This is a great example of what makes me pessimistic about Canada’s long-term future. How are we going to be able to tackle and accomplish the things that really need to get done (infrastructure, housing) when there’s been decades of dithering over something that should have been obvious?
I’ve never had door to door postal service since I left home in 1975, yet politicians still drag out the old line “ people won’t be able to survive” with out this service. All of it is total BS. The post office is a dead man walking no matter what politicians say.
I believe down deep the federal government knows the Post Office and a long list of many other government departments are bloated with staff, poor performers and attempt to provide services that almost everyone knows can be done better & cheaper by the private market.
I also believe the Liberal Party considers most of the folks as their supporters and believe that eliminating the excesses & redundancies would mean these folks would be let go and have to enter the real world, known as the private sector, where wages would be lower, benefits less and a higher level of performance required.
I believe the current government is not willing to do the work necessary to bring these entities into the real world & risk the political fallout.
Face it as this is just taxpayer funded vote buying. Is it any wonder the L's continue to win in Ontario & Quebec as they continue to add more jobs to support more & more meaningless policy objectives. If you where one of these folks would you support the C's who promote the rationalization or eliminations of entities like the CBC even though we all know down deep this is needed.
These groups all have strong unions & most of the media as supporters so running on a mandate of cleaning up the civil service isn't a path to an electoral victory. So nothing gets done and the government just gets bigger. If I remember correctly I just read that government spending from all levels is approx 47% of GDP.
As the pool of contributing taxpayers continues to decline we must accept that this is not a sustainable long-term path.
Lets accept the fact that much of the government work is just an expensive Unemployment Insurance Program.
It is fine to end door-to-door home delivery by a Crown corporation that can no longer provide such services in a profitable manner, but let us also end that corporation's legal *monopoly* on such services. Other corporations like Amazon would probably deliver letter-mail door-to-door if only they were not required by law to charge 3 times as much as Canada Post would charge.
It continues to fascinate me that there continue to be favoured places in the country with door to door delivery. Here in the colonial west, it’s been 40 years - two generations- since we hewers of the nation’s wood enjoyed such a luxury. Instead, we wear crampons in winter to make it across the street.
If you live in the wealthy suburbs of any western canadian city built before the 1990s you get door to door delivery. Definitely the wealthiest neighbourhoods of Calgary still have door to door delivery!
Not so. I moved into this suburban home in 1988. Never had it. My daughter and son both live in suburban neighborhoods built in the 70s. No door to door. You must be referring to Mount Royal and Elbow Park? I suppose those are possible
I live in North Vancouver and get door to door delivery so it does exist out in the West. My world will come to an end if I have to walk to communal mailbox (j/k).
The argument that we *must* preserve door to to door delivery for the third of us that are lucky enough to have it has always seemed entirely without merit.
YES, WEALTHY, and OLD, Mount Royal, Elbow Park, Lakeview, Pumphill. I live in a well to do Newer community (2006) and we never had home delivery. I suppose those communities with the exception of Pumphill would be considered urban now.
I haven't had door delivery mail service since 1966. And all Canadians in small cities, towns, villages and rural areas, and any subdivision built after the early 1980s, have never had door delivery. Downtown city residents (and poor decisions including daily delivery) are what has bankrupted Canada Post!
Enough already!
Shows Lewis is as out of touch with the real Canada as Trudeau was!
Like the author, I go to my community mailbox maybe 1x/ week and sometimes not for weeks at a time unless I'm expecting a very specific piece of mail--usually from a government, or a bank. Most product packages now come by courier because retail companies switched away from Canada Post during the recent strikes/threats of strike. It seems to me there could be creative solutions presented to support those for whom the community box is genuinely a mobility hardship. In France, La Poste offers a variety of services you might not expect, e.g. you can literally pay the post person to check in on an elderly relative on a regular basis. As others have remarked in comments, this is not nearly our biggest national challenge. Surely we could find a workable solution. It seems that the incentives for those making the choices are not sufficient to do so.
All I ask for is a recycling bin beside the box, I take most of my mail from the mailbox to the blue bin for every piece of actual mail I receive I think I get at least 10 pieces of junk mail, or donation solicitations!
Agreed. Where i live the community blue bin is right next to the mailboxes (due to wildlife, no private bins). And a lot of my 'junk' mail is flyers from political candidates, ahem.
I'm elderly, even by modern standards. I get home delivery that I neither need nor want. March 19 was a high-water mark - 27 pieces of advertising flyers, including 13 duplicates. Very little real mail.
I have had a super mailbox for 23 years now, I find it better than home delivery most of the time...The only issue, when somebody tried to break into the boxes and damaged them and Canada post failed to notify us that mail delivery would cease or tell us where to go to pick up our mail until the box was fixed...then took a full 2 months to do the job.
I am sympathetic to the idea of reducing the cost of running Canada Post. But I am not in favour of having to struggle out for a ten to twenty minute walk to a "community mail box," where the snow is guaranteed not to have been shovelled and the boxes themselves frozen shut, or indeed vandalized. Why does the option of once a week door to door delivery not seem to be an option. I would like to know. That would be fine by me and would cut delivery costs by 80%.
This is already the reality for much of the country. If there's a need to maintain door to door delivery for accessibility reasons, it should be considered on that merit, rather than postal code.
This is a great example of what makes me pessimistic about Canada’s long-term future. How are we going to be able to tackle and accomplish the things that really need to get done (infrastructure, housing) when there’s been decades of dithering over something that should have been obvious?
Well said.
I’ve never had door to door postal service since I left home in 1975, yet politicians still drag out the old line “ people won’t be able to survive” with out this service. All of it is total BS. The post office is a dead man walking no matter what politicians say.
Add the gun buyback to the list of really bad ideas that need to be killed. Door-to-door should have ended more than a decade ago.
I believe down deep the federal government knows the Post Office and a long list of many other government departments are bloated with staff, poor performers and attempt to provide services that almost everyone knows can be done better & cheaper by the private market.
I also believe the Liberal Party considers most of the folks as their supporters and believe that eliminating the excesses & redundancies would mean these folks would be let go and have to enter the real world, known as the private sector, where wages would be lower, benefits less and a higher level of performance required.
I believe the current government is not willing to do the work necessary to bring these entities into the real world & risk the political fallout.
Face it as this is just taxpayer funded vote buying. Is it any wonder the L's continue to win in Ontario & Quebec as they continue to add more jobs to support more & more meaningless policy objectives. If you where one of these folks would you support the C's who promote the rationalization or eliminations of entities like the CBC even though we all know down deep this is needed.
These groups all have strong unions & most of the media as supporters so running on a mandate of cleaning up the civil service isn't a path to an electoral victory. So nothing gets done and the government just gets bigger. If I remember correctly I just read that government spending from all levels is approx 47% of GDP.
As the pool of contributing taxpayers continues to decline we must accept that this is not a sustainable long-term path.
Lets accept the fact that much of the government work is just an expensive Unemployment Insurance Program.
Sad but true. We are so broken.
It is fine to end door-to-door home delivery by a Crown corporation that can no longer provide such services in a profitable manner, but let us also end that corporation's legal *monopoly* on such services. Other corporations like Amazon would probably deliver letter-mail door-to-door if only they were not required by law to charge 3 times as much as Canada Post would charge.
It continues to fascinate me that there continue to be favoured places in the country with door to door delivery. Here in the colonial west, it’s been 40 years - two generations- since we hewers of the nation’s wood enjoyed such a luxury. Instead, we wear crampons in winter to make it across the street.
If you live in the wealthy suburbs of any western canadian city built before the 1990s you get door to door delivery. Definitely the wealthiest neighbourhoods of Calgary still have door to door delivery!
Not so. I moved into this suburban home in 1988. Never had it. My daughter and son both live in suburban neighborhoods built in the 70s. No door to door. You must be referring to Mount Royal and Elbow Park? I suppose those are possible
I live in North Vancouver and get door to door delivery so it does exist out in the West. My world will come to an end if I have to walk to communal mailbox (j/k).
The argument that we *must* preserve door to to door delivery for the third of us that are lucky enough to have it has always seemed entirely without merit.
Elbow park for certain.
YES, WEALTHY, and OLD, Mount Royal, Elbow Park, Lakeview, Pumphill. I live in a well to do Newer community (2006) and we never had home delivery. I suppose those communities with the exception of Pumphill would be considered urban now.
I haven't had door delivery mail service since 1966. And all Canadians in small cities, towns, villages and rural areas, and any subdivision built after the early 1980s, have never had door delivery. Downtown city residents (and poor decisions including daily delivery) are what has bankrupted Canada Post!
Enough already!
Shows Lewis is as out of touch with the real Canada as Trudeau was!
Like the author, I go to my community mailbox maybe 1x/ week and sometimes not for weeks at a time unless I'm expecting a very specific piece of mail--usually from a government, or a bank. Most product packages now come by courier because retail companies switched away from Canada Post during the recent strikes/threats of strike. It seems to me there could be creative solutions presented to support those for whom the community box is genuinely a mobility hardship. In France, La Poste offers a variety of services you might not expect, e.g. you can literally pay the post person to check in on an elderly relative on a regular basis. As others have remarked in comments, this is not nearly our biggest national challenge. Surely we could find a workable solution. It seems that the incentives for those making the choices are not sufficient to do so.
All I ask for is a recycling bin beside the box, I take most of my mail from the mailbox to the blue bin for every piece of actual mail I receive I think I get at least 10 pieces of junk mail, or donation solicitations!
Agreed. Where i live the community blue bin is right next to the mailboxes (due to wildlife, no private bins). And a lot of my 'junk' mail is flyers from political candidates, ahem.
Community mailboxes come with their own built in recycling slot to junk mail and flyers... it's a little slot that people also use for outgoing mail.
I'm elderly, even by modern standards. I get home delivery that I neither need nor want. March 19 was a high-water mark - 27 pieces of advertising flyers, including 13 duplicates. Very little real mail.
I have had a super mailbox for 23 years now, I find it better than home delivery most of the time...The only issue, when somebody tried to break into the boxes and damaged them and Canada post failed to notify us that mail delivery would cease or tell us where to go to pick up our mail until the box was fixed...then took a full 2 months to do the job.
As Matt says. Our expectations are the problem. Ha.
I am sympathetic to the idea of reducing the cost of running Canada Post. But I am not in favour of having to struggle out for a ten to twenty minute walk to a "community mail box," where the snow is guaranteed not to have been shovelled and the boxes themselves frozen shut, or indeed vandalized. Why does the option of once a week door to door delivery not seem to be an option. I would like to know. That would be fine by me and would cut delivery costs by 80%.
lolz. “ ten to twenty minute walk to a "community mail box,". Ian these boxes are like 50m from most people’s front door. Maybe 100 if you’re unlucky.
This is already the reality for much of the country. If there's a need to maintain door to door delivery for accessibility reasons, it should be considered on that merit, rather than postal code.
A billion dollars a year. I wonder how many votes Trudeau actually got by ignoring this problem.