Canada Post wants the federal government to consider changing the legislation that requires it to deliver letter mail daily— a mandate the Crown corporation says no longer reflects modern realities and is causing it to lose money.
“If you have a community mailbox, a lot of people check it once or twice a week,” said Jon Hamilton, vice-president of communications at Canada Post.
“We need to work with government to ensure the regulatory framework aligns with today’s needs.”
The postal charter, which dictates how frequently Canada Post delivers mail, hasn’t undergone any significant changes since it was created in 2009, Hamilton said.
If you don’t want unsolicited commercial mail, you can always contact your local post office and request to be added to the no flyers list. Just because you don’t like flyers doesn’t mean that mail delivery isn’t important when it matters.
I’m not arguing for or against daily delivery, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have our mail service tied to a profit motive. If we, as a society, decided on once weekly mail I don’t think it’d impact most Canadians… but we should make that decision independent of considerations around profitability.
Edit: on re-reading my comment I definitely agree I could have been more clear.
At first you were complaining that you were paying money for a service, and now you’re complaining that you’d rather pay money for a service. If it’s a government service, you’ll have politicians trying to defund it just like they are with health care, or sell it off like Ontario did with Hydro One. If it’s a government regulated private service, it doesn’t have to deal with that, but it needs a way to fund itself. Pick your poison…
Public service along with us working to address neoliberal fud that is perpetually underfunding our critical services. Ask someone if they want to pay higher taxes - they’ll say no… ask someone if they want better services - they’ll say yes. Especially on the topic of healthcare and housing affordability this issue is really coming to a head and, as far as my conversations have gone, most Canadians don’t mind paying more income for more social safety nets and services.
