Canada post is a service. Its job is to provide a service to every person in the country, not to generate profit for shareholders. When it’s doing well, it can self sustain, which is cool, otherwise it costs money through tax dollars as would any services we pay for.
Agreed, this isn’t complicated. We either want it to exist and we pay for it, or it goes away.
I think this misses the point. Whether it is a service or not, it needs to be run well so we don’t end up wasting our tax dollars. It seems to be losing far more money than ever before and there should be consequences for that. There are basic reforms that should have been implemented that are now costing us.
Again with the “losing money” narrative. It doesn’t lose money, it costs money.
Now. Does it cost so much more than ever before? I don’t know. And if it does, why is that? Good questions.
But if it doesn’t cost proportionally so much more but we all stopped buying stamps or using the paid services it provides to subsidize its operational costs then that would explain the deficit. Otherwise we’d need to ask more pointed questions, I’m with you on that
But you can’t slap “basic reforms” on something when you don’t see or understand the larger underlying picture past the sensationalist headline and that’s unfortunately the point where most people stop asking questions
I think this misses the point. Whether the fire department is a service or not, it needs to be run well so we don’t end up wasting our tax dollars.
Postal banking. The workers want it and even presented a proposal to the corporate leadership, who said no.
That said, delivering mail isn’t supposed to be profitable. It’s supposed to provide people with their mail.
It would cut into the capital available to commercial banks, so of course it won’t happen. RBC, TD, CIBC, BMO and Scotia do not want to lose those sweet customer deposits.
Same reason we don’t get public rail and public telecomms: essential services can only be delivered if they make a rich person richer.
It also isn’t going to work in Quebec since we already have Desjardins, and like what 70%+ of people here bank with them?
I remember when my wife worked there this came up. It’s like adding typewriter repair and buggy whip sales as a business division. No relevant consumer is asking for this when you can do it all on your phone, even deposit cheques, if you don’t already do it on a desktop.
You’ll get a bunch of high-maintenance old people that still want to pay their bills in person and can’t, and it’ll lose money hand over fist.
You’ll get a bunch of high-maintenance old people that still want to pay their bills in person and can’t, and it’ll lose money hand over fist.
I really don’t think that that’s an inevitability. Functionally, they would become very similar to a credit union and this would actually give Canada Post more flexibility as an organization to expand their parcel services as well as reconsider their utility to the average Canadian by offering financial services.
Canada Post is already very entwined with the Royal Canadian Mint through collectible coins and also sells money orders. Adding postal banking could be the start of a small portfolio of auxiliary services that Canadians find valuable in addition to their usual mail and parcel delivery. This would especially be a boon in rural or low-income areas where dedicated banking services are far away or unaffordable.
There’s a reason dedicated banking services are unaffordable in rural areas; it’s because they’re unprofitable. Chasing unprofitable models is notoriously unprofitable.
An organization that isn’t a dedicated banking service might not adhere to that model since it’s not a dedicated banking service. Obviously that’s the point I was making, that Canada Post has the chance to branch out and is uniquely flexible in the space, so they would have the ability to integrate some auxiliary services into their business model without much disruption at the post office level.
This approach also doesn’t have additional personnel overhead since Canada Post already have staff and established locations. Cross-training postal employees is a lot easier and cheaper than having to establish and maintain a bank branch, especially one that offers mortgage/insurance brokerage or investment products. Canada Post wouldn’t necessarily need to offer that, especially not right away.
Alternate title: Canada Post reports cost of 32.5 per Canadian.
Canada Post doesn’t cost us anything.
I wonder if it would help if we banned fly-by-night couriers that Amazon et al use and diverted more of that volume through CP.
They’d be better-paying jobs, too.
1.3 Billion is staggering. Divided equally amongst all Canadians, we’re paying about $32 each.
So what?
Do we really need daily door-to-door delivery?
I think you could go down to 3 days a week.
Physical mail delivery is still vital but we have many, many communications alternatives available to us now.
The Federal government needs to change their mandate. Delivering to ALL addresses in Canada is not profitable for anybody
It’s a service. It’s not supposed to be profitable.
That’s the problem. They want Canada Post to break even or be profitable. It should be a service like the military and DFO.
“The federal government needs to change their mandate, defending rural areas isn’t profitable so we should scale back the military”
“The provincial government needs to change their mandate, providing healthcare to old people isn’t profitable so we should scale back hospitals and just let them fend for themselves”
Profitable? Why is that a consideration?
There are already areas where you pick-up at the post office (nearby) and super mail boxes already mean a huge fraction of delivery is no longer door-to-door.
We do not need to reduce coverage more than we have. Postal service is essential.
I think it is viable to ask about frequency. So no thing like 3 days a week works just as well for what postal service is used for in this day and age while costing quite a bit less.
