Friday December 13, 2024

Canada Post’s holiday strike highlights the absurdity of outdated labor tactics in a world where private alternatives thrive, pushing Canadians to move on permanently from a once-vital service.

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 13, 2024

A Postal Strike Christmas Carol: How Canada Post Might Haunt Its Own Future

November 21, 2018

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – unless you’re waiting for Canada Post to deliver that holiday card or package. Yes, dear reader, the postal workers’ strike has landed like a lump of coal in the stockings of Canadians coast to coast. In an ironic twist, the very season when the Crown corporation traditionally pulls out of its year-long funk to play Santa is now a glaring reminder of its dwindling relevance in a world dominated by private couriers and digital messages.

Canada Post, the once-mighty reindeer of holiday delivery, is facing an existential crisis. In the past, when postal workers struck, the whole country felt the pinch. The 1981 strike? National chaos. The 1997 lockout? A crisis requiring swift political intervention. Today? It seems the Christmas spirit isn’t the only thing that’s gone digital—so has the way Canadians send and receive love, greetings, and gifts.

News: No hope for the holidays: Zero chance Canada Post can deliver cards and packages before Christmas, experts say

December 12, 2013

Let’s take a sleigh ride down memory lane. In 2006, Canada Post delivered 5.5 billion letters annually. Today, it’s barely scraping by at 2.2 billion. For decades, the sound of a letter hitting the floor was a daily joy; now, it’s a relic of simpler times, replaced by the ping of an email notification or the cheerful buzz of a courier app.

Parcel delivery was supposed to save the sleigh. And for a while, it did. But then came Amazon, FedEx, UPS, and a thousand gig workers in unmarked vans delivering packages at all hours. Even Canada Post’s jump to weekend delivery couldn’t keep up. Now, it has a mere 30% slice of the parcel pie, down from two-thirds before the pandemic. As Andrew Coyne aptly pointed out, the strike only hastens the exodus: once customers discover that private couriers work faster and more efficiently, why would they ever come back?

Opinion: Suppose they gave a postal strike and nobody noticed

April 25, 2015

Today, Canadians are managing the strike with a shrug and a Plan B. The outcry isn’t about losing the mail—it’s about the inconvenience of finding alternatives. It’s hard to summon sympathy for postal workers striking at Christmas, a time of goodwill and frantic shipping. Their demands for higher wages and benefits feel like asking Santa for a new sleigh in a world where everyone else has upgraded to drones.

Reader feedback to Coyne’s piece reflects this shift in sentiment. “They’re striking themselves out of a job,” one person quipped. Another commented, “If this goes on, maybe we’ll finally privatize the thing.” Harsh words, but reflective of a growing reality: Canada Post has become more a seasonal tradition than a year-round necessity, like eggnog or fruitcake.

If the strike proves anything, it’s that Canadians have moved on. Small businesses, once reliant on postal service, are now cozying up to private couriers. Families, once reliant on snail mail, have gone digital. Even junk mail enthusiasts—yes, they exist—are adjusting. And as for holiday cards? Who needs stamps when you’ve got e-cards and emojis?

Perhaps Canada Post’s strike is its last hurrah. If customers don’t come back, and deficits continue to balloon (a $748-million loss last year, remember?), even the statutory monopoly on first-class mail won’t save it. The future might just be a Canada Post museum exhibit: “Here lies the Crown corporation that once delivered Christmas.”

Canada Post’s labor tactics feel like Ebenezer Scrooge’s attempts to save a dying business by turning up the heat on Bob Cratchit. But just as Scrooge learned, holding onto old ways in a changing world is a recipe for obsolescence. Canadians want their deliveries fast, reliable, and reasonably priced. And if Canada Post can’t deliver, someone else will.

This Christmas, as we sip our cocoa and track packages online, let’s remember the lessons of the season. Adaptation, goodwill, and maybe, just maybe, learning to let go of the past. Canada Post, we wish you a Merry Christmas—but it might be time to pack up the sleigh. After all, the world is moving on, with or without you.

There’s a kind of unwritten rule in Canada: if you land a public sector job, you’ve scored yourself a lifeboat in a sea of private-sector uncertainty. Governments, after all, are the safety net, and the political stakes in labour disputes mean they’ll often bend over backwards to keep things smooth. Usually, when strikes heat up, a neat little trick called arbitration gets wheeled out to settle the squabble. But when it comes to Canada Post, that formula falls apart.

Why? Because it’s not just about labour versus management—it’s about an entire business model that feels like a relic of the rotary phone era. The union and Canada Post are locked in a 1970s-style labour standoff, oblivious to the fact that the world has zipped ahead. This isn’t the age when a postal strike meant a national crisis. It’s 2024, and most Canadians have a better relationship with their email inbox than with their mailbox.

Here’s the stark reality: while postal workers strike, the private sector fills the void. Couriers like UPS, FedEx, and Amazon don’t just wait in the wings—they swoop in and scoop up business. Customers, once diverted, rarely return. It’s a lot like the newspaper industry of yesteryear. Remember when the morning paper was an irreplaceable ritual? Now, if newsrooms don’t adapt, readers simply scroll elsewhere. Canada Post faces a similar choice: innovate and evolve, or become the next “Remember when?” story.

The irony is rich: a left-leaning government in power can’t even be accused of union bashing, yet the Crown corporation is still fumbling. Political leaders can’t keep using duct tape solutions like arbitration if the core business model is on life support. Canada Post is hemorrhaging money, running six consecutive years of losses, while clinging to the outdated assumption that it’s an essential service.

The hard truth is, Canadians are voting with their feet—and their wallets. And this holiday season, as cards and packages sit undelivered, many are learning they can live without Canada Post. As the saying goes: adapt, or perish. The postal workers striking now might be remembered as the ones who stamped the final nail into their own mailbox.

As Canada Post workers strike during the holiday season, Canadians are reminded of the irrelevance of the Crown corporation in an age dominated by digital communication and private couriers. Once the backbone of Canada’s economy during peak seasons like Christmas, Canada Post’s monopoly on letter mail and declining market share in parcel delivery have turned it into a costly relic. The strike, meant to push for better worker conditions, is ironically accelerating customer migration to nimbler competitors. By choosing the worst possible time to disrupt service, postal workers may have unwittingly hastened the demise of their own industry, leaving Canada Post a ghost of Christmas past.

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