A false choice on home delivery
Perhaps the mail needn’t be one thing, providing one identical service to everyone
On Wednesday, after months of sabre-rattling on the file, the New Democrats finally laid their cards on the table: Eliminating home mail delivery is such an affront to “fairness,” in particular to “seniors and persons living with disabilities,” snail mail critic Alexandre Boulerice said in a press release, that a newly elected NDP government would reinstate it. Presto, mail-o.
“New Democrats are listening,” the release crowed. “Reinstating home delivery mail service will help those in greatest need.”
Now, moving on to our daycare program … huh? Wazzat? No, no, Mabel in Whitehorse, there’s no home delivery for you. Or for you, Jean-Guy in Trois-Pistoles. Or for you, Dorothy in Bonavista. Or for you, Archie in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Or for you … look, just stop asking, OK? You’ll continue to get your mail at a superbox or at the post office, so please keep your wheelchairs well oiled and mind the icy sidewalks. The issue of fairness here, particularly to seniors and persons living with disabilities, concerns urban Canadians. They must be protected; theirs are the cuts the NDP will reverse — the ones announced in December 2013. You others were fine as you were, and will continue to be. Capiche?
It is one thing for politicians representing the affected communities to make themselves look selfish and silly on this file. Thus Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, among other chief magistrates, has thrown in his lot with a Canadian Union of Postal Workers lawsuit alleging that eliminating home delivery would violate Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the federal Human Rights Act, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UN Convention Against Torture and Canada Post’s obligations to Universal Postal Union. (OK, not the UN Convention Against Torture. But all those other things.) This presents us with three options. Either Denis Coderre spent 16 years in the House of Commons, nine of them in government and five as a cabinet minister, without noticing that Canada Post was depriving roughly one-third of the Canadian population of its human rights by delivering their mail to lockboxes as opposed to their front doors or lobbies. (I presume it doesn’t violate my human rights to have to fetch my mail from a box in the lobby — which is to say to periodically transfer its contents into the adjacent recycling bin. But perhaps it’s worth suing to check.) Or, Coderre thinks Canadians who enjoyed home delivery as of December 2013 should on principle enjoy different and greater human rights than their fellow citizens. Or this is just a really, really dumb, politically advantageous way to be seen defending his constituents’ entitlements.
It is quite another thing, however, for a federal party to talk of fairness and justice and rights with respect to a service that a great many Canadians do not enjoy and in some cases never have. It might play well in the cities — though urbanites have the least need of mail. But it might also make a party seem ignorant to the realities of people who don’t live in cities, and excessively focused on the needs of those who do. It’s not likely a major risk, of course, inasmuch as the NDP’s opponents aren’t likely to point out the inconsistency: the Liberals oppose the cuts as well, and the Conservatives certainly aren’t going to want to talk about this on the campaign trail.
It nevertheless highlights the innovation vacuum in which the debate is transpiring. There were other ways Canada Post could have achieved similar and desperately needed cost savings: Cutting down on delivery days, for example. Anecdotally speaking, it seems roughly 50 per cent of Canadians who receive home delivery and give a crap about the mail prefer that idea to cutting home delivery entirely. Thus a lot of people would be annoyed whatever Canada Post decided to do.
At no point has anyone in a position to effect change come along and suggested that perhaps Canadians might have a choice in their mail service: Daily home delivery, maybe twice-daily (!), maybe on Saturdays and Sundays (!!), for those willing to pay for it; and cheaper options for those who aren’t. Perhaps some mad genius might discover a guaranteed way to transport a letter from A on Monday to B on Tuesday, within the same city or perhaps even beyond, for less than $26. Perhaps we ought to let him. Perhaps the mail needn’t be one thing, needn’t provide one identical service, to all Canadians. Indeed it never was and never did. Only no one in Ottawa seems willing to admit it.