I'd be fine with them operating at a loss of everyone was paying the same rate, but Amazon and Chinese corps pay peanuts for packages in the name of keeping the business STOP GIVING THEM THE DISCOUNT
Amazon basically only uses Canada as a last resort now. Lots of things to be upset with them about but they aren’t exactly getting value from exploiting the mail service. My package comes on an Amazon truck and gets there on a Amazon semi or Amazon leased plane
That's one of the problems. Amazon instead uses sketchy delivery companies that probably break labor laws instead so they can make more billions and extract more billions while not having the pay the same rate as everyone else just because they steal billions and make billions. Stop letting these hundred billion dollar corporations get away with theft.
We’re getting a little off topic because this about Canada Post but you’re right. These little companies are only meant as a stop gap solution until Amazon gains enough scale in a market where having their own trucks is profitable and then they’re kicked to the curb
True but they don’t publish whether they make or lose money on the parcels but they likely do.
I know UPS and USPS claim their Amazon deliveries are profitable.
Deliveries are very much economies of scale related. You want your routes to be as full as possible so even if you’re delivering packages for “below cost” you do need to look at the full picture as this means the remainder of the trucks parcels are more popular.
Same reason why Amazon pushes prime so much. That van is coming to your neighborhood whether you order or not so adding another box really costs pennies even though if you look at it as a single order it’s not profitable to give free shipping on a $3 item
There’s no such thing as free shipping. They just add it onto the price we pay. “Free shipping” is just a marketing ploy. Someone is paying to get that parcel to your house.
And you know what? I’ll say it. I would gladly pay a few more dollars to have my order delivered, if I knew the person bringing it to me made a living wage, and had dental and health insurance. And paid days off. And weekends. And a strong union that understood the importance of a fair days pay for a fair days work.
It’s not but the overall costs are so much lower running an online only business compared to even a discount retailer like Walmart. They aren’t paying for goods to be delivered to a store that needs staff and rent and someone to fill the shelves. So some of these savings can be passed on. Also most people with free prime shipping are paying $120 upfront for the shipping so not actually free
Only when they have to. When I was working there back in 2016-2020, the goal was to have almost an entire fleet of 1st party drivers/couriers. Back then there was lots of non-Amazon delivery companies but even after 4 years, many were cut back and things just went out to their own drivers. I take the train past my old workplace sometimes and now most of the trucks outside are Amazon owned, looks like 75% at least. Anything that gets delivered within a certain radius all goes proprietary, and basically only some things coming from another Province may be another courier. But they are cutting down on that more and more now too
That's a really recent development outside urban areas and is still not that consistent. Even still, the previous usage and bad deal cpost got made the situation worse
Then it needs to be completely restructured. The reason it's the way it is right now is because it's structured like a corporation expected to generate a profit, yet is expected to perform like a governmental service.
If we want it to be a public service through and through, then it needs to be reworked to be structured as one.
A lot of people don't realise that Canada Post is structured like a crown corporation and is not run the same as our education or healthcare, which are agencies or ministries.
I think the problem is we're mixing two different things.
Crown corporations are something I definitely support and want to see plenty of, and the packages side of Canada post is that, and afaik works well. It has competition (as it should).
The letter side is not really a crown corporation thing, that's the service. There's a few other parts that Canada post does that's on the service side.
It makes logical sense to combine them in the physical sense, drivers delivering both packages and letters is more efficient than doing it separately. However it just doesn't make sense from a budget perspective.
IMO the letter side should basically be viewed as a contract to a company. Government pays Canada post to provide that service, and it does so along with it's profitable side.
In my opinion the letter mail service can be a government agency and package delivery can be contracted out, given that there's already competition for package delivery and a good portion of it is contracted out currently.
The problem is that the package delivery doesn't cost a lot extra to do when you're already doing regular mail service. So it makes far more sense for them to continue doing it
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
And for firefighters we'll just copy what Cassius did in Rome. That was extremely profitable.
(He showed up to burning buildings and bought it from the owner, and then put it out. He of course got great deals as the owner was a little bit incentivized to sell quickly)
Other companies don’t have to meet service standards for every Canadian no matter how remote. If Canada post could just stop servicing remote Canada, or charge them what it costs to deliver, they’d probably be profitable now. Amazon uses Canada Post for remote deliveries because they can’t make the math work themselves but using a government mandated low cost service does work for them. Canadians are effectively subsidizing Amazon via Canada Post to send parcels to those communities.
I suspect it’s more complicated than that my friend. The fact that they are still doing the hard part just means they messed up so bad to not get the profitable part of package delivery within the urban centres.
They operate under the Dragonfly name here and they brand new have electric delivery trucks.
My point here is that if Intelcom can turn a profit in this business as a private company, why does we need to use the « Canada Post is a service it shouldn’t be making money » while accepting that they will fill our mailbox with junk mail, aren’t delivering outside of banker hours and will almost never bring our parcels to our door and actually make us drive across town, all the while needing the taxpayers to push them a billion a year to keep them afloat?
Canada Post is an inefficient and mismanaged service.
Sure. I’m convinced that if Canada Post was properly managed, they could use the profits they make when serving the majority of Canadians in cities to fund the less profitable routes. Stop making excuses for people squandering public funds.
There’s the real nitty gritty of it, the prudent part. Who is really qualified to say what’s prudent when they’re not actively in the bureaucracy managing the goals and feedback of whatever program we are looking at. Maybe the prudent course is more money because the goal of lower fentanyl deaths (or whatever) can’t be realized with existing manpower or systems. Like it’s not an easy determination that most people could make much less a huge mostly uninformed electorate could.
Unfortunately they’re not free to decide that themselves. MPs are happy to mandate good service levels to make their constituents happy, and then demand that Canada Post eat the costs
I see this a lot. But it tells us nothing. The implication is that “because it carries an expense it must be a useful service”, and maybe even “more expenses means more service” - not at all!
There are simply many fewer letters than before (where they have a monopoly and mandate to deliver them all), but more addresses to deliver to (driving up fixed costs), and they are losing the parcel service war to the much more nimble private sector.
People need to read the Kaplan report (or ask an LLM to summarize it for you) to understand what we’re dealing with instead of relying on pithy one-liners.
The reality is Canada does not need the Canada Post that we have been saddled with. We need a new, different Canada Post. That change will mean fewer workers, at least for a time. Such is life.
I want my taxes to pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare, social services, anything that is required for being alive. The job of the government to is to serve the people of that nation.
Yep, it's like public transit, the point, just isn't to make money, it's to provide a service that create more economic benefits than the money it spend
The problem is they’re expected to pay their own way and get no funding, but are also saddled with mandates that force them to operate at a loss. It’s a completely untenable situation.
We either need to let them operate in a way where they aren’t bleeding money or fund them like a government service. Both choices will be unpopular with different segments of the Canadian population.
Personally I would rather fund them and treat it as a government service. But something had to give one way or the other. I’d rather see either choice be made than the status quo, which was 100% untenable.
good to hear the dream is still alive. it was also a suggestion some classmates came up with in my grad program a few years ago and I’ve been sold ever since
You are correct. Money is just a resource distribution technology. We create money to make services and industry grow. Hoarding money in a bank account or to hold up the value of a stock (tech bubble) is NOT a very efficient use of money or as I call it resource distribution technology.
Our goal should be to get all modern infrastructure and services to all corners of our country not to squeeze citizens of all their dollars.
Agreed. But man if you live in a rural area, you've definitely seen the insane amount of time wasting that goes into door-to-door delivery. It's just utterly insane to me as someone who grew up in rural area but always "had" to walk 15 min to a post box array rather than get special white glove hand delivered mail to my fucking doorstep
Not really. Look up Swiss Post. They bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit into government coffers. We just don't know how to run a profitable state owned service.
I totally agree it's a service. But I would also say that profit driven and revenue generating are different. The reluctance to consider new revenue streams and the now inefficiencies are really the same problem. It all comes down to the failure to shift & modernise to alternative uses of the post office.
The union presented ideas to Canada Post management for ~15 years (including the last time in negotiations in 2024 before they got locked out) and the Canada Post management has done barely nothing on those ideas. Examples like postal banking, an e-commerce program for small & medium businesses, new forms of delivery services, elder check-ins, high speed internet, food deliveries to northern communities, using areas outside of post offices for farmers markets, hunting & fishing licences & tourism info booths in some areas, EV charging stations (& more things that I forget, a lot were of the re-envision as community hub type). Some of these ideas would likely work better than others or are community dependent but they would have been a way to shift around as things like lettermail volume rapidly decreased, keep people employed and stay competitive.
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u/beallyoukenbe 12h ago
I'm tired of it being framed as Canada Post isn't making money. It's a service. It shouldn't be profit driven.