest reaches of Grise Fiord (look for it on Google Maps). A business would never deliver there, and they don't because it's not profitable. A non-discriminatory mail service is not a profit business, it's a public service of the government. Firehalls ans library systems have budgets, but no one expects them to be solvent because they're services supported by public funds (taxes), not businesses.
- What is getting so lost in all this social media outrage, is no one is proposing the total ending of mail delivery here. It's still going to occur, just with some adjustments coming to make the service less of a capital burner, and maybe more of a service that's matched to the reality of a modern age. It doesn't make much sense to me that everyone is so opposed to this. Ol' Grise Fiord is going to still receive their mail under this new proposed system. Well I mean they were until the postal union led their employees off the job once again for the umpteenth time.
I don't want to use anything else but a government service to deliver passports and bank cards.
- Could you not return to the passport office or the bank to take care of that? We all need to set fire to billions of dollars a year because you require white gloved seven day delivery, to your door, of these things?
  Passports shouldn't be coming through the mail either, I've always felt that way about this, regardless of the current situation. You should be returning to a desk to pick up such an important document, and providing proper ID to a properly trained individual to receive such a thing, in a controlled environment.