So, it appears it would not be unusual for Joe’s dad to drink with one of his buddies along his route at 8:00 a.m. – awe, isn’t that nostalgic – I can almost picture the Norman Rockwell painting just thinking about it.
So, it appears it would not be unusual for Joe’s dad to drink with one of his buddies along his route at 8:00 a.m. – awe, isn’t that nostalgic – I can almost picture the Norman Rockwell painting just thinking about it.
We got a Christmas letter from out of town family earlier in the week. It had a bit of bulk to it due to the inclusion of a couple of photos, so accordingly someone at Canada Post took a sharp knife and slit the bottom, hoping to find some cash.
I want nothing to do with Canada Post. I’m glad they’re dying, and I don’t want to pay for them anymore and I don’t want to trudge out to some mail box to pick up the occasional letter.
But aren’t the people claiming that “Canada Post is saddled with debt worth billions” — the people who run Canada Post?
I have a package due from Amazon and it is supposed to be delivered by Canada Post. It was in Brampton for shipping on November 26th and still hasn’t shown up in Calgary. It took the people who settled the west less time to get here.
We’re all nostalgic about our childhoods. Why, in my day, Italians were considered to stupid to be allowed to write newspaper columns. Good times…
Last Christmas while doing the dishes, the mail woman AKA letter carrier, put some mail in my box. I saw her do it. I went out right away and saw a tag that said “attempted parcel delivery” pick up next day after one pm.
She was still on the street next door so I chased her down and and asked her why she didn’t ‘actually’ attempt to deliver the package. She said she didn’t think anyone was home. I said “well, I was and now if you will just give me the package”. She said no, you will have to pick it up tomorrow at the post office. I said why??? I am right here, you say you just tried to deliver the package, so give me the package.
She looked like she had seen a ghost and then said, I don’t have the package!!!!!!!!!!
I suggested that the deal here looks to me like the job of delivering packages involved putting them in the little truck and then taking them to the customers door. If the customer isn’t home, you must then carry the package back to the little truck, then back to the post office. All that work ….
I was angry at this point, so I asked her for her bosses name. She then pulled out her cel phone and dialed her up. Unbelievably she handed me the phone. I could see her eyes starting to tear up a bit. She got caught and she was scared. What she did was a fraud. The tag stated that an attempt to deliver was made, when it was not.
I told her boss that someone paid to have a package delivered to my door … or at the very least an true attempt should be made before forcing me down to the post office to stand in line for a half hour at Christmas time.
I stated simply that I wanted the package delivered this very day as it was supposed to be or I was going to public with is fiasco.
The person on the phone said that someone would call me about this within the hour and I should let the mail women go back to her job.
Within an hour the letter carriers bosses boss was at my door with the package and an apology AND A REQUEST TO PLEASE KEEP THIS QUIET.
My question now is …. is this standard procedure at the post office … to lie and avoid doing the job they are being paid to do because it’s easier? Or was this just one lazy bitch who was gold bricking because she could get away with it …. up until me.
Screw the post office I use Email, receive and pay bills on line, and Use courier exclusively if I need to send or receive a package.
Will nobody think of the sidewalks??? The horror the horror…..
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/12/13/ending_home_delivery_bad_news_for_sidewalks.html
A few thousand union jobs, that the taxpayer subsidizes, disappearing is good news. As far as the drop boxes are concerned, many people all over Canada have had their mail service this way for decades already, so no big deal as far as I am concerned.
“The concept of public service debt is a phantom notion” No, debt is a contractual obligation. If Joe is right the government can say “we’re not paying for that phantom notion anymore, you posties can forget your pension.”
“mail is a public service and that service is our right”
I must have misread the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I couldn’t find any mention of the right to have flyers and envelopes addressed ‘to occupant’ delivered to my door in either document.
Try again
Joe Davidson former CUPW President, “to h_ll with the public”
chickens-home-roost
It’s amusing watching progressives turn into reactionaries as they try to “conserve” all of the dying institutions of the past while conservatives are trying to “progress” toward new economic and technological realities.
I have not had home mail delivery since the mid-seventies, except for 1 1/2 years, when we lived in a small city. I also haven’t had milk delivery via horse-drawn wagon and garbage pickup by horse-drawn wagon since I was a kid. With all the changes we’re being force-fed in this country due to the ‘global warming’ farce and political correctness, kids being indoctrinated by leftist school programs, industry being vilified, some jobs being automated and the mind explosion of the internet, mail delivery is not a big deal to me. As a female green activist said to a logger who had button-holed her about jobs while going in to an NDP convention some years ago, “I guess loggers will just have to find other jobs!”
Ahhh, what a sad story. Funny how it’s all Harper’s fault. My dad was a letter carrier as well for 30 years and retired a decade and a half ago approximately. The stories and complaints I heard from him, not just about management but about his co-workers. Being paid a full day of work while they ran their routes in order to be in the Legion when it opened. Lazy workers that couldn’t be bothered to sort all their mail when needed. He hated going on strike, but he did it since it was his “duty” according to the union.
He worked hard, and one of the things he told me was don’t get a job in the post office. Funny thing is that I tried once. Turned out that the rules had changed since my dad had started work there. Military veterans applications were quietly filed in the circular file. Go figure.
I have talked to other people and the stories sound the same. There is no longer any respect for the post office. Rightly deserved as well I think.
A buddy of mine in Hamilton noticed that he never ever received mail on a Wednesday. He asked all the neighbors and they said they never received mail on a Wednesday either. So he waited a few months until he was on holidays and then scouted out the mail drop off. Sure enough the mailman picks up the mail and puts it in his car and drove away. He reported it to the post office. Still never got mail on a Wednesday.Ever.
In the last two weeks, I have had four important items delivered by Canada Post, including my passport just this AM. No problems at all, excellent and timely service.
I know it’s trendy here to bandwagon jump on the Posties, but many do a hard job well,as my two brothers,one retired, did and do. I’ve worked in many industries over the past 50 years, and in each job there were hard workers and lazy bastards,the Post Office is no different.
One paragraph at the link though, caught my attention:”Harperism has ruined our rail service, muzzled our scientists, starved our food safety inspection, throttled our employment insurance program, filled our jails, handcuffed our universities and weakened our public broadcaster.”
My F***ing oath! If the disease of Harper Derangement Syndrome spreads much more, we may actually see the Liberals “Teeth and Hair” candidate win.
Unions can take the blame for killing door to door mail delivery. It’s a job that requires good health, ability to walk in all kinds of weather and of course be able to read. When people with more education and many of the people they’re serving make less and without their great benefits, there’s not much sympathy for it’s demise.
don, The Toronto Star has an editor who should be Martin-Bashir-ed.
My dear friend Abraham had a good job at the buggy whip factory. Then the evil Daimler came along and destroyed his way of life. All he was left with was his fully indexed pension.
My fondest memories of Canada Post as a kid are about every second Christmas, CUPW going on strike and causing enormous disruption to everyone trying to get cards and presents to loved ones. Oh, but that was for the common good not to extort greater wages from CP users and line the pockets of union bosses.
My Dad would say his fondest memories of Canada Post was when he was in Ottawa at the time of Stalin’s death. There were two places with their flags at half mast: The Soviet embassy and the headquarters of CUPW.
I also remember our friendly postie who would take his time and have a friendly visit with everyone he could along his route, of course this was to be nice and not to get overtime. Funny, when the weather was really nice in the summer he could do that route in about two hours.
Wasn’t it their deity, Algore, that invented the internet?
That Joe, he funny. Tells a good story. Now what about the NEWS?
I worked at a Calgary media company that received a bag of mail every day. (I’m referring to a duffel bag four feet high and two feet in diameter.)
Every day the top third of the bag was stuffed with mail that was not for us. This did not mean the mail was simply delivered to the wrong address in Calgary. There were packages and mail sent from Montreal going to Toronto, or mail from other countries going to places in other parts of Canada.
Each day I would mark the mail as mis-delivered to (company name) please redirect.
After a week of this, a delegation from the Canada Post sorting plant visited my boss. The delegation was comprised of senior management and senior union reps. They demanded I stop marking the mail as I was “making them look bad” (direct quote)
We used to give the post office a couple thousand dollars per year for what they call “priority courier.” At the other end, about once every couple months, they were challenged to find an ordinary street address of a business open every day. This put us into a regular panic. At our end, in a small town, courier meant courier it yourself. They did deliver stuff, just not very often to us. They miraculously found our box number despite us deliberately not using it so we could get the delivery we paid for. Now if regular mail comes with our street address, they have no ability to determine our box number and return the mail. The post office employs people who are actually lazier and stupider than the RCMP. We switched to a private courier and our blood pressure went down a lot.
Umm, have the government hire tens of thousands of people to go door-to-door once a day on weekdays to see if there’s anyone close to death is lying on the floor just inside their open front door?
If the residents on any given street take a stroll at varying times of the day/evening to to collect their mail from a local drop-box, rather than staying in their houses and picking the mail off the floor, or sticking their arms out the door into their mailboxes, won’t the street then be dozens or hundreds of times safer?
Translation: My old man took a taxpayer-funded public-sector union job, worked for about half as long as people in the private sector, and then got a disability pension.
Translation: People who receive taxpayers’ money are unaware that “public service debt” is debt, and don’t know the definition of “rights”.
I stopped having any expectations of or respect for the post office when in 1978 I was doing some service work on their teletypes …. the mail sorting area was visible from where I was doing my job and I watched a group of mail sorters playing bounce the box off the 14 foot ceiling before they fired them down the big shoot.
Now I am friends with a letter carrier who has about 20yrs in and I hope he gets out while the getting is good.
But as far as ME subsidizing the Canada Post Corp. forever? Forget it.
When I was a young lad we would get mail delivery twice a day and once on Saturdays. The mailman would also take any letters you had written and take them to the post office. The men were diligent and well respected, being mostly WW11 Vets.
Fast forward 25 years. We had one of those drop-off gray mail boxes
on our street. Most days the mailman would open it, take out a bottle, take a long pull and promptly vomit on the ground. He would then try to deliver the mail.
How times change.
Ah yes. I remember milk delivered by horse, and ice delivered next door by horse. In Ottawa
the bakery delivery and milk delivery became motorized. My Mom quit the bakery delivery when
the goods began to be stale (deliverer kept them at home overnight or longer). I also remember
the first postal strikes. Very disruptive. Oh yes, and old Mr. S used to come around with his
cart of vegetables. A remarkable man, Mr. S. With his cart he put one brother through law school
and the other through medical school, and both became prominent in their professions. After his
brothers became prosperous they offered to pay for his retirement. He said he was used to his work,
and I don’t think retired until shortly before he passed away. He was an Orthodox Jew, with definite
views on Christians, but he was friendly none the less and had a great sense of humour.
Oh yeah, I forgot about those semi-annual strikes from our childhoods!
We had a Canada Post “official” show up on our doorstep to measure the distance from my neighbors mailbox to our mailbox. My first thought when I heard of this from my wife was that someone obviously has too much time on their hands, but what I couldn’t figure out was what caused this guy to be here in the first place. Did our postie complain, was this guy the union rep, or was he from CP management?
The problem was that we live on a corner and our mailbox is on the side of the house, always has been because we, like previous owners, park on the side street or in the garage and that is the best spot for the box. And it was convenient for the postie too as he walked within three paces of it as he passed by on his route. For some reason the route changed and instead of walking by our house on the way to the next block we were now the end of the route and the poor postie had to walk all the way around to the side of our house to deliver our mail before doubling back the way he came. The last thing the official said was to expect a letter from Canada Post asking (ordering?) us to move the mailbox to the front.
I guess I will never get that letter now, which saddens me because I was hoping for an epic battle with the demons of stupidity over this.
In my business I’ve often told customers that they could rely on Canada Post to mail cheques and tax documents instead of hand delivering or couriering them. I can honestly say that after 34 years in business I can only recall 2-3 problems with the mail.
That said, I recently went to send a book to a friend. The cost was going to exceed the book price. I questioned this and was told it was because of tracking. I told them I didn’t need tracking as it wouldn’t matter much if the paperback disappeared.
Paraphrasing Seinfeld, Sorry no no-tracking for you.
To Don Morris – I don’t think people are annoyed at individual posties – on the whole they do the job they have well. BUT to assume that Canada Post as a whole is somehow better than any other courier service is silly. When this was announced, CBC was right on it having listeners call in – one person stated that Canada Post had excellent service, because they got parcels delivered by Canada Post at 6 p.m. and how wonderful it was that these dedicated employees still were on the job at 6 p.m. Clearly this person has never received parcels from other courier services. I’ve had UPS and Fed Ex deliver parcels on weekends and at 9 p.m. at night – in fact sometimes they prefer to because people are more likely to be home and they don’t have to take the parcels back to the depot!!
And that is the problem – there are better services out there, but we have become so used to ‘bad’ service from public sector employees/agencies that we are shocked when it is even a little bit better than bad!
I wish the Toronto Star was government/taxpayer owned,so Harper could close that den of fanatics down too.
I am posting from the land of schmucks, according to Oz, In The Us, the post office is established by our Constitution. I live on a rural route and, over the years, have received excellent, devoted, service from out rural postal service agents (bureaucratese for mail men). Ours have always been concerned about the continuing welfare of their patrons. However, since our elderly mail carrier has disappeared or retired (two months) our service is becoming spotty. We have had some very cold weather lately with a little snow and sleet. No mail deliveries since last Friday, except yesterday at about 8pm. On Tuesday, we did hear the clomp clomp of someone running up to our mailbox in heavy boots. It was UPS delivering our mail at about 7pm. He had run down the road from the previous mailbox about 300 yards away, just to get us our mail (our road had been completely cleared by everybody up and down, using their farm tractors.) A short time later I think fed ex delivered another parcel of mail. Only in America, maybe not Canada! Our postmaster was certainly thinking and acting to fix a bad situation. Kudos
I remember as a young boy a daily walk to the post office with my mom to pick up the mail. We lived in a small village with a post office and everyone in the village had a box at the post office. We did not get home delivery 50 years ago. I get it now, but when it’s gone I will get around to making arrangements with people who bill me to send me email invoices. I’ll have to go to the super box once a month to get the two magazines I subscribe to. That is the only business I will do with the PO.
What I sent to the author of this so-called column:
A number of years ago while a student at Ryerson I was a Christmas helper in P.O. Stn. F in Toronto. I came away with the firm opinion that Canada Post should fire everyone and start from scratch. Laziness, poor management, gross incompetance and general lack of interest in properly serving the customer were in open evidence.
During Christmas rush, by myself, with no experience I finished my route before 11 in the morning.
I am surprised the post office lasted this long.
When my father delivered mail in the fifties, he worked long days. I worked there part time as a student and delivered mail too but when I was working the union had things to a point where an average Mail deliverer would have his morning walk done by 10 am with a three hour lunch till one. A clever worker rearranged his walk so he was finished the day by 1:45. Many took second jobs to fill their time. That was the early seventies, I doubt it got tougher since then. They get no sympathy from me.
“..to stupid..” Careless typo.
It’s ‘too stupid’
Regards
Nitpicker
That article was so silly and illogical and amatuerishly written I assumed it was a one off. Nuh-uh. Joe Fiorito is apparently a regular columnist at the Star. Giving Mallick a run for her money.
Statement:
“Mike and I talk when we see each other on the street. He is another set of eyes on the neighbourhood. He knows us all and he sees what’s going on.
The benefit of his presence is a daily, and a priceless peripheral good: my street is safer — and more human — with him than without.
… this guy once saved a woman’s life while he was on his rounds — her door was open, he saw her on the floor and called an ambulance.
How do you replace that?”
Comment:
– I’m not just sure how or when “neighbourhood watch” became a “priceless” part of the letter carriers’ mandate. Do the letter carriers regularly help people with snow removal after a particularly heavy fall, or move people’s blue boxes and QMI advertisers off the curb and/or front lawn when they know, by those people’s custom, that they won’t be home? If so, I’m personally looking for a very big pay-equity wage increase, to be sure, as will all those in the vast tracts of new subdivisions built since 1987, who do the same for their neighbours.
Statement:
“Follow along: Canada Post used to be a Crown corporation; first it was hived off, then it was hobbled and now it is being killed for limping; time of death, five years from now.”
Comment:
– Sounds like a certain self-styled “lazy” “libertarian” whom we know only too well. The historical record will show, actually, that there used to be a ministerial-level position called Postmaster General, whose most infamous incumbent in the modern era was none other than Bryce Mackasey, about whom Mr. Mulroney commented, at the start of the 1984 campaign, “There’s no whore like an old whore…” And the rest, as they say, is history: Mr. Trudeau, Sr.’s last government turned Canada Post, which was an agency, into a crown corporation in late 1981, primarily to implement business principles onto a pig’s breakfast.
Statement:
“Goodbye, Canada.”
Comment:
– Good luck with that, wanker.
Good times! Remember locker plants? Dad would pick up a slab of meat packaged in butcher wrap before driving home after work. Employment tended to be long term in those days, and most people didn’t move very often.
“He made the same calculation all public sector workers make: a steady job at modest wages, providing a social good, in return for a modest pension.” – Full time starting wage with no experience is $46,000. That is in the top 1/3 in Canada. Median income is only $31,000 in all of Canada. This is a service not a social good.
“The benefit of his presence is a daily, and a priceless peripheral good: my street is safer — and more human — with him than without.” – The vast majority of home delivery takes place in older core neighborhoods with high crime rates. Based on this assertion the high crime areas should be the newest neighborhoods that don’t have a mail carrier walking by once a day. On the other hand maybe the crime rate is lowered for that block for the 5 minutes the carrier is on it.
“You might believe the lie that Canada Post is saddled with debt worth billions. It is not. The concept of public service debt is a phantom notion; the mail is a public service and that service is our right, and it is paid for with our taxes.” – I literally sputtered when reading this. SOMEONE pays either now (current cash flow) or later (DEBT). Of course now he is calling it a service and not a social good so I guess I can give him credit for that…wait…did he just call it a right? Never mind.
“Follow along: Canada Post used to be a Crown corporation; first it was hived off, then it was hobbled and now it is being killed for limping; time of death, five years from now.” – Follow along: It still is a crown corporation with a single shareholder, the Canadian Government; by hived I assume you mean run like a business instead of as a government department; by limping I assume you mean by electronic transfers reducing the need for physical delivery; by time of death you mean the point at which all addresses receive their mail the same way instead of 30% getting specialized home delivery? By the way, direct home delivery is nothing more than a specialized service.
“Now it is killing 6,000 jobs. Where does Harper think people are going to find work?” – Canada Post says that they expect 15,000 retirements over the next 5 years. It looks more like they are promising to hire 9000 people during that time. BANG! Don’t you love the sound of a paradigm shift without a clutch? I assume that Harper believes that people will continue to find work in Western Canada where we literally can’t find enough people do the work.
Simply put, when a business model is not working you have to either change the model or change the business.
My dad is also a mail carrier currently doing house to house delivery. He loves his job and will be happy to do what Canada Post tells him to do when they stop delivering to his houses.
I almost chocked when I read “modest wages”. My brother was a postie and never worked past 11am unless it was overtime. Now at 58 he’s retired on a healthy pension and all the second jobs he had over the years helped pay for his house. Sweet gig if you can get it. Pretty fair and balanced article from the Star (sarc)….
Good examples EBD and there are lots more in that article. Really, it is some of the worst bilge I have seen in a newspapers and there is a lot of bilge in newspapers. Toronto Star is even worse than I thought.
You think maybe all those strikes in the 70s & 80s is now haunting Canada post. Naw couldn’t be. I mean people forgive lost checks or mail.
Don’t disrespect Harper . Your Dads Unions boss’s created a Tsunami of bad will. Killed any sympathy for Canada post. . Never fear though they will never have to want.They did enough harm to this Industry. More than the internet never could do in a century.
Private companies do okay it seems. Mean while the Stamp scam from this organization never stops.
Not only does this article writer not get that times change but that unionised workers appear to have zero work or moral ethics. If letters aren’t delivered, no biggie. That kind of indifference deserves to go out of business.
It doesn’t really bother me to see home delivery disappear…I’m only about five doors away from the logical spot to put a community mail box on my street.
But I wonder why they didn’t consider reducing service to two days a week? Instead of potential five day a week mail, you could have expected Tuesday & Thursday or Wednesday & Friday delivery. (Mondays not an option as too many of them are stat holidays) Result would have been about half the necessary number of letter carriers. (Until the union figured out a way to scam that).
And if those posties miss their daily walk with a pack to carry, maybe they could join the infantry!!
Just a month ago,I had a letter delivered in November that was mailed in mid- October.
The other 200 or so letters this year and in each of the previous 10 years were all on time. But because I’m a grumpy old fart that despises unions and is unable to pick anything but low-hanging fruit, I will focus on the letter that went astray.
Did I get that right folks?
Furthermore, I think that the move to community mail boxes is the right idea, and I’m not the only postie that agrees with that decision.
There is a lot more to the workings that went into this gov’t decision. I believe it is part of the path to privatization. The PO is a profitable crown corporation.They may show a loss this year, but they also spent over a billion dollars in the past two with their “postal transformation” plan,the one that is now being scrapped. Heads should roll for that move, but I won’t hold my breath.
Oh, and one more thing, this is baffling to me. The corporation will not be starting the implementation of this new plan for at least 8 months. It will be done over a four year period. Why would they announce it two weeks before Christmas? That is just rude.
Nailed it!
Fiorito is obviously taking time off from being the Star’s Bedbug Editor, since that’s what his columns have about three times out of four of late.
“Public service jobs are a tool of social policy, and an economic strategy in tough times.”
There is no such thing as “public service”.
The concept of “service” in one sense suggests giving of oneself without thought of reward, but considering how the public unions run roughshod over the taxpaying public, there sure as hell isn’t any of that notion of it here.
In another, “service” means an activity towards an end that one finds useful for which one is willing to pay, i.e., trade. That’s what mail service is, and it is currently (and regrettably) a public sector activity. But the litany of horror stories of bad public postal service already detailed above lead to the identification of what is missing, and should be brought in: competition.
When people talk glowingly about “public service”, what they really mean is, “take what you get and be glad to get it” – and there’s nothing noble about this, which is essentially a form of bullying.
The same goes for anything else with “public” in front of it – public education, public broadcasting. There is nothing noble about any of them, and they all have “take what you get and be glad to get it” as an underlying theme. Enough already!
There is absolutely zero cause for communication by mail to be a government-run enterprise, and there never has been. But the government is making something of a mistake here. Rather than just cut back service at the monopoly, it should throw the field open to competition immediately, and of course end the ridiculous law that requires any competitive letter delivery to cost three times the Canada Post rate. If people want home delivery, and some surely would like to retain it, there should be some enterprising companies in a free market that would be willing to deliver it for the right price.
More from Bedbug Guy, and let’s take them one at a time:
“Harperism has:
– ruined our rail service
Not really; VIA Rail had weakened itself by poor service for years, not unlike Canada Post, and it too is deeply in debt. If people want to travel by rail, why should non-travelers help them do so?
– muzzled our scientists
Since when does anyone get to mouth off about his employers without consequences? If there are serious concerns about policies, resign and go to the papers (which happens already). And why should government be involved in science anyway? The last thing we need is politicized science, but today there are too many politicized people in the field, to the detriment of objectivity. Government’s job is to protect our rights.
– starved our food safety inspection
Food safety problems have arisen even with inspections, and the companies have scrambled to deal with them as best they can. Companies should always be in a position to be held responsible for their actions. The Supreme Court has ruled that this is true even if they conform to regulations (St. Lawrence Cement, 2008), but it has also ruled that regulators cannot be held responsible if they don’t do their jobs properly, through laziness, incompetence or malfeasance (Cooper v. Hobart,, 2001). In other words, regulation / inspection is worthless anyway, so who needs it?
– throttled our employment insurance program
Didn’t that start with Chretien / Martin in 1995? If it weren’t for government policies (at the federal, provincial and municipal level) that create unemployment, we wouldn’t even need this program.
– filled our jails
A person who goes to jail deserves to be there because of his own actions, not the PM’s. Yes, there is room to disagree with the drug laws, for example, but I don’t think Harper has “filled the jails”. And notice how, on the one hand, the leftists scream against the construction of new jails while on the other they scream about overcrowding in the current system?
– handcuffed our universities
I’m not sure what this refers to, but if every student these days is coming out indoctrinated with Marxist swill, then some handcuffing is exactly what they need. We have the right not to pay with our tax dollars for this indoctrination.
– and weakened our public broadcaster
Again, there is really no need for a public broadcaster. The private sector has to rely on voluntary trade, while the public sector gets some or all of its revenue from tax dollars. So naturally it’s biased toward maintaining this gravy train. Enough! There is nothing noble about “public” anything, and they always have “take what you get and be glad to get it” as an unstated theme. I will concede, however, that in my opinion some of what is presented on the public channels is worthy and there is plenty of what is presented on private channels that is not.
Finally, this from Fiorito: “Above all, the Harper government has a miserable job creation strategy, but it is terrific at creating poverty. Now it is killing 6,000 jobs. Where does Harper think people are going to find work?”
Governments aren’t supposed to have “job creation strategies”, although sadly they all seem to have one these days, even Harper. Jobs should be created by the private sector to fill the needs or wants of consumers. No government “strategy” can accomplish or even aid this.
If there is anything creating poverty these days it’s government regulation, spending, debt and waste. One notion that should be dumped into the circular file is that there should be “public services” that don’t have to play by market rules.
As for the 6,000 jobs, I recommend that private competitors to Canada Post be created by enterprising individuals and that at least some of the 6,000 experienced workers be hired to help with their work.
First off this idiot “journalist” insults his father by calling him his “old man” extremely derogatory term which I will never allow my children to utter in my presence (otherwise they’ll get a slap in the head). I remember telling my kids how insulting that term was and to never use it in my presence. This jerk uses it to describe his father in an opinion piece.
Secondly…apparently Joe’s “old man” was an alcoholic who managed to keep his job and “modest” pay and “modest” fully indexed pension despite not being able to show up for work because he was a drunk! Thanks Joe for proving just how screwed up our civil service (at least the post office) is.
This guy is a total moron and very naive of life itself…but he is a “journalist” working at the Star so that explains a lot.
Thirdly…everyone knows the post office loses tons of money every minute…..except a “journalist” at the Star. This guy in typical liberal/socialist fashion expects the taxpayer should just suck it up, shut up, and keep putting up with an inefficient, outdated and archaic government entity.
” everyone knows the post office loses tons of money every minute ”
The post office has made money every year for the past 15.
Unfortunately, ” everyone ” is too lazy to actually find the truth out when it is so much easier to repeat the lies.
@WallyJ – Wrong
From the press release –
“In 2012, the Canada Post Group of Companies had a before-tax profit of $127 million and the Canada Post segment a before-tax profit of $98 million.
This result was created by non-recurring, non-cash adjustments worth approximately $152 million. These adjustments are largely due to reductions in the future costs of sick leave and post-retirement health benefits. The savings are a result of reaching new collective agreements with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in December 2012.
Without the non-cash adjustments, the Canada Post segment would have incurred a before-tax loss of $54 million in 2012. For the Group of Companies, the before-tax loss would have been $25 million. Rapidly declining mail volumes combined with the need to serve a growing number of new addresses are a major cause of Canada Post’s serious financial challenges. Compared to 2008, Canada Post is now delivering 23.6 per cent less Transaction Mail per address. As a result, Canada Post expects a substantial financial loss in 2013.
Canada Post must continue to explore and pursue opportunities to reshape its business and adjust its labour costs. To remain financially self-sufficient, Canada Post must make more fundamental changes to transform its business. ”
Without the ability to adjust funds it states the before tax loss was $54 Million. The only way 2012 showed a profit was by moving book money.
Here is the 2011 report –
“Canada Post reported an unconsolidated financial loss before tax of $327 million for 2011. On a consolidated basis, the loss before tax was $253 million.
The unconsolidated financial loss follows 16 consecutive years of profitability at Canada Post. Several factors contributed to Canada Post’s financial performance in 2011, including the labour disruption that occurred in June and effectively shut down the postal system for 25 days.
This had an immediate financial and competitive impact—leading to an estimated $200 million or more in
lost revenue and driving customers to competing logistics and delivery companies. The long-term impact of the labour disruption is still unknown.
Other factors that contributed to the 2011 financial loss included an unfavourable decision by the Supreme Court of Canada concerning a pay equity case and the continued decline of mail volumes due to poor economic conditions, electronic substitutions of traditional mail and rising domestic and international competition.
Canada Post also continues to face a sizeable, volatile pension obligation.”
So, two consecutive years of real loss, with a third year pending. They have to make changes, no choice.
You can look it up yourself, http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/aboutus/corporate/annualreport.jsf
Also, 2013 isn’t looking very good.