View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: Should Canada Post reverse its decision to discontinue home mail delivery?
Necessary
So there is a lot of rhetoric and bravado being bandied about of late regarding Canada Post’s decision to eliminate home deliveries.
Such corporate decisions are never viewed very positively by the world at large since it means people we know may be out of their jobs. That is never an easy prospect to deal with for anyone.
But home mail delivery, if you look beyond those carrying the mail, is a rather strange thing in this era.
To start with, even in a small city such as Yorkton the service is far from universal. Depending on where you live the mail might be carried to your door, or it might not be.
That disparity alone brings into question why home delivery exists at all.
Next is the waning importance of the service.
Government cheques, those for what in my younger days was family allowance, and pensions, are almost all directly deposited.
Letters from family, friends, and even business, are almost the exclusive realm of electronic mail these days.
Large parcels don’t come to the door either, and Canada Post is far from the lone carrier of parcels anyway.
And then there are the financial considerations of Canada Post. The corporation is not making money; quite the contrary actually.
So it was to trim costs, since a lot of its traditional business is gone; the aforementioned cheque deposits and email as examples.
It is not a great situation for the mail carriers, but as taxpayers we should want a fiscally responsible Canada Post, and that will mean changes, which will not be palatable for all. This is one such case.
- Calvin Daniels
Meh
To be honest, I am finding it very difficult to care about the issue of Canada Post ending home mail delivery.
Of course, it has been at least 13 years since I had home delivery. That was in Austin, Texas, where it was delivered twice a day during the week and on Saturday.
And the world has changed. Almost everything we get is junk mail anyway. We get our bills electronically. I can pay them on my smart phone. My parents sent me an e-Christmas card this year, which suits me just fine.
What does kind of bug me is the vitriol surrounding the fight between the post office and the union. Both campaigns seem exaggerated and partisan rather than informative and solution-oriented.
I don’t trust either entity’s numbers and have little desire to try to find out the truth.
I do feel sorry for the people it may actually affect, those with mobility issues primarily, but I suspect this is an over-stated problem.
It is also kind of disappointing that Canada Post did not put more effort into diversifying the business model rather than just slashing services and raising prices.
The union, of course, is obligated to fight for jobs, but if it is true the employer is taking care of the reduction in jobs by attrition, I can’t see a really big problem with it.
The bottom line is there are some Crown corporations I think are very important to the nation; Canada Post is not one of them.
-Thom Barker
Not a fan
I am of the belief that home mail delivery should not be removed in 2015.
In my mind it’s really just a way for the government to cut costs. Get rid of a few hundred employees (they say they won’t, but they will), put up mail boxes at the end of the street and make people go get their own mail.
Sure, that’s easy to do for the able-bodied people.
But what about little old Mrs. Kadarchuk, who takes 10 minutes just to get from her couch to her kitchen? The government now expects her to go and pick up her own mail. Sure in the summer it might be nice, but we’ll have a Kadarchuk-cicle in winter!
As you can probably tell, I’m not a fan of the decision. The system wasn’t broken, so why try to fix it?
For decades and decades the mailman brought the mail right to your house. That’s what he (or she) did. On a day in which you were in a good mood you could open the door and chat with the mailman.
I feel like my grandpa right now, “I don’t like change!” but really, in this case change is not for the better.
Remember the postman’s pledge: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed round.”
Now it will be: “Mail, do it yourself.”
Not quite the same ring.
-Randy Brenzen
