It’s too bad Mr Lee appears to have more sway with our government than those whom it is purported to serve. I wonder where the money trail leads to….I think to Nazi USA, Nazi Amazon, big oil and gas polluters – mostly American, Carbon Capture (which has been proven is a scam and does not work), extremely dangerous, stupid and polluting LNG, billionaire American kid killing, spy and AI tech, etc.
Planning the obsolescence of Canada Post, Amazon’s low-wage, non-union model is a threat not just to Canada Post, but to Canadian workers across the board by Paris Marx / November 4, 2024, Canadian Dimension
If you’ve heard anything about Canada Post recently, it’s probably that it’s losing money. A lot of money. And there’s little sign that the hemorrhage will stop anytime soon.
Last year, the Crown corporation reported an annual loss of $748 million and warned it could run out of operating capital by early 2025, unless it came up with new borrowing or refinancing options. Canada Post’s operations aren’t actually subsidized by the federal government. It’s expected to serve every single address in the country and still break even, with limits on the prices it can charge and the services it can offer.
With the ascension of electronic communication, letter mail volumes have plunged, meaning there’s less revenue coming from Canada Post’s original vocation. It delivers packages too, but there it faces competition not just from traditional parcel-delivery services, but also from an even lower wage model pioneered by Amazon.
Canada Post has begun selling off parts of its business to try to close the gap, leading long-time critics of the post office like Carleton University business professor Ian Lee to declare it’s “disappearing before our eyes.” In recent years, Lee has been advancing a radical proposal to gut the number of post offices serving rural communities, slash the workforce by two-thirds, and significantly pull back on the delivery network.
It’s not just a plan to cut costs, but to force the public service to become just another business in the marketplace.
That whole discussion of the question is deliberately circumscribed. There is an unwillingness to entertain a future in which Canada Post’s role can continuously evolve to serve the needs of Canadians. And the degradation of delivery work by Amazon is accepted as a fait accompli, instead of something we can reverse if the government is prepared to defend workers’ rights against a company whose business model is geared towards undermining them.
The narrative we hear about Canada Post is one fashioned by the organization’s management and people like Lee who are biased against the notion that a public post office can survive and thrive into the 21st century. Media reporting echoes it uncritically, suggesting to the public that Canada Post is doomed and that there are few options for digging itself out of the hole it’s in, apart from heeding the calls for privatization and dismantling. But that’s not the way it has to be.
For several years now, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has been promoting a much more hopeful vision for this institution that every single Canadian depends on. The Delivering Community Power plan envisions a future where Canada Post expands to offer banking services, provide check-ins for the elderly, and plays an even more essential role in the sustainable communities of the future. Unlike Lee’s project of closing post offices across the country, it’s a plan that recognizes the crucial role the institution plays and seeks to ensure it can continue providing essential services to Canadians even as their reliance on letter mail declines. But there are roadblocks to realizing that vision.
Expanding the post office is going to require funds, a tall order given how much money Canada Post is currently losing. Yet CUPW disputes the narrative embraced by corporate management and those that want to see the end of the post office as we know it. According to the union, Canada Post has seen its non-labour spending jump by over 56 percent between 2017 and 2023, which includes a five-year plan to spend $4 billion on infrastructure upgrades for a surge in parcel growth that hasn’t materialized. It maintains that those spending decisions go a long way to explaining the losses Canada Post is experiencing. Further, parcel volume has not actually fallen, rather the total market for package delivery has expanded and Canada Post hasn’t maintained its share of that growth, in part because management told Amazon it couldn’t keep up with its demands in 2022, driving away a major customer.
CUPW’s story paints a different picture of the troubles facing Canada Post. It’s not so much a business in terminal decline, but one with bad management that has been making poor decisions about the future of a public institution. The limited vision of management paired with the government’s lack of interest in reimagining Canada Post’s future is part of what has put it in this bind. Postal banking would bring in ample revenue that could help fund the delivery business, but the government would not just have to give the Crown corporation permission to expand its mandate; it would likely also have to invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver it. And neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have any interest in spending that money — and angering the big banks in the process.
But there’s one other threat facing Canada Post that may be far more existential than many people recognize. Amazon is not just a customer of Canada Post, relying on it to reach the destinations out of range of its own delivery network; it’s also a major competitor whose business model rests on cheaper pricing made possible in part by aggressive attacks on the power of workers. Unless that’s addressed, it will be hard for Canada Post’s unionized workforce to compete.
There’s no denying Amazon has changed the way many people shop in the past few decades and played a significant role in swelling the number of parcels most people receive in the average year. It’s commonly seen as a successful e-commerce platform that has used its dominant position to expand into many other lines of business, like video streaming and health care. But that success is also dependent on vigorously opposing unions and suppressing the wages of its workers.
If you think of how a package gets from Amazon to a customer, it needs to pass through a warehouse and then sit in the truck of a delivery driver before getting to their door. Over time, Amazon has moved into those areas — and tried to transform how they work. Logistics is a traditionally unionized industry where workers tend to command good salaries, but that’s not the case with the Amazon model. The e-commerce giant fiercely combats any attempt by workers to form unions at its fulfillment centres because it has been trying to reframe warehouse work as non-skilled labour for which workers should expect little more than minimum wage — and far less than at unionized facilities.
Amazon’s been doing something similar in the delivery field. Unlike with its warehouses, Amazon doesn’t hire its own delivery drivers. Instead, it either uses independent contractors or “gig” workers through its Amazon Flex platform, or it contracts the service out to delivery service partners like Intelcom, who hire the workers themselves. In this model, Amazon can set aggressive delivery targets that force the workers into a stressful and precarious existence. It’s no wonder Amazon’s warehouse and delivery workers suffer high rates of injury.
Now consider the broader consequences of that. As Amazon’s warehousing and delivery models expand, they place pressure on competitors to follow suit: to speed up the pace of work, to adopt new forms of surveillance and algorithmic management, and to restrict worker pay, if not to attack their unions altogether.
When Lee talks about the need to make Canada Post delivery more competitive with Amazon or FedEx, whose workers are also non-union, it’s pretty clear what he’s suggesting: not just mass layoffs, but an attack on the postal workers’ union too.
That leaves us with an important question to consider. Not just what we want the future of Canada Post to be, but also what kind of society we want to live in. We should want to take advantage of the post office’s unique, nationwide infrastructure to provide more and better services to Canadians instead of dismantling something that we may never be able to rebuild.
But even more than that, the government should see Amazon’s low-wage, non-union model as a threat not just to Canada Post, but to Canadian workers across the board, and intervene to rein it in.
Paris Marx is a tech critic and host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. He writes the Disconnect newsletter and is the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.
Mikey a year ago:
Becoming more ‘efficient’ and ‘competitive’ in private sector economic propaganda is code for lower wages, more inequality production, more power to upper class economic power and the continued stranglehold on our politics that continues to corporatize society. Please add offshoring wealth to the deceptive propaganda list.
As commodities to be exploited by Amazon etc., citizens would do well to ask, “Why voters volunteer for incarceration within a failing economic model designed to exploit?”
jabberwooky 10 months ago:
I have 2 friends who are postal workers. They say that going on strike before Xmas was never the plan and got cornered into it by incompetent management and its tactics. I was not aware of the implications of the voracious Amazon model in this picture. It really does treat its employees badly and that’s something the CUPW would never accept. It’s a sad situation really. Either the cost of mail goes way up or the service slowly disappears.Or our gov’t quits lying about it, publicly states mail delivery is an essential service not a corporation, financed by our taxes the way the gov’t finances billion dollar profit raping polluter fossil fuel companies, many of them foreign owned. It needs good management that can make better decisions to keep costs down without affecting deliveries to rural clients too badly. Competition from FedEx, UPS and Amazon is a killer to their business model. I think it was Prof Ian Lee in a CBC interview that said the mail service will be gone in 6 years. When CPost is history will we be lamenting its loss from the Canadian landascape? Maybe briefly.I beg to differ. I think many Canadians will suffer badly after Carney and his KKKLan kills Canada Post, but he’s a Nazi Zionist Harper con, causing suffering to ordinary citizens is the intent.
Marc Bédard Pelchat 10 months ago:
We should start to see how we could transform Canada Post into a worker’s cooperative. I think the unions should work in that sense, build a consensus and make a proposition to the government.
Ted 10 months ago:
“the government should see Amazon’s low-wage, non-union model as a threat not just to Canada Post, but to Canadian workers across the board, and intervene to rein it in.” Well that’s not going to happen given that gov is there to facilitate corporations to maximize profit
***
@discordantmuse.bsky.social:
We subsidize fossil fuels, we can subsidize our public service called Canada Post.
@psac_afpc:
The government gave Canada Post the green light to end home delivery for millions, leaving seniors and rural families stranded. We are in solidarity with postal workers.
Join the picket line. Protect our communities. Protect our workers.
@gunstreet.bsky.social:
the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.
@janecragun.bsky.social:
Same goes for public schools, colleges, and universities.
@joknowles.bsky.social:
Also health-care facilities, prisons, etc. etc. etc.
@kikithehamster.bsky.social:
Jails and hospitals
@loxy.bsky.social:
Reminder: when Canada Post was on strike, it was not possible for me to send out items for my biz. It was also not possible for me to buy from many Canadian businesses because couriers don’t want to serve the North. This is a step towards privatizing something that should be a service to Canadians.The suffering is the point. Couriers do not deliver to my home either, even though I am less than an hour from Calgary and on the edge of the Hamlet of Rosebud. If Carney succeeds in privatizing what Herr Harper failed to (because we Canadians punted his cruel Nazi ass but now voted in his evil twin), I’ll no longer have a way to get my mail or send it unless I drive a long distance which is expensive and polluting; I avoid driving at all costs to reduce my emissions. Carney is a liar, a traitor and a fraud.
@tryangregory.bsky.social:
Told ya. Dozens and dozens of you partisans insisted there wouldn’t be cuts to services.
“Nation building” by infuriating labour, driving away progressives, and cutting public service.
I wish the people rationalizing everything Carney does could see even a tiny bit of the big picture.
Government spent $30 billion on a pipeline and $30 billion on EV battery plants at one go, so $4 billion over seven years is PEANUTS for our postal service.
@tryangregory.bsky.social:
Dear goofballs: Public services are not “money losses”. They are public services paid for with public money.
@julieslalonde.bsky.social:
I am begging Canadians to understand that Canada Post, like public transit, should not be a business – it’s a service.
Canada Post is a lifeline for rural, remote and Northern communities and overall, we need to re-evaluate why people think they “need” random shit delivered ASAP.
“Canada Post is on track to lose money” Hum. Duh. It cost less than a toonie to send a letter across Canada.
“Canada Post is a service and not a business” was common knowledge until late stage capitalism brain rotted most people into think if it ain’t making money for shareholders, it’s failing.
@parismarx.com:
The government is reducing service standards and Canada Post’s biggest advantage: its nationwide network.
This plan is about cutting back the postal service instead of investing to give it new revenue tools through things like postal banking. It’s shameful.
@tryangregory.bsky.social:
Just the beginning of Carney’s cuts to public services.
Before you rationalize cuts to Canada Post, please understand that I don’t care to hear it. Instead of commenting, maybe spend a few minutes reflecting on what this once again shows us about Carney’s views of labour, public services, austerity, and “nation-building”.
“There won’t be cuts to public services. Stop fearmongering. Give Carney a chance.”
Dozens and dozens of you
Annnnnnnd… the rationalizations have already begun yet again.
@tryangregory.bsky.social:
Carney is worse than Harper 2.0. And we told you he would be.
@brianbusby.bsky.social:
The redirection of parcels to Purolator was never raised in today’s news conference. This is particularly interesting given that the Canada Post CEO sits on Purolator’s board.
Union rep says directive comes because of move to stop home deliveries, close rural post offices
The union representing Canada Post workers says its members will be on nationwide strike in the next 24 hours, describing the situation as ‘fluid.’
Canada Post says green light to end door-to-door deliveries can help with climb out of financial hole, Ottawa freeing carrier to make changes as it faces ‘existential crisis’ by CBC News, Sept 25, 2025
‘The goal, ultimately, is to save Canada Post,’ minister says of postal service transformation3 hours ago
Rhianna Schmunk
We’re wrapping our live coverage on Canada Post for now, but here’s a recap for those who might have missed today’s updates.
The government has directed Canada Post to significantly change how it delivers mail. First, Ottawa told the carrier to stop door-to-door home deliveries and transitioning those addresses to community mailboxes over the next few years. Second, it said some rural post offices should be closed.
All of this, Minister Joel Lightbound said, is part of a plan to save Canada Post, because its finances are in abysmal shape. (It lost more than $1 billion last year alone, with bigger losses expected this year.) The union disagreed, saying the ongoing labour uncertainty is also costing money because customers are going elsewhere.
Canada Post welcomed the changes. Then, late in the afternoon, the union representing tens of thousands of postal workers said they were “outraged” by Ottawa’s decision and confirmed they were going back on strike.
I’m a senior writer on the national desk. I’ve spoken with Canada Post workers today.
They say they get to know the people along their routes during home deliveries and perform wellness checks on elderly residents – services they feel are being overlooked.Fucking fraudster Carney, like Harper, doesn’t give a shit about Canadians, especially not unwell, challenged, or senior/marginalized Canadians or anyone living rural (where we already live sacrificed in raped resource fields to provide abundance to USA and the global rich and Canadians living in cities).
“It’s a little sad that an institution that is kind of in everyone’s community will eventually wither away,” said Daniel Bryant, who has been a mail carrier in Toronto for 20 years.
Helen Karrandjas, who has worked for Canada Post since 2020 in Toronto, says it feels like a “waste” to not leverage Canada Post’s network to serve Canadians in their communities.
“This is yet another indication that Canada Post is seen only as a parcel delivery company, and the people that work there only as delivery personnel, and completely overlooking the service component of the job,” she said.3 hours ago
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the postal workers’ decision to walk back off the job will have a “massive” effect on small businesses.
“Doing this in the lead-up to the critical holiday retail shipping season is especially troubling,” said CFIB president Dan Kelly.
“Still, the federal government must push forward with the needed changes ordered today by Minister Lightbound. Now is not the time to turn back.”4 hours ago
I’m a senior reporter covering business, labour and economics at CBC News.
Part of why this surprise, sudden strike can be considered legal — even without the typical notice — is because technically, Canada Post workers have already been on strike for months.
Things like an overtime ban or a work-to-rule campaign can be considered “strike” or “lockout” moves, and CUPW has been taking those kinds of actions since May.
That’s when the back-to-work order from the Canada Industrial Relations Board technically expired, because it ordered the workers back under their old contract from last December until mid-May.
“CUPW again issued a 72-hour strike notice, and then refused to take overtime work” earlier this May, said Ottawa labour lawyer Malini Vijaykumar.
“They haven’t concluded a new collective agreement since that time,” said Vijaykumar, a labour and employment law partner at Nelligan Law. “So, technically, they may still be in [a] legal strike position, even though they haven’t been fully on strike for the past several months.”
That said, Vijaykumar does expect that Canada Post will head to the federal labour board and ask for a new order to get CUPW back to work.
She also says it’s possible the federal government could invoke Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to make a similar order happen, though she points out the government has come under “significant fire” for doing that with past labour disputes.4 hours ago
I’m a senior producer with cbcnews.ca. Canada Post employees were already technically in a strike position, so it’s not illegal.
CUPW, which represents 55,000 of the service’s employees, can instruct its members to walk off the job. When that happens, no new mail will be accepted and any items already in the system will be held until the strike is over.5 hours ago
A negotiator with CUPW is speaking about the strike on CBC’s Power & Politics. On air, Jim Gallant watched footage of postal workers who have walked onto the picket line in Moncton, N.B., tonight and confirmed job action was back.
“We don’t want to be there,” Gallant said of the strike. “We want to be delivering to people’s homes, just like what we call our competition. We want that parcel going. Otherwise, it deteriorates the post office and the writing is on the wall at that point.
“We need something that is sustainable, not a sunset industry.”5 hours ago
CUPW has issued the following statement: “In response to the Government’s attack on our postal service and workers, effective immediately, all CUPW members at Canada Post are on a nation-wide strike.”
People walking through downtown Vancouver this afternoon were aware that losing home deliveries in a major urban centre isn’t the same as losing that service in a small town.
Retiree Allison Crowell struggled to recall the last time she got mail from Canada Post – maybe six months ago. Still, she said she was worried for others.
“I do believe that they provide an important service for bits that the private sector wouldn’t be interested in and people who live in rural areas,” she said.
Zachary Shilling, who works at St. Paul’s Hospital, said he’s more concerned about labour negotiations between Canada Post and the workers’ union.
“I care more about labour rights than I do if my packages are late,” he said.
Software development manager Rodney Shupe said he doesn’t get door-to-door delivery, anyway, since he lives in an apartment building.Yes you do you douche! You get your mail in your building community box or entry way, that’s door-to-door and how mail is delivered to those living in apartments/condos.
In an area of Halifax that still gets door-to-door deliveries, residents had mixed feelings.
Luke Davison said he doesn’t get that much physical mail, anyway, so he won’t be all that affected by losing home delivery. Still, he said, a community mailbox, “would be a little inconvenient. I guess the door-to-door service is kind of nice.”And is an essential service for many Canadians notably living rural, e.g. seniors, those living with challenges and too poor to be able to afford a vehicle or taxis, or choose not to have a vehicle to reduce emissions or cant afford their exorbitant costs.
Another resident, Andrew Leblanc, said he likes his mail delivered to his door but said he is no more entitled to that service than any other customer.
“If we are going to go that route, then it should be for everybody. And everyone that has the mailboxes now should get door-to-door delivery. It should be the same thing for everyone,” he said.I had door-to-door delivery when I lived in an apartment in Calgary, and before that when I lived rural, to a mail box near my home. For the last 27 years, I have not had that service, and have to drive a significant distance to get to a post office. I am expecting Carney will make the rural post offices I use even further away to the point where I will not be able to afford the time or money to use Canada Post at all. It’s already inconvenient, frustrating, and costs a fortune and lost time to drive an hour to mail parcels, registered mail, etc.
Janine McGregor said the level of inconvenience will depend on where you live. She said she grew up in Ontario, in an area with a community mailbox.
“I think it’s fine if you’re in the city and it’s on the same street as you. But if you’re rural and have to drive somewhere far, that’s not great,” she said.
While it’s been politically unpopular for governments to propose cuts to Canada Post in the past, attitudes may be shifting.
Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said Canadians do see room for improvement even though privatizing Canada Post is a non-starter.If Fucker Carney privatizes Canada Post, which I expect he is intending – perhaps to give it to USPS or Amazon, there will be no mail services for many rural Canadians.
When Angus Reid surveyed Canadians this summer, Kurl said nearly three-quarters of respondents said that they would support reducing door-to-door home delivery to three days a week instead of the five days a week.
“Those who have already checked out or found other ways to receive communication and parcels, it’s going to have less impact on them,” Kurl said Thursday.
“But for those who really care and really rely on it, particularly in rural communities, particularly for those who really say that this is something that they want or need, I would expect there will be some blowback.”43 minutes ago
As we mentioned earlier, the Liberal government famously promised in 2015 to save home delivery and stopped a plan to convert millions of Canadians to community boxes.
Well, here we are today.
Power & Politics host David Cochrane asked Minister Lightbound this afternoon whether that 2015 decision was a mistake.
“I think, [in] hindsight, probably yes,” Lightbound said, though he added that Canada Post’s financial situation is more dire now and that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decline in letter mail.
Cochrane challenged Lightbound, saying his government knew in 2015 that Canada Post’s situation was inevitable. The minister responded that he is “proud to be in a new government that’s willing to lead the hard decisions.” 53 minutes ago
A Canada Post spokesperson said that the government’s announcement will give the Crown corporation the changes needed to “chart a strong, financially sustainable path forward.”
Canada Post president and CEO Doug Ettinger wrote in a statement that the corporation takes its responsibility seriously, and “will work closely with the government and our employees to move with urgency and implement the necessary changes in a thoughtful manner.”
“Our goal is to ensure that a strong, affordable, Canadian-made, Canadian-run delivery provider supports the needs of today’s economy and delivers to every community across the country,” he added.2 hours agoMail delivery might take longer
The current standard for mail delivery is three to four days, but it would be expanded to three to seven days based on volume, according to the government’s technical briefing.
Another detail: Canada Post has a program that lets people register online to receive letter mail at home if they can’t get to a community mailbox for whatever reason.2 hours agoCatharine Tunney
NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice, the party’s labour critic, has also weighed in. He said the Carney government “wants to realize the dream of Stephen Harper with community boxes everywhere and cuts for our rural populations.”
“And in the cities it’s going to be a mess,” he said on his way into question period, suggesting there is nowhere to put more community boxes.2 hours ago
Christine Normandin, the party’s house leader, accused the government of “slipshod” and “hastily improvised” reforms that overlook thousands of Quebecers.
Speaking during question period in the House of Commons, she also criticized the end to the moratorium on closing rural post offices. She said the government should not cut back on service in rural areas and called on them to ensure Quebecers in those areas aren’t abandoned.
Minister Lightbound responded saying the government is committed to ensuring all Canadians in remote areas have access to Canada Post.2 hours ago
The small business community, on the other hand, said today’s announcement is a positive step toward making necessary changes, but they remain concerned about the lack of a deal between Canada Post and its union.
“The union’s most recent job action banning flyers was another blow to small businesses. At this critical time of year, the last thing small businesses can afford is another strike,” said Dan Kelly, president at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).
The federation urged Ottawa to temporarily make Canada Post an essential service to prevent another labour disruption.2 hours ago
There’s also concern some Canadians might feel changes more deeply. Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of CanAge, a seniors’ advocacy organization, said vulnerable Canadians mustn’t be left behind. She was particularly concerned about particular seniors, people with disabilities and people who don’t have bank accounts.
She said governments at the provincial and federal level need to take extra steps to be sure “critical funds” like Employment Insurance, Old Age Security, and Canada Pension Plan payments are still delivered as quickly as possible.
“We understand that while times do change, not everyone changes with them as quickly,” Watts said.2 hours ago
I’m another reporter on the business desk. I just spoke with Mark Lubinski, president of the Toronto Local Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
“It’s a bombshell,” he said, adding he felt “anger, dissatisfied, disappointed, disillusioned.”
He said workers were expecting a contract offer from Canada Post, not what he described as surprising and devastating news.
“I personally did not think the government was going to do an announcement like this because it is not what the Canadian public wants or needs,” said Lubinski.
He said he believes that the union will fight Ottawa’s decision.
In recent annual reports, Canada Post has been highlighting two stats squeezing the organization: There are more addresses to reach and less mail to deliver.
In its latest annual report for 2024, there were 17.6 million addresses, marking a 6.7 per cent increase from five years ago. Meanwhile, 113 pieces of mail were delivered per household by the Crown corporation, a 32.7 per cent drop in the same time period.
The carrier said it is an “unsustainable” situation.3 hours ago
This is not the first time the end of door-to-door mail delivery has been considered in Canada.
The former Conservative government under Stephen Harper moved to end door-to-door delivery and bring in new community mailboxes for five million Canadian addresses.
But the plan met massive public outcry and even became a campaign issue.
During the 2015 election the Liberals under Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to “save home mail delivery.”
After forming government, Trudeau clarified that Canadians who have already been moved to community mailboxes wouldn’t be getting their home delivery service back.3 hours ago
As a federal Crown corporation, Canada Post operates at arm’s length from the government and is responsible for managing its own day-to-day operations as laid out in the Canada Post Corporation Act
However, the federal minister is responsible for Canada Post’s overall policy direction and ensures its operations and services align with government policies and priorities.
That relationship has led to successive governments bringing in regulations and policies dating back to the 1980s.
Today, as we’ve said, Lightbound announced his government is lifting two moratoriums: one that’s been in place since 1994 on closing rural post offices and another on community mailbox conversion.4 hours ago
Lightbound ended the news conference saying he has “utmost respect” for postal workers, but did not answer a direct question about layoffs down the road. He repeated that Canada Post will have to take a “cold, hard look” at its management structure, among other potential changes.4 hours ago
I’m Nisha Patel, a senior reporter on the business desk.
I’ve reached out to Canada Post for its reaction about its plans. The organization says it’s “currently reviewing the Minister’s announcement and will provide a comment later.”4 hours ago
CBC’s Ashley Burke asks: Is this the end of the federal government bailing out Canada Post?
“No, but it’s a clear message that it will not be — that there are limits to our capacity to bail out Canada Post year after year, and it needs to show a path to financial viability,” the minister says.4 hours ago
Lightbound is asked about Canada Post’s review of its management structure, whether he gave the Crown corporation a cost cutting target, and whether those cost cuts will impact management or the broader organization.
“It’s throughout the organization, but they must look at management. A cold, hard look,” he responded.
Lightbound hasn’t set a specific target, but he gave them 45 days to address inefficiencies, he said. As the government goes through its own review, “Canada Post has to do the same,” he added.4 hours ago
A reporter in the room asked Lightbound whether this shift is “the beginning of the end for day-to-day, door-to-door delivery.”
Lightbound does not give a yes or no answer. He says more than three-quarters of Canadians — 77 per cent — already get their mail through community, rural or apartment mailboxes, rather than straight to their doorstep.4 hours ago
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says they weren’t told about Lightbound’s announcement in advance, a reporter says to Lightbound.
The Minister says he had a “productive conversation” with CUPW on Friday, but that he wasn’t aware of a postponed meeting.
“I’ll be always happy to meet with the union to discuss,” said Lightbound. He said the new measures address some of the issues the union had previously raised with the company.
Lightbound is authorizing Canada Post to convert 4 million addresses to community mailboxes, which he says will lead to $400 million in savings. He said this will be done over the course of nine years, with most in the next three to four years.
He also announced that the moratorium on closing rural post offices will be lifted, which was imposed in 2014 and covers 4,000 locations. The country has changed since then — some rural areas now may be suburban or urban, Lightbound says.4 hours ago
Lightbound says that a “stalled relationship between management and labour have hindered Canada Post’s capacity to evolve,” calling the corporation “effectively insolvent.”
He adds that government bailouts are “not the solution.” The federal government lent Canada Post $1 billion earlier this year.4 hours ago
Minister Lightbound starts his remarks in French, calling Canada Post an institution that needs to be saved. The Crown corporation is losing millions of dollars every day, he says, and has lost considerable ground to private companies since 2018.4 hours agoCanada Post allowed to end home delivery, Ottawa announces
The federal government is allowing Canada Post to end home delivery and convert the remaining four million addresses that still receive it to community mailboxes, as part of a plan Ottawa says will allow the corporation to stabilize its finances and ensure the survival of the corporation. Some rural post offices are also going to close.
@christyceeck.bsky.social:
Your life could be turned upside down. You could be completely devastated. You could worry about how to pay your mortgage or rent. You could worry about when you will work again. But remember, you are an ‘adjustment’. Gosh, the thing I disliked most in comms was the euphemisms.
@kbyrd.bsky.social:
So the govt will spend A LOT of money leasing more office space for RTO in order to spend less money on staff … talk about messed up priorities
@themeaningofliff.bsky.social:
Canadians really got a good look at full bore mostly unrestrained neoliberal capitalism worship from PM Carnage today.
And bear in mind that it was still somewhat restrained. There will be worse in the future.
@christyceeck.bsky.social:
I have ‘PM Carnage’ echoing in my brain now in his worst neoliberal moments!
@youcaughtscott.com:
Carney diehards getting the “Fell for it again” award day after day
@brodiedog.bsky.social:
Will be shocked if we still have a public healthcare system by the time these freaks have finished their term. And they will still lose to the conservatives.Pee Pee and Carney run the same fucking party with different outfits, rage farming and logos. They are working together serving rich Nazis.
I was suspicious when Trump called him a great guy. Now we know why.I realized before the election that Carney conned us when he refuse to say the word, “genocide.” Fucking Nazi American Tech and unintelligent stolen AI Lover, douche racist kid and climate killer.
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