Canada Post as we know it can’t be saved. This has been a reality for decades even if delusional unions won’t accept it and callow politicians won’t deal with it.

The Crown Corporation has lost $3 billion since 2018 and the losses are growing by the year. Home delivery of letter mail was the prime service Canada Post provided.

That service peaked in 2006 with 5.5 billion letters delivered.

In 2023 that number of letters had dropped to 2.2 billion and it will only continue to drop. People don’t need physical letters delivered to their homes anymore. Email and electronic documents have replaced letter mail and it's only diehard romantics and Great Gramma Avi sending her annual Christmas cheques to grandchildren who still correspond by mail. Romance is lovely and great grandmothers are fantastic, but it doesn’t justify maintaining an obsolete service at a cost of billions of dollars.

In an astounding act of financial illiteracy and greed, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has taken labour action. The union has refused an offered 11.5% raise. They are demanding large raises along with protections against technology which may take their jobs. Unless Canada Post can somehow illegalize email and fax machines, it’s hard to say how these jobs can be protected.

It’s time to call the CUPW bluff. Let them strike. It will only speed the inevitable process of winding down Canada’s national postal service. The postal workers will lose what little political capital they had as they delay Gramma’s Christmas cheques and they will drive the few businesses still using antiquated postal services into modernizing their systems. Indeed, even city governments are already moving to alternative communication systems in anticipation of a strike. Civic bureaucracies are slow to change and often are supportive of unions. Municipal mailouts make up a large part of the dwindling letter mail. They won’t move back to postal services after a strike ends.

The inefficiencies within Canada’s bloated postal service are myriad.
To begin with, there simply isn’t enough need to have mail delivered five days a week. Most Canadians can get by with service once or twice a week. Most of the mail these days is junk and it doesn’t need to be arriving in a timely manner. But, junk mail is declining too as businesses move to more efficient, electronic means of promotion and marketing.

All door-to-door home mail delivery must end. It’s ridiculous that the money is still being spent to have a postal carrier walk to one-third of the homes of Canada five days a week. Canada Post realized this years ago and began moving services to centralized boxes. Unfortunately, in 2016 the postal union cut a deal with Justin Trudeau to halt the conversion and a third of the country kept home delivery of mail.

Postal carriers work short days with long pay. They even have taxis delivering them to their postal walks in some cities so they don’t have to suffer the indignity of riding a bus like the commoners. Let’s face it. Being a postal worker is a good gig. They are highly paid and enjoy full benefits along with a generous pension for a relatively unskilled job. If Canada Post were to cut two-thirds of the workforce, you can rest assured the remaining third would suddenly discover work ethics and be able to put in forty-hour work weeks.

If unions truly cared about workers, what they would be negotiating for transition packages and job training for the postal workers who face certain layoffs within a few years. Unions rarely care for workers however and while they know Canada Post is speeding toward a fiscal wall, they don’t care. The union heads just want to milk the company for as much in dues as possible before the inevitable crash comes.

Let the postal workers strike.

Let them demonstrate to Canadians just how little we need them.

Then the environment will be ripe to restructure Canada Post and cut the service down to a tiny fraction of what it is. Some remote regions still need subsidized delivery services and a trickle of letter mail service can still be provided to centralized postal stations. Private operators are already dominating the package delivery market and they will fill the demand much more efficiently than Canada Post ever could.

Giving in to the postal union would be tacitly admitting that Canada Post is expecting a taxpayer bailout. They are losing billions with the current model and would only lose billions more if they capitulate to the unions.

There is no use in continuing to keep Canada Post on life support. Like Blockbuster video and home milk delivery, the service isn’t required any longer and we should be facilitating the natural evolution of the industry rather than futilely trying to fight it.

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