Cyrus Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 The Edmonton Journal‘s editorialists, meanwhile, aren’t so sure about the government’s plans for the Senate at all. “With the current arrangement that gives Ontario and Quebec each as many Senate seats as the whole of the West, elections in the long run would surely be bad news for anyone who believes a period of majority Conservative rule is a good idea,” they argue. And they worry newly empowered, provincially elected Senators could very well usurp the legislatures as “the true spokesmen of their provinces.” The Canadian Union of Postal Workers having helpfully warned us of the prospect of a strike in case we’re planning on paying an important bill, the Calgary Herald‘s editorialists offer a “news flash”: “Most people don’t mail bill payments anymore. They pay by phone or bank online, in an instant, and colloquially refer to the product the unionized workers deliver as ‘snail mail.’” Actually, we refer to that product as “garbage,” because that’s what 95% of it (in our case) is. Now, some Canadians would of course be seriously affected by a postal strike — only vastly fewer than, say, 15 years ago. As the Herald says, CUPW has much less bargaining power than it seems to think. “The very notion of a national mail strike is little short of insane,” Jay Bryan writes, entertainingly, in the Gazette. Unreliable and slow at the best of times, Canada Post is, he says, “a constant drag on this country’s productivity even when it’s operating normally.” It’s painfully obvious that we need some kind of privatization or competition to shake the organization out of its torpor — or at least, we’d add, the threat of such upheaval. What say you, new Conservative overlords? Seriously, do people even realize how fast the mail is in, say, the United Kingdom? A first-class letter costs 46p — about 75¢ — and is expected to arrive anywhere in the land the next day. Including Saturday. Yes, Canada is much bigger than Great Britain. But Great Britain’s not bigger than, say, Toronto. National Post cselley@nationalpost.com LMAO the letter arrived in ENGLAND Opinion: We need competition in mail delivery By JAY BRYAN, The Gazette May 31, 2011 Be the first to post a comment Story Photos ( 1 ) In implementing its modernized methods of sorting and delivering mail, part of the corporation’s transformation project, Canada Post has been facing resistance from employees in Winnipeg, the first city to operate under the new “two-bundle” system. In implementing its modernized methods of sorting and delivering mail, part of the corporation’s transformation project, Canada Post has been facing resistance from employees in Winnipeg, the first city to operate under the new “two-bundle” system. Photograph by: Don Healy/Postmedia News, Don Healy/Postmedia News With a postal strike possible as of midnight Thursday, it's high time for our federal government to wake up and reform Canada Post, an organization that's a constant drag on this country's productivity even when it's operating normally. We need competition in mail delivery, a reform that has paid large dividends in countries all over the world. Meanwhile, in Canada, the cost to mail a first-class letter has been shooting up much faster than the rate of inflation, while the quality of service remains as poor as ever. At my home, we're regularly reminded of this as we receive a stream of outdated, mangled magazines and at least a few letters each year that are clearly addressed to people on other streets. The real eye-opener for me came a few years ago when a son had two university applications lost, both sent at high cost by Canada Post's premium courier service. The first, to a university in California, simply never arrived. Only a compassionate admissions officer allowed a replacement to be sent in late. We gained an inkling of what might have gone wrong when a second application, this one to an institution in Boston, showed up at the shop of a watchmaker in the British city of Bristol. Yes, you read correctly: it was delivered not only to the wrong address, but the wrong continent. The watchmaker noticed that the original address label had been covered by a different one, perhaps one that fell off its original package and was replaced carelessly. He was kind enough to forward the document. These are just one family's anecdotes, of course, but it wouldn't be hard to gather more like them. It's bad enough that delivery in this country is slow, but when it's this unreliable, you have to wonder why the supposedly reform-minded Harper government doesn't seem to have any plans for improvement. The current labour wrangle is an excellent example of the kind of trouble we're courting by maintaining the Canada Post monopoly on delivering letters. The very notion of a national mail strike is little short of insane. After all, both Canada Post and its union are living on borrowed time. Email and other forms of digital document delivery are steadily eroding its business. You might assume that managers and workers, both threatened, would try to preserve their jobs by working furiously to deliver the mail faster, cheaper and more reliably. Of course, you would be wrong. That's because government-owned monopolies don't have to care about customers: they're immortal and immune to market pressures. Happily, it's easy to come up with a better idea for mail delivery. Others have done it for us. Countries around the world have been opening mail delivery to competition for decades, with excellent results. One can now find competitive mail delivery services or privatized post offices - sometimes both - in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and New Zealand. A couple of researchers at the Montreal Economic Institute, Vincent Geloso and Youri Chassin, are the latest of many economists to conclude that opening up mail delivery to competition would bring major economic benefits to Canada. This would go far beyond getting your letters to you faster. Even with the decline of snail mail, it remains an important service for businesses, which will be hit badly by a mail strike and can expect continuing productivity losses if Canada Post isn't reformed. An obvious benefit of competition is that Canadians would no longer be able to be held hostage to disputes between postal workers and management. If there were competition, the normal rules of labour negotiations would apply, with both sides acutely aware that a strike would drive customers elsewhere, threatening lost union jobs and perhaps some changes in the management suite. Other normal rules of business behaviour would also begin to be felt. The impulse to hike postal rates would be offset by the knowledge that competitors would take this as an opportunity to undercut Canada Post. Lost or damaged mail would be a reason to abandon Canada Post in favour of some other delivery service. The advantages, in fact, are so obvious that virtually every informed analysis of Canada Post in recent years has recommended competition and/or privatization. This includes recommendations by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the C.D. Howe Research Institute, former Canada Post boss Michael Warren and, most recently, the Montreal Economic Institute. The Institutes's report found that in countries that had introduced competition, and sometimes privatization, productivity improved dramatically, permitting good service with significant cost savings. er? So how about it, Mr. Harp- Haven't Canadians suffered enough? The full MEI report can be found at http://www.iedm.org/files/note0511_en.pdf jbryan@montrealgazette.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Opinion+need+competition+mail+delivery/4865226/story.html#ixzz1NxjHjzgQ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jesseps Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 If they do go on strike, I hope it wont be long. Seeing I lost my credit card and it takes 6-9 business days and my next VISA bill is June 11th. If I don't pay by the end of June, Canada Post will be paying my Visa bill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyrus Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 If they do go on strike, I hope it wont be long. Seeing I lost my credit card and it takes 6-9 business days and my next VISA bill is June 11th. If I don't pay by the end of June, Canada Post will be paying my Visa bill. oh no, they will not be paying your Visa do not get confused, you will get fucked, but The Union is never wrong You might want to call around, your new VISA card may well be on a slow boat to Nigeria or possibly France at the moment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sillystou Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 Je sais pas si ça va être comme ça pour Montréal et la rive-sud, mais j'ai lis dans le journal hier qu'il parlait de seulement distribuer le courrier les lundi, mercredi et vendredi... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.