How do you define domestic mail for packages? If I’m coming over to your house for dinner and I bring you a gift, am I delivering mail?
What about ordering pizzas or other food delivery? Coffee beans?
A lot of mail is business to business anyway. I work in a mailroom at a business who receives tens of thousands of pieces of mail per week. By far the majority of that mail comes from other businesses, not individuals, and it really ought to be sent electronically. I personally have opened and scanned thousands of pieces of mail which then get shredded (after a retention period) without anyone ever reading the paper documents. The rest of the business only operates on the electronic versions (PDFs from our scanning), not the paper copies.
We also send out tens of thousands of paper cheques per month by mail. These could all be e-transfers but for the cost of upgrading old software systems. That cost calculation changes dramatically when postage rates go up.
That’s ultimately the crux of the matter: costs. Canada Post is not even close to competitive with other parcel delivery services. They don’t have to worry about competing with letter mail because of a legally enforced monopoly.
Food delivery is a good point though, the perishablility of the package might have exceptions. Most food delivery needs to be delivered within an hour, and the majority is delivered within 20 minutes. Such deliveries are also super local, rarely if ever going farther than 60km. You could say food deliveries of under 50km are exempt, which would probably have some strange outliers, but I don’t think every package is going to get sent with free fries to circumvent this.
At the other end, enforcing better working conditions and possibly unions would go a long way, but good luck finding a politician in power willing to do that.
Perhaps a bit more flexible would be a tax on parcels, and Canada Post has no change beyond that.
At the end of the day, the focus on costs is the issue. The service Canada Post provides is mail access to nearly everyone. Private services will pick up the profitable routes, but they won’t cover nearly as many as Canada Post. If we shut down a service because the profitable routes have been taken by private services, people loose service and more people become dependent on private services.
Maybe the answer is to make Canada Post a charter agency, setting up infrastructure only where used, but required to cover any route requested. That might appease the corner cutters, but would maintain service to the people who need it. On the other hand, I don’t want to ceede any distance to deregulators, lest they use that as precedent to dismantle other services and the few remaining crown corps.
That’s really the larger issue. Arguing that services aren’t profitable in order to dismantle them in favour of private corporations. Our city does this with our busses all the time. Public transportation gets better the more of it you have, but people argue that it doesn’t make enough money so we should reduce service. What is a service worth? Why should we expect them to be profitable?
I think what you’re missing is that even if you had completely free, taxpayer-funded mail delivery you’d have corporations profiting off it: the corporations sending the mail.
Corporations send by far the majority of mail. In my job, I personally, have sent over 100,000 pieces of mail in a single week. Most of that mail gets sent to other businesses, not individual people. Why should taxpayers be subsidizing that?
Because a centralized universal solution is more efficient. Why should healthy people subsidize the sick? Why should drivers subsidize busses? Why should pedestrians subsidize highways? Why should people with solar panels subsidize power plants? Why have public services at all?
You could argue that businesses should pay more, but the fact that a service is useful is not an argument to shut it down.
How do you define domestic mail for packages? If I’m coming over to your house for dinner and I bring you a gift, am I delivering mail?
What about ordering pizzas or other food delivery? Coffee beans?
A lot of mail is business to business anyway. I work in a mailroom at a business who receives tens of thousands of pieces of mail per week. By far the majority of that mail comes from other businesses, not individuals, and it really ought to be sent electronically. I personally have opened and scanned thousands of pieces of mail which then get shredded (after a retention period) without anyone ever reading the paper documents. The rest of the business only operates on the electronic versions (PDFs from our scanning), not the paper copies.
We also send out tens of thousands of paper cheques per month by mail. These could all be e-transfers but for the cost of upgrading old software systems. That cost calculation changes dramatically when postage rates go up.
That’s ultimately the crux of the matter: costs. Canada Post is not even close to competitive with other parcel delivery services. They don’t have to worry about competing with letter mail because of a legally enforced monopoly.
You’re not getting paid to move a gift. USPS is.
Food delivery is a good point though, the perishablility of the package might have exceptions. Most food delivery needs to be delivered within an hour, and the majority is delivered within 20 minutes. Such deliveries are also super local, rarely if ever going farther than 60km. You could say food deliveries of under 50km are exempt, which would probably have some strange outliers, but I don’t think every package is going to get sent with free fries to circumvent this.
At the other end, enforcing better working conditions and possibly unions would go a long way, but good luck finding a politician in power willing to do that.
Perhaps a bit more flexible would be a tax on parcels, and Canada Post has no change beyond that.
At the end of the day, the focus on costs is the issue. The service Canada Post provides is mail access to nearly everyone. Private services will pick up the profitable routes, but they won’t cover nearly as many as Canada Post. If we shut down a service because the profitable routes have been taken by private services, people loose service and more people become dependent on private services.
Maybe the answer is to make Canada Post a charter agency, setting up infrastructure only where used, but required to cover any route requested. That might appease the corner cutters, but would maintain service to the people who need it. On the other hand, I don’t want to ceede any distance to deregulators, lest they use that as precedent to dismantle other services and the few remaining crown corps.
That’s really the larger issue. Arguing that services aren’t profitable in order to dismantle them in favour of private corporations. Our city does this with our busses all the time. Public transportation gets better the more of it you have, but people argue that it doesn’t make enough money so we should reduce service. What is a service worth? Why should we expect them to be profitable?
I think what you’re missing is that even if you had completely free, taxpayer-funded mail delivery you’d have corporations profiting off it: the corporations sending the mail.
Corporations send by far the majority of mail. In my job, I personally, have sent over 100,000 pieces of mail in a single week. Most of that mail gets sent to other businesses, not individual people. Why should taxpayers be subsidizing that?
Because a centralized universal solution is more efficient. Why should healthy people subsidize the sick? Why should drivers subsidize busses? Why should pedestrians subsidize highways? Why should people with solar panels subsidize power plants? Why have public services at all?
You could argue that businesses should pay more, but the fact that a service is useful is not an argument to shut it down.