Wishful thinking won’t help Canada Post
If the federal Liberals were hoping for some easy answers to the Canada Post dilemma, they are guaranteed to be disappointed. There are no easy solutions.
In May, the government formed an independent task force to review the postal corporation, a move sparked by the Liberals’ campaign promise to restore door-to-door mail delivery and “to make sure that (Canada Post) provides high-quality service at a reasonable price to Canadians, no matter where they live.”
That was pre-election pillow talk. Now the honeymoon is over, and it will be difficult to deliver on that promise, especially the “high-quality service at a reasonable price” part. The task force has determined, to no one’s surprise, that Canada Post can’t be financially sustainable unless “transformational changes” are made.
Mail delivery was once a foundational public service. It was vital to commerce and industry, and the principal means of communication for everyone.
But the role of the post office has been much diminished.
Who mails letters these days, when you can communicate instantly by texting or email?
Social media keep everyone (or nearly everyone) up to date on life’s grand events, as well as endless minutiae. Grandparents who once would eagerly check the mail for photos of the newest grandchild now check their smartphones for pictures of the little tyke taken mere minutes after birth.
Most people receive and pay bills online. Even wedding invitations are being delivered digitally. Who needs stamps and trips to the mailbox?
In a discussion paper released this week, the task force, trying to live up to its mandate to find “viable options,” suggests several ways Canada Post can improve its chances for financial survival. Those include delivering legalized recreational marijuana (it already delivers medical marijuana), charging fees for door-to-door delivery and rebooting plans to install more community mailboxes.
The marijuana trade isn’t likely to have a huge effect on the post office’s bottom line, and charging fees for door-to-door delivery, we predict, would be wildly unpopular.
The Liberals blamed the Harper government for the move away from front-door delivery and toward community mailboxes, but that was the decision of Canada Post as it tried to trim costs. It was a sound move — two-thirds of Canadians were already surviving without door-todoor delivery.
Still, many people — particularly the elderly and those with disabilities — depend on that service. So why not change it to twice a week for those who need it? That would require Parliament to change the Canadian Postal Service Charter, which says the post office must deliver mail five days a week.
The task force suggests considering turning some rural post offices into franchises, another move that would require a change to the postal charter.
Canadians love their post office, said the task force, noting that “even though Canadians recognize the ongoing shift to digital communications, they are emotionally attached to mail: personal letters, parcels from loved ones, greeting and holiday-related cards are viewed with much affection, even nostalgia.”
But nostalgia and emotion can”t make Canada Post profitable. If it’s to be self-sustaining, it will have to change how it operates and what it does.
Even then, it faces fierce competition from the private sector, in services such as parcel delivery, and more challenges from rapidly changing technology.
Difficult decisions lie ahead, and they can’t be made by task forces and public consultations.
Sunny promises notwithstanding, the Liberals will have to make those difficult choices.