BY MICHAEL TAUBE,
Are you fed up with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) holding our country’s mail service hostage? If so, you’re not alone.
Canada Post, a Crown corporation funded by our taxpayer dollars, and the striking mail carriers, have been unable to find common ground for various union demands, including more benefits and seven weeks of vacation pay. Generous counterproposals to the union, featuring starting wages of $19 per hour and top wages of $26 per hour, have been met with relative silence. This has led to rotating mail strikes, and the volume of letter mail has dropped by 50 per cent. Mail service in urban areas will be reduced to three days a week, which inevitably has led to job layoffs.
Until the CUPW’s demands are met by Canada Post, it seems the situation is at a standstill. Canada is therefore in a state of postal turmoil, and it’s frustrating enough to make you go, well, postal.
What’s the solution? It depends who you ask.
Toronto Sun editorial page editor Rob Granatstein proposes reforms to the system. On June 5, he suggested Canada Post put the kibosh to Toronto’s door-to-door delivery, which he says costs on average $253 per address a year. Instead, the city could move to “the once-dreaded, and, really, still despised SuperMailbox,” which would cost $100 per address a year. It’s a creative proposal, and could be used as a model in other cities and communities. Unfortunately, the time, labour and ultimate cost of setting up SuperMailboxes in urban areas wouldn’t be a cost-effective strategy, at least in the short term.
The Montreal Gazette favours the status quo. A June 6 editorial trumpeted, “ … the arguments in favour of maintaining Canada Post as the national letter-delivery service still outweigh those against, and will for some time yet. Despite the erosion its mail volume has suffered, it remains a vital national resource that provides reasonably reliable universal delivery at equitable cost for all Canadians.” Gee, I didn’t realize the Toronto Star had moved to Quebec and hijacked the Gazette’s editorial board. Or they’ve started sucking up to the province’s new lord and master, the NDP, a bit earlier than expected.
National Post columnist Lorne Gunter took a different approach. Last month, he encouraged CUPW to “hasten the demise of Canada Post and its monopoly stranglehold on first-class mail.” With respect to the possibility of increased costs, he wrote on June 9, “So? That form of subsidy is no more justifiable than grants to arts groups that claim they couldn’t put on their plays, concerts or exhibitions in the absence of taxpayer funding. Both amount to coercing money from one group of Canadians for the benefit of another.”
I’m with Gunter. Ottawa should get out of the business of delivering our mail — and the CUPW can finally get out of our lives, for good. It’s time for the Harper Tories to either privatize Canada Post, or dismantle the entire operation, sell off its assets, and create a competitive atmosphere for private mail service. I’d be content with the former option, but strongly prefer the latter. (Heck, I’d even give an enthusiastic nod to the pony express or carrier pigeons if a company presented a good business model.)
Private sector competition consistently trumps public sector complacency. This doesn’t mean the private sector is perfect, but it’s a far better solution than letting a state-run monopoly like Canada Post operate without any real competitors. By letting the free market play a role, consumers will have greater choice and more options when it comes to sending letters and packages to colleagues, friends or loved ones.
Will competition lead to increased prices, with the removal of subsidized rates? Not necessarily. Under the Canada Post monopoly, the cost of purchasing postage stamps and sending off parcels has gradually increased. Even some private services in which Canada Post has a major stake, including Purolator Courier, have experienced rate increases.
If the cost of letter mail and parcel service has been inconsistent under a state monopoly, there’s no reason to suggest a private company couldn’t keep rates lower, competitive or around the same. In fact, an April 2011 Montreal Economic Institute report noted that after Austria, the Netherlands and Germany privatized their mail services, the cost of letter mail stamps went down between 11 and 17 per cent. If anything, it’ll be key to a Canadian company’s survival in a private mail system to ensure that this regularly happens.
Good luck with your strike, CUPW. The longer you play games with our mail, the closer we get to privatization. Where will that leave you, exactly?
Michael Taube, a political analyst and commentator, and former speech writer for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, this column originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen.