Canada Post in terminal decline -CTV

[deleted] · 2025-02-06T22:45:08+00:00

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/

Hydraglass

WalterDnes now importantly people literally can't depend on mail arriving every single day because there's vast more variance than that in their handling times of mail. I've had mail take anywhere between 3 and 7 days to get to me from Toronto and Ottawa. If mail only came on Tuesday and Thursday that variance wouldn't shift at all - there's absolutely no way I would have known if the envelope would have arrived Wednesday or Thursday as there's more variance than that in the process behind the scenes that recipients never know about or see. If you get some mail every day now, then you'll get the same mail if it comes on Tuesday and Thursday - some maybe a day later some a day earlier, and after two weeks of that operation and the internals of the operations adjusting to it, no one would ever notice. My proposal would be half of the addresses in a postal code or delivery zone get deliver M/W and the other half on T/R - that means one driver or delivery person could now cover what currently takes two - they can cover twice the addresses because they only do them half as often. Distance traveled per week per address gets cut in half, overall delivery efficiency goes up 2x, cost per address goes down by 50%, overall cost reduced significantly and everyone still gets service from Canada Post.

Donoreo

Simple cost saving: 1 delivery person for 2 routes on a rotating schedule. Week 1 route 1 gets delivery 3 days, route 2 gets 2 days. Week 2 route 2 gets 3 days and route 1 gets 2 days. This cuts the labour costs by half right away and the service levels are still very high.

urbanriot

WalterDnes

Actually there are 748 million reasons why not

Incorrect. That's only one reason and it all falls under what I've said all this time.

"Cutting the fat" would require doing to CUPW what Ronald Reagan did to the US air traffic controllers union.

Not entirely, at least the air traffic controllers were actually working. The Canada Post union is running the company and this level of control seems unprecedented, they're literally running it into the ground because they know they can hold mail delivery over our heads and every time the government or the employer capitulates.

The root cause of Canada Post's downfall is the decline of of letter mail, erasing economies of scale.

No, it really isn't, the root cause of Canada Post's downfall is the overcompensated employees. We need less employees doing more work. It's become a job to ride out for a pension and lavish benefits, not a place to work.

There's no other country struggling with this problem aside from Canada and it's entirely because of the union. Cut out the union, go to contracted delivery systems, and Canada Post would easily flourish.

WalterDnes

urbanriot

urbanriot

The root cause of Canada Post's downfall is the decline of of letter mail, erasing economies of scale.

No, it really isn't, the root cause of Canada Post's downfall is the overcompensated employees. We need less employees doing more work. It's become a job to ride out for a pension and lavish benefits, not a place to work.

So "I asked Mr. Google" and the first hit was... https://www.statista.com/statistics/727397/mail-volume-of-canada-post/ (graph below). In 2012 total mail volume was 9.755 billion pieces. By 2022 it had dropped to 6.584 billion. Notice the trend? Any business that loses 1/3rd of sales volume over 10 years is in trouble.

Hydraglass

WalterDnes Looks like about a 30% decline in 10 years, another 30% by 2032 will have them down to 4 billion pieces - less than half of 2012's volume -- so - there should be half the people and half the cost, which will mean half the delivery expectation - if we expect costs to remain manageable. If not - I guess we can always make it $9 for a stamp if people are still so desperate to not change service levels. That'll still be cheaper than sending lettermail by UPS or FedEx by half.

Donoreo

WalterDnes This clearly demonstrates that both the union and declining mail usage are contributing factors. Reduced mail volume and escalating costs are evident. While it is debatable whether Canada Post is solely responsible for the decline in mail, the union’s role in labour costs cannot be ignored. The union’s primary objective is job creation, but its focus on labour costs may be hindering this goal.

WalterDnes

Hydraglass

Hydraglass That'll still be cheaper than sending lettermail by UPS or FedEx by half.

Do you want to know why it'll still be cheaper than UPS or Fedex? Do you REALLY want to know why it'll still be cheaper than UPS or Fedex? Because mommy government said so "Canada Post Corporation Act R.S.C., 1985, c. C-10"
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-10/page-2.html#docCont Sections 14(1) and 15(1)

Exclusive Privilege of Corporation

14 (1) Subject to section 15, the Corporation has the sole and exclusive privilege of collecting, transmitting and delivering letters to the addressee thereof within Canada.

15 (1) The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14(1) does not apply to
(e) letters of an urgent nature that are transmitted by a messenger for a fee at least equal to an amount that is three times the regular rate of postage payable for delivery in Canada of similarly addressed letters weighing fifty grams;

WalterDnes

Donoreo
I've found another source for the same data at https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/a-look-at-how-much-mail-canada-post-delivers-amid-a-strike-notice/ This one goes from 2006 to 2023. When you hover over a data point, the numbers pop up. I plotted them. It's not a pretty picture. I did a linear regression from 2009 onwards, skipping 2020. The regression hits zero in mid-2042. If I include 2020, the zero point comes one year earlier.

Things are so bad that the federal government had to "loan" over a billion $CDN ($720 million USD) to Canada Post for curent obligations https://www.marketwatch.com/story/canada-to-provide-c-1-03-billion-to-canada-post-to-avoid-insolvency-at-mail-service-update-fc82ac98 This is for stuff like "keeping the lights on" (literally), water bills, phone bills, meeting payroll etc, etc.

Below is the source data and the resulting graph. You can copy+paste the data into a .CSV file, import into a spreadsheet, and do you own analysis...

Year,"Mail Volume"
2006,11.433
2007,11.646
2008,11.62
2009,10.634
2010,10.437
2011,9.965
2012,9.623
2013,9.321
2014,9.002
2015,8.789
2016,8.256
2017,8.269
2018,7.967
2019,7.724
2020,,6.252
2021,6.757
2022,6.584
2023,6.494

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