What if you went on strike and nobody cared? Postal workers are learning the hard lesson that their service isn’t as essential to people as they thought it was. With a month on the picket lines, all postal workers have managed to accomplish is to lose public support and speed up Canada’s transition to a paperless society. Postal workers can no longer effectively hold Canadians hostage during the Christmas season. Their strikes no longer cripple the nation, they only irritate it.Demand for letter mail is never going to come back and the only people who appear not to know this are the postal workers and their union. Canada Post was given a monopoly on letter delivery, but even with that, they can’t fund themselves. Letter mail has dropped by over half in volume since 2006.Canada Post has lost $3 billion since 2018, and the losses are mounting faster. It may be on track to lose $1 billion in 2024 alone. The hemorrhaging can’t continue forever, and unless something dramatic changes, Canada Post will go bankrupt.While as a Crown Corporation, Canada Post is supposed to be self-funding and not hitting taxpayers for its operational expenses, taxpayers still are liable for the debts incurred. Canada is already in a dire economic situation with massive government debt, low productivity, and a rising cost of living. Adding billions more to the debt load won’t be doing Canadians any favours.Not only should Canada Post refuse to give in to union demands for raises, but it must also scale its size and scope dramatically to face contemporary reality.The route to solvency for Canada Post may be harsh for its employees, but it’s simple. With 68,000 employees, labour is by far the biggest expense with Canada Post and that’s where the cuts must come.All direct-to-doorstep letter delivery must end. It is ridiculously expensive and labour-intensive. Over two-thirds of Canadians already get their mail at community mailboxes. The only reason the transition to community boxes didn’t reach all Canadians is that Justin Trudeau cut a deal with the postal union back in 2016. That deal must now be ended and community boxes installed everywhere. One worker can cover the ground of dozens of carriers by travelling from box to box to deliver mail rather than walking house to house.Delivery no longer needs to be daily. If a person has a pressing, immediate need to have a document delivered to their door, they can pay Xpress Post or a private courier to deal with it. Postal workers deliver little more than flyers daily these days and there isn’t enough demand to justify going out five days a week. Once per week will suffice.Canada Post should get out of the parcel delivery business. They had a near monopoly a few years ago, and they blew it. The private market has filled the parcel void with superior service and now has a majority market share. Canada Post may as well fully divest from it. At most, they could provide some subsidized service to remote regions but that’s it.By ending home delivery, ending parcel service, and cutting to one day per week, Canada Post will be able to shed tens of thousands of positions. Canada Post will still have a legislated monopoly on letter service and even if it manages to lose money, the losses will be much smaller than the current ones.Yes, many jobs will be lost. That’s unfortunate. Is Canada Post supposed to be providing mail service or is it a social welfare program, though? If the only point is to provide jobs whether there is a need for them or not, we may as well form a Crown Corporation to hire thousands of people to dig holes, and then fill them back in again. It will serve the same purpose as using Canada Post as an employment program but won’t contribute to as much traffic on the streets.Some postal workers would find employment in the private courier sector as that industry expands. Others are going to have to retire or find new trades.The strike has taught Canadians that losing Canada Post as we know it is an inconvenience at worst. We don’t need a huge national postal service and with the strike driving millions into converting to electronic finances and communications, Canada Post must shrink. Let’s cut it with a plan to transition workers as painlessly as possible, but let’s get on with it.There is no longer work for film processors, record store employees or barrel stave makers either. The world changes and the workforce must adapt to deal with it. Postal workers had a good gig but the run is over.
