PM Carney so incensed me over his unintelligent, has-been, conservative handling over Canada Post, that I wrote my MP. My MP wrote back today with the longest email I’ve ever received from their office. Clearly, Carney has cracked the whip and told his minions, uh, I mean, MPs how to represent him to their constituents. Geeze, I thought MPs represent us to him and his government.
Our government recognizes that Canada Post operates as a public good, and that it is an essential service to rural, remote and Indigenous communities. These measures will put Canada Post on the path to financial viability, allowing us to ensure the continuity of services, especially in rural, remote and indigenous communities where it matters most”
(They forgot the period. It happens when copying and pasting.)
Financial viability isn’t what serves rural, remote, and Indigenous communities — it’s service that does. Canada Post is a service provided by taxpayers for all Canadians. But let’s say, it matters if Canada Post, like the military, pays for itself and even makes money for the government…oh wait, the military doesn’t. But health care does, right? Oh wait, it doesn’t and isn’t expected to. That’s why the Federal government keeps turning a blind eye to Premier Ford, and Premiers before him, cutting health care services.
Anyway, I’m getting a little too venty. Let’s get to their arguments about how cutting service serves people better.
“…key measures to stabilize its finances so our postal service can remain sustainable and continue serving Canadians for generations to come”
What are these key measures?
Updating letter mail delivery standards with flexible delivery schedules: With the average household receiving only two letters per week, daily delivery is no longer necessary in every case. Introducing flexibilities in delivery frequency and scheduling will save costs and improve operational efficiency without reducing service quality for Canadians. Delivery standards will be modernized to reflect current volumes, improve efficiency, and better use ground transportation. This ensures faster, more predictable service while keeping costs under control.”
Apparently, Carney and his governing seals are unaware that Canada Post letter carriers walk past houses and apartment mailboxes and community boxes that have no mail in their delivery bags. They’re pretty flexible that way. They only walk up paths to front doors to deliver mail. They actually know not to walk to the front doors of houses that have no mail to be delivered to. They’re intelligently flexible that way.
So since anyone with a thinking brain knows flexibility is inherent in the system, what does Carney mean by “flexible delivery schedules”? It sounds like less than daily. Every few days or weekly, perhaps. How will that work, though?
Since Canada Post doesn’t run the companies that send mail, it can’t tell them when to post letters, bills, statements, and essential documents to fit in with weekly or every few days or whatever “flexible” means. Yet these letters must arrive within a day or two of being mailed. How will that work with weekly or every few days?
Also, Canada Post doesn’t control Canadians’ activities. It can’t tell them when to apply for a passport or shop or whatever generates activity that results in mail being sent to them. They expect generated mail to arrive in a timely manner. How will weekly or less or some arbitrary, steadily diminishing “efficient schedule” maintain timely service?
Now, if Carney doesn’t want Canada Post to deliver mail, this “key measure” will go a long way to ensuring that. After all, banks, utility companies, credit card companies, government departments, etc. want mail to get to their recipients in a timely manner. With Carney insisting Canada Post only deliver sporadically, it’s impossible to maintain service quality, and these companies will have to find more expensive alternatives, increased costs with worse service that Canadians will bear.
He aims to divide the country between those who can access non-Canada Post ways to get their essential documents, bills, statements — from those who can’t.
I’m not sure how many know that courier companies and Amazon use Canada Post to deliver their packages to rural, remote, PO Boxes, and Indigenous communities.
I live in a rural town in Canada and FedEx called me to say they had my package but were unable to deliver it as they only go as far as their depot, then Canada Post takes it from there. So people are paying FedEx prices to get Canada Post delivery in rural Canada? Are you kidding me?— Allig8r (@allig8r.bsky.social) October 10, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Bluesky is spreading this information to apprise Canadians how essential Canada Post is to delivering parcels.
BINGO Also the North, and this includes every single business, not just homes in rural areas. And these American multinational courier services do not pay Canada Post enough for delivering for them. So Canada Post aka taxpayers, subsidized private American firms. #cdnpoli
[image or embed]— Aurelia Cotta The Original (@originalaurelia.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 4:11 PM
If anyone believes this is about efficiency and maintaining service…
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art… This is straight out of Harper’s playbook in 2013. He announced end door-to-door delivery (making Canada the only G7 country without door to door delivery) after strikes/lockouts/disputes with the union during negos from June 2011 to Dec 2012. short 🧵
[image or embed]— Armine Yalnizyan (@armineyalnizyan.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Community Mailboxes Lessen Service and Accessibility
My MP went on to the next key measure:
Expanding community mailbox usage by ending the moratorium: 77% of Canadians already use community, apartment, or rural mailboxes. We are ending the moratorium so that remaining households will gradually transition to community mailboxes, providing a reliable alternative while allowing Canada Post to focus resources on areas with higher demand. Programs and infrastructure will support convenience, including parcel lockers, flexible retail services, and tracking tools.”
Glad my MP didn’t bother speaking to Toronto’s other elected representatives. Where exactly will they shoehorn these community mailboxes in a densely built city like Toronto?
Councillor Josh Matlow, who represents a midtown ward, wrote on Bluesky:
“The federal government has announced its intention to replace door-to-door Canada Post delivery with Community Mailboxes. I’m bringing a motion to city council next week to address this. Currently, approximately 75% of Canadians receive their mail through these boxes. However they have been placed in very few dense, urban areas across the country.
This is not the first time that Community Mailboxes in Toronto have been considered. In 2014, the federal government announced their intention to eliminate home delivery. After considerable pushback from residents and municipalities, the government reconsidered and cancelled the plan in 2018.
Implementing these new boxes poses a lot of potential issues. The Toronto Star reported that between 2,500 and 11,000 boxes will be needed to replace home delivery. Further complicating matters is that Canada Post requires the boxes to be on concrete slabs & at least 9 metres from an intersection. It will be particularly challenging to even find enough possible locations in dense, older parts of the city.”
If it was so difficult 7 years ago to find space in Toronto, why does Carney believe that the city will suddenly find space after being the number one North American construction boom city?
Disabled Rely on Door-to-Door Delivery
My neighbour has Parkinson’s & would have a hard time getting to one of these boxes unless they were right at the corner. And not even then during winter.— Lioness (@lionesss.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 8:02 PM
That’s another issue. Because of the COVID pandemic, Canada’s disability rate has risen. Before the pandemic, it was higher than the global average, but now it’s trended up towards the one-third mark. The sudden popularity of delivery services for almost everything has helped the disability population gain some independence despite Canada’s dreadful inaccessible infrastructure.
I personally would not always be able to pick up my own mail. For various accessibility reasons, I switched back from virtual bills to paper bills. How would I remember and physically be able to get these essential letters in time to pay them without incurring interest charges?
Since accessibility is a slogan, is it any wonder that Carney and my MP don’t care that people won’t be able to access their mail strictly on the basis of disability? I wonder how many forced to use community mailboxes years ago rely on neighbours and family to fetch their mail now? Should a national service that binds the nation humiliate people with disabilities in this way?
Oh right, Carney’s nation building is a slogan. He doesn’t seem to understand that regional projects such as mining operations aren’t nation building activities. The Last Spike was nation building: a railway from coast to coast. Building an electrified high speed rail line would be the modern equivalent. Binding the country together by strengthening Canada Post as it delivers mail and brings postal banking to every urban and remote spot from coast to coast to coast, is.
The last “key measure” my MP listed:
Adapting the post office network to today’s communities: By lifting the moratorium on rural post offices, Canada Post will update its 1994 rural definition to reflect today’s communities and will submit a plan to ensure all communities continue to be served, particularly underserved areas, while maintaining its universal service obligation. The network will be adapted to maintain service in rural, Northern, and underserved areas while improving efficiency and ensuring resources are directed where they are most needed.”
To an urbanite like me, I have no idea what this means. But given the thrust of the other key measures was to gaslight the reader into thinking that cutting delivery schedules was maintaining service, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is government-speak for cutting rural post offices so that people have even less access to mail, creating a new divide in Canada — between people with good internet access (rural Canadians don’t have that) and where couriers deliver to (see above) versus those without.
Whenever you’re told Canada Post is “broke,” you should also remember that it owns 91% of Purolator (c.$2.5 billion/year). The plan is to transfer that most-profitable part of Canada Post into private hands and euthanize the parts that are less profitable (but still vital). 10/— Michael Nabert (@sustainablesong.bsky.social) October 15, 2025 at 8:49 PM
What key measure could Carney and his minions enact to build Canada, bind rural and remote and Indigenous and Northern and urban Canadians, and expand services?
Postal Banking
In 2013, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives wrote on a report on postal banking: “This report finds that the traditional financial banking sector is not meeting the needs of all Canadians, and that the reintroduction of postal banking in Canada would offer access to financial services not now available to many Canadians. The study examines the wide range of models of postal banking in many countries, and looks at the reasons why postal banking should exist in Canada, how it could work, and some of the possible options.”
Canada Post is experienced in handling securely millions of financial service transactions each year including domestic and international remittances, money orders, prepaid reloadable cards and e-vouchers. It set up a MyMoney account by partnering with a private FinTech firm Koho. But it could go beyond that.
Beyond Letters and Postal Banking: Making Canada Post A Nation Building Service for All Canadians
Unions have their uses; CUPW not only protects its workers from the race to the bottom, which is really what “efficiency” means — lower wages and less service in order to pad pockets of a few. Unions also analyse the service to truly improve it. They suggest:
- accept identity card applications, provide identity authentication services, register voters, certify documents, issue permits, etc.
- provide government services
- provide full banking services — like France and many other countries do — to the population not currently served by our banks, like those rural and remote communities where banks have closed their branches — you know, those communities Carney and his MPs claim to care about improving service to
- rent display space to artists and producers for showcasing their specialty goods fixed lengths of time. Showcase “Canadiana”. Or help on-line sales of products through a website portal like the Swiss post office.
- use its infrastructure to provide high-speed internet in rural and remote areas that do not have access to this service. Many post offices in Europe, such as the UK, Italy and France, already offer internet and cell service.
- Canada Post could provide last mile delivery for the entire sector — for lower prices and be good for the environment because it would reduce our use of fossil fuels, and cut pollution and traffic congestion
- Canada Post could partner with large grocery stores to offer home delivery across the country like the Swiss and Danish post offices.
- Provide electric vehicle charging stations; support Ontario’s automotive sector by replacing all postal vans and vehicles with electric — which would reverse some of the closures announced after Premier Ford gave automotive companies massive subsidies for these fleet vehicles. I’ve noticed a huge difference in noise and air pollution since FedEx and Purolator went EV and bike courier. We’re in a climate crisis. The piper has arrived. The costs for stopping climate change can no longer be punted down the generations. We are it.
Get rid of community mailboxes and restore home delivery. I know, that one is shocking. But door-to-door is greener, relying on leg power instead of combustion engine power, and puts people with disabilities on an equal footing with the healthy.
Since the 1980s, the goal has switched from providing services to the many towards making money for the few while impoverishing everyone else. Money not service is the goal.
Canadians continue to rely on it today, making it a vital public institution.”
How can my MP and Carney call Canada Post vital in one breath while behaving as if its sole purpose is to make money?
Isn’t it time for that to change? After all, humans working together to build a strong economy and fight global warming is one that can withstand economic war.
