Canada Post in fight for survival: prof

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This article was published 13/12/2024 (344 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada Post may have no option but to drastically change its service delivery model after its labour dispute is settled, a University of Manitoba professor argues.

Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management, said fewer mail deliveries per week, layoffs and a switch to community mailboxes may be in the cards so the Crown corporation can save costs while maintaining the public service. Otherwise, it risks privatization.

“There’s a fundamental change that’s needed in this whole arrangement, as far as I can see,” Prentice said Friday. “It’s technology-driven, the demand for mail delivery is certainly not what it used to be.”

Canada Post, which has 55,000 employees and high labour costs, will have to adapt to changing consumer habits and remain competitive with private couriers.

Daily mail deliveries could be cut down to once or twice per week and the conversion of door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes, which was suspended in 2015 after the Trudeau Liberal government was elected, could be resumed to save the corporation money, Prentice said.

Canada Post’s relevancy has been debated during a month-long strike. However, privatizing the post office, as Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre has promised, would affect rural communities that rely on it and can’t access third-party parcel services.

“It’s an obligation on the part of the government to serve all parts of the country,” he said.

“We all have high-speed internet here in the city, but you don’t even necessarily have that out in the country so there’s certainly more need in the countryside.”

Prentice said he expects the Liberals won’t deal with the problems at Canada Post before next year’s election.

“The union has to make the company more competitive. They can’t just simply demand that they carry on forever,” he said. “There is a role for government to subsidize some essential services. So the question comes down to how much of the post office is essential?”

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

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Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.