Transport minister defends Canada Post plan
OTTAWA — Transport Minister Lisa Raitt says Canada Post’s new five-point business plan will restore the ailing corporation to self-sufficiency.
Faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses, Canada Post announced Wednesday that it will end door-to-door delivery, increase the price of stamps and reduce its labour force.
The plan has raised the ire of opposition MPs who say other options should have been explored and Canadians should not be charged more for less service.
But Raitt, who appeared on CTV’s Question Period Sun- day, said the plan will help Canada Post cope with plummeting mail volume and increased operational costs.
“We know that they’re losing a significant amount of money and we also know that they have a responsibility to be self-sufficient,” Raitt said. “So they came forward with this Canada Post 2.0 plan and they went through it in great detail with officials.”
While countries across Europe have eliminated mail monopolies or privatized postal operations, Raitt was adamant that Canada was not ready for such an approach.
“When you take a look at the models around the world — certainly in the U.K. — they’re far ahead of us,” Raitt said.
In the United Kingdom, mail responsibilities are split, with mail being delivered by Royal Mail while post offices are run by the governmentowned Post Office LTD. Royal Mail has competed with private companies since 2006 and was privatized this fall.
“We’re not that far along in terms of the spectrum so what it made sense was for Canada Post to look at the things they could change and the things that made sense to them,” Raitt said.
A Conference Board of Canada report on the future of Canada Post noted that moving to a privatized postal service can create more benefits than harm and that “postal operators who decreased governmental involvement had increased service quality, became more innovative and improved their productivity.”
Raitt also said the timing of CanadaPost’sannouncement, which came the day after the House of Commons rose early for Christmas break, was purely coincidental. Opposition MPs have accused the government of trying to minimize the impact of bad news by rolling out the business plan when politicians weren’t around to answer questions.
“I was very surprised when the House rose on Tuesday,” Raitt said. “I fully anticipated answering questions in question period on Wednesday, but that’s not the way it happened.”