Article - Finding Real Solutions For Canada Post's Future

Faken

The Universal Postal Union regulations come into play when a postal authority sets its international rates.

Letter Post

http://www.upu.int/uploads/tx_sbdow...otocolEn.pdf

Parcel Post Regulations

http://www.upu.int/uploads/tx_sbdow...otocolEn.pdf





I don't agree. Canada Post has closed most urban post offices and replaced them with franchise owners. Canada Post has achieved total victory over the unions. It is now gleefully working on freeing itself from the pension liability which the federal government downloaded onto the CPC. Sorry to be so political, but the Canada Post nonsense is all about political choices.

Unfortunately I don't see anything in the documentation that explains why Canada's international parcel rates are at least double any other country. If you know the relevant sections, please let me know.

The damage from unions is from many years of abuse, and there is no question that union wages have hurt us in the long run in many industries. Unfortunately unions are no longer being used as intended, and despite union propaganda, serve more to protect bad workers than they do protect the good from bad employers.

Canada Post is a crown corporation, of course it's all about politics, that's why it's just another CC in trouble. Once you embed a union, there is no victory to be had and the damage is done. That's why companies like Couche-Tard do what they did... they tried to set up a union in about a dozen locations, Couche-Tard (a corner store chain) shut down all 12 locations overnight.

Anyhow, CP will never have any sympathy from me and their ridiculous fees and I like thousands of other shipping companies will refuse to work with them when there are so many cheaper alternatives for parcel service.

Dan

I must concede to some degree lorddenning's point, though, about profit levels. I've gone back and looked at the annual reports on CP's website. But for 2011, CP has posted profits for the last decade +. It has only started losing money in 2013. I admit I fell victim to the media's "sky is falling" campaign. While I am all for reducing waste and cutting costs, I do not like the flavour of what is being done here - clearly there is an alternate agenda that has nothing to do with CP losing money. And I don't like being played.

A point of order: 2011's "profit" only came from accounting adjustments to employee liabilities that were adjusted during the collective agreement, ie. writing off of sick days etc. So there is merit to the claim that CP lost money in 2011; indeed CP leadership admits they lost money.

The other troubling trend is the 26% volume drop in mail over the last 5 years. This is a disastrous trend for any business, and it can not continue in perpetuity. CP can continue to raise rates to keep the revenue up, as I believe it has been doing, but it can only do this for so long until the lack of volume undermines this strategy. Is this declining volume trend due to the economy or changing modes of communication? I disagree with lorddenning that we've hit "rock bottom"; I believe we will continue to see declining lettermail volumes. Although the economic downturn likely accelerated this decline, and a recovery may decelerate the decline, it will remain a decline nonetheless, and one that requires a new approach to the business if we hope to see CP remain a profitable crown corp.

Oh the decline will most definitely continue. Magazine publications continue to drop and are moving to digital only platforms... that's millions of monthly magazines that will slowly be removed from print and postal shipping. There is also a HUGE push with ePost over the last couple of years and it's just getting started, so that means all kinds of mailed statements like your hydro, cable, payslips etc all going 100% digital with no more mailed statements.

The decline of crude hydrocarbon based (oil) supplies and the change to oil sands and other transportation powwering fuels like batteries and magnetics has an impact on how much the extra cost will be on transporting anything by convential means.

But the pleasure of it all, sending and receiving a letter or shipment, in the mail, far outweighs the seeming inconvenience of the extra cost involved.

Communications and touch are an important human thing.

I agree Puzzler, but I think it is less about the cost than about the inconvenience of sitting down, writing a letter, addressing the envelope, sourcing postage, then having to add "mail letters" to the to-do list that is already a billion items long.

We are now in the age of one click shopping, 140 character tweets, and instant messaging. Letter writing and waiting just aint where it's at anymore. And I will be the first to admit that we lose something in that.

True enough. But, there is always time management.


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