Before the world staggered into the Great Depression, I was an infant, aware of little beyond my own safe cocoon. Two things I did know. A steam whistle wailing in the night announced the arrival of the 11 o'clock passenger train. I also knew that when my father went out into the darkness he would meet the train. He was a postmaster. He hauled mail to and from those trains in a handcart.
Early in the Dirty Thirties the passenger trains disappeared, to be replaced by a twice-weekly mixed train which, theoretically, ran during daylight hours. The trains were supplemented by a once-a-week stage which, theoretically, also ran during daylight hours. My father's handcart disappeared. I know not where. The local drayman hauled the mail to and from the trains and was also the operator of the stage service. The conditions of the drayman's employment were established by some post office department person with the soul of an unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge.
My father's relationship with his employers wasn't much better, but he rarely complained. In those years, steady jobs of any kind were rare. Mail service was vitally important to rural Canada. Sometimes, the glut of people in the small lobby of the post office spilled out onto the creaky wooden sidewalk. The post office department turned over a profit every year.
Years later, I became a postmaster, too. By that time, the post office department was being subsidized from federal tax revenues. Operating costs were higher because workers in the system were being treated more generously. Scrooge-type rules were disappearing, but I do remember being required to work on Christmas Day and other public holidays. What had not changed was the dedication that had been the hallmark of the service since pioneer times.
Desperate efforts were always made to prevent interruptions in service. I remember stage drivers shovelling their way through packed snowdrifts on unplowed roads. I remember washouts on the rail line when Her Majesty's Mail was given priority over everything else which was carried on the section crew's speeder and by rowboat. I remember beginning to sort delayed mail at 3 a.m. Such dedication would be hard to find today.
In spite of improving technology, service by Canada Post has not made great strides in improving accessibility, speed or rates. There has been a pruning of offices, staff and of hours of service. Post offices don't process mail or provide counter service on Saturdays. (The same Draconian cutbacks are in prospect in the United States.) When Canada Post purchased a courier service, it came under fire, under the rules of NAFTA, from a major courier in the United States.
Canada's chief NAFTA negotiator was Simon Reisman, a man well-practiced in the artful bouts of bureaucracy and, as former head of the Treasury Board, the man who had been in virtual control of the post office department. Reisman was thought of (in Canada) as a miracle worker who could negotiate the spots off an angry leopard. He is shown in old TV clips as a tough, pugilistic, pipe-smoking deal-maker who could tie a band of Yankees in knots without ever putting his pipe down. It was a David and Goliath scenario, but the Canadian David was slinging marshmallows instead of rocks. The image was more impressive than the results of the negotiations.
After the NAFTA negotiations were complete, there were questions to be asked. They can still be asked today. Why could United Parcel Services of the USA contemplate suing Canada Post but not the United States Postal Service? Why could a chemical company from south of the border successfully sue the Canadian government for banning a fuel additive that was also banned in the United States? Why could an American company challenge the legality of Canadians banning the same agricultural chemicals that were banned in the United States? Why was there no clear-cut section of the treaty that denied that fresh water from Canada would ever be sent south to sprinkle the golf courses of our gun-toting neighbours?
Other trade deals have been, and are being negotiated. Canada is now party to the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is being hammered out with the European Union. It contains terms that restrict the right of Canadian governments, large and small, to find Canadian solutions for Canadian problems. It offers no protection against Canadian fresh water being exported as a commodity.
The Reisman Era is over. There is no glare of publicity. Strange doings proceed on secret stages in an atmosphere of misty silence. Who is negotiating what? And why?
