Canada Post in terminal decline -CTV

[deleted]

When will they finally realize that it doesn't work? Why do they still insist on 5 day delivery? The union is simply out of their mind with demands. Why aren't there efforts to restructure the operations? Tuesday/Thursday delivery is all that is needed, reassign those excess people who work in the lettermail sorting/delivering operation to package delivery.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/consumer-alert/article/canada-post-is-in-terminal-decline-there-is-no-way-around-it-delays-still-being-experienced-by-postal-service/

[deleted]

50 mangers being laid off

https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2025/02/06/canada-post-layoffs-50-managers/amp/

urbanriot

[deleted]

50 mangers being laid off

There's only so many managers they can lay off before they have to get to the unionized employees. Honestly, they should do an efficiency review of employees and delivery to recalibrate the expectations of postal employees.

px_eliezer_

urbanriot

We have a guy who can help with that efficiency review, he even used to live in Canada. 😃

GrumpyCanadian

px_eliezer_ We don't want him, you can have him, he's too... for us!

GrumpyCanadian

px_eliezer_ I also have to add: if he were to do for Canada Post what he did for Twitter, nobody in Canada would be getting any mail for very much longer.

WalterDnes

It's not Canada Post's fault any more than the horse+buggy industry was responsible for its own demise. A long time ago, "snail mail" was the only way for the average person to communicate with distant relatives. Long distance phone calls were horrendously expensive.

Flash forward to today. Many cellphone plans have a "free cross-country-calling" option. Video calls are commonplace. And of course email happened. Why pay for a stamp and envelope for a letter that'll take days to show up, when you can send a free email that'll show up in the recipient's inbox in minutes?

Face it "snail mail", and Canada Post in general, is doomed, just like the horse+buggy before it, and legacy Pay-TV now.

MichelR

WalterDnes The Quebec government's inefficiency is a great source of revenue for Canada Post. Can't even set automatic payments from the SAAQ's "new" web site (a disaster), you have to send snail mail to two different P.O. boxes in Quebec City (one for DLs, one for plates). As long as they keep sucking, CP will be doing decent business in this province. 😃

urbanriot

px_eliezer_

We have a guy who can help with that efficiency review, he even used to live in Canada.

I have no doubt he'd fix the issue. It's not a complicated problem.

Thane_Bitter

While the Union is disconnected from reality in some areas, they did call on setting up a no fee banking system using CP. This would have allowed no/low fee banking, something that would help the poor the most and do away with all those hideous cheque cashing scam places that prey on the poor and stupid. I can't see that happen now either and they have screwed up on parcel and package delivery. For what little letter mail they do you never can seem to find a mailbox either, CP has no public location list of them and does remove them from service without notice. At least those with community mailboxes do have a mail slot though as I understand it certain morons stuff all the junk mail into it rather than recycling it at home.

If it was a private company it would have imploded a long time ago, just dealing with the retirement costs of past workers is a massive amount of money they do not have. The only way to save it is to stop home delivery, do delivery once a week, and try to get into the competitive parcel market again, even if it still makes a buck at the end of the year they are still burdened with legacy costs and debt that outsize the corporation by magnitudes. Trying to turn things around will have the "musky" appearance of destruction (though that is only his goal and end game) because a number of people will lose their job and the entire operation and ethos of the organization has to be entirely rebuilt and in a new profitable direction.

px_eliezer_

Thane_Bitter While the Union is disconnected from reality in some areas, they did call on setting up a no fee banking system using CP. This would have allowed no/low fee banking, something that would help the poor the most and do away with all those hideous cheque cashing scam places that prey on the poor and stupid.

Exactly.

In fact, the [Japanese Postal Savings System] does similar to that that, and is 150 years old this year.

I guess that in Canada it would be bitterly opposed by the huge banks on one end, and on the cheque cashing services (and Payday loans!) on the other end.

(The United States Postal Savings System (USPSS) was a non-profit savings bank that operated from 1911 to 1966---Bernie Sanders and others would like it brought back).

markuswarren

I'm just wondering if what happened with the UK's General Post Office could be something that could happen to CP? as in turn it into a Public Limited Company rather than crown corporation. Not sure if that is a good thing or not.

Dks01

And replace it with what? Canada Post is still an essential service. It may not be in the luxurious urban areas, but in rural areas it saves a lot of driving.

MomOfARocker

WalterDnes While I agree with you, I am still one of those who likes to send people actual greeting cards for Birthdays, Anniversaries, Christmas and what have you. However, I would have no objection to them going to a two day, or even a one day, a week delivery pattern but I would hate to see them gone completely. Can't imagine sending greeting cards by expensive courier service and I would imagine the greeting card businesses would be seeing a steep decline in sales also. Just my

[deleted]

Dks01 And replace it with what? Canada Post is still an essential service. It may not be in the luxurious urban areas, but in rural areas it saves a lot of driving.

Sure but Mon-Fri deliveries are NOT necessary, not even in the most remote places! That is a massive waste of money.

They need to shrink that down, and focus on efficient package delivery with weekends. If the union employees dont want to deliver on weekends, they should be able to hire part time workers who will!

Dks01

[deleted] really? I get something most days. Canada Post stopped community mail boxes. Move to that for efficiency. I don’t need weekend mail. I remember when Canada Oost delivered twice a day and Saturday mornings. But that was in the days of Ebinezer Scrooge.

[deleted]

Dks01 really? I get something most days. Canada Post stopped community mail boxes. Move to that for efficiency. I don’t need weekend mail. I remember when Canada Oost delivered twice a day and Saturday mornings. But that was in the days of Ebinezer Scrooge

But do you need your mail EVERY day? bills, stuff from government, other correspondence are never THAT time sensitive that you can't wait an extra day. Thats where I think they can save a lot, and focus on package delivery and weekend package delivery. not mail.

If all of the workforce cannot be repurposed/retrained for package logistics/sorting/delivery then a portion needs to be laid off. This isn't a job for life. When the business is dying, you either shut it down or reorganize/downsize to save what you can, otherwise they will all lose their jobs.

urbanriot

[deleted]

Sure but Mon-Fri deliveries are NOT necessary

It is for people who receive mail every day of the week.

That and there's no reason we can't have daily mail delivery. We're cutting our nose to spite our face when we should be cutting the fat.

[deleted]

urbanriot It is for people who receive mail every day of the week.

That and there's no reason we can't have daily mail delivery. We're cutting our nose to spite our face when we should be cutting the fat.

What's your reasoning for keeping 5 days a week mail delivery? If I get two pieces of actual addressed mail in one week its a big whoop here. Everything else is flyers or crap from the various politicians, and i don't even get that every day.

WalterDnes

urbanriot

That and there's no reason we can't have daily mail delivery.

Actually there are 748 million reasons why not. From Canada Post's 2023 annual report https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/financial-and-sustainability-reports/2023-annual-report/our-financial-picture.page

For 2023, the Corporation recorded a loss before tax of $748 million, compared to a loss before tax of $548 million in 2022. From 2018 to 2023, Canada Post lost $3 billion before taxes. Without changes and new operating parameters to address our challenges, we forecast larger and increasingly unsustainable losses in future years.

The 2024 annual report isn't out yet, and the strike will make things worse.

We're cutting our nose to spite our face when we should be cutting the fat.

"Cutting the fat" would require doing to CUPW what Ronald Reagan did to the US air traffic controllers union. That will NOT work in Canada's political climate. Reagan also had an excess of military air traffic controllers, to step in and take over. Dumping even trained military ATC staff into an unfamiliar location can be risky. Apparently Canadian ATC intervened over radio when a US military ATC instructed a commercial flight to approach Seattle at 10,000 feet. Mount Baker was in the way, with a peak at 10,786 feet... oops. Also we do not have a cadre of trained postal workers to step in even if there are no violent picket lines.

The root cause of Canada Post's downfall is the decline of of letter mail, erasing economies of scale. How many ISP's send and cablecos out paper bills anymore?