Canada Post lost $748 million last year, warns of "critical" financial situation

Public services aren't meant to be profitable. They're meant to provide a service that serves the community.

While I agree with the sentiment I don't think being a public service should exclude them from being scrutinized.

The corporation cites declining revenue from delivery of letter mail and parcels, despite an increase in the volume of packages the company is delivering.

Letter mail has been declining since it peaked in 2006. Canada Post delivered less than 2.2 billion letters in 2023.

The cost of delivering mail and parcels is increasing, the company said. Canada Post has struggled to compete post-pandemic with the rising number of new, privately owned delivery companies that use what it calls a "low-cost labour" business model.

I think it was more controversial in 2014, but at a near 2 decade decline of letter mail volume thinking about reducing door to door letter services with community mailboxes seems pretty reasonable thing to at least discuss.

As far as competing with companies that are known for creating a job environment where their "contractors" have to piss in bottles. I don't think is a Canada Post issue.
- That's a fair point. So long as it's addressed from a position of "is the community being served well" and not "this should be run like a business". Canada Post has a difficult (and expensive) mandate: to service all of the country, no matter how remote, and the knee-jerk reaction to such headlines is often to privatise which would change that mandate to "earn as much profit for investors as possible".
  
  I'm living in the UK these days, with private post, and private water companies. Things have literally been enshitified, with raw sewage flowing down the river Thames, so I'm concerned when I see such headlines.
- Scrutinizing our federal services is a Conservative precursor to killing it. Cruelty isn't the point but one can be mistaken.
- I think we need to address the gig economy as a whole. It's not good for anyone other than the companies who are exploiting these workers.
  
  Beyond that, for Canada Post specifically, I don't understand why I need lettermail delivered 5x per week. Cut it back to twice per week, and suddenly one worker can deliver to 2.5x as many houses per week. Or even just give them a day off and "only" double the number of houses served in 4 days.

And what as the RoI on the military?

If the point of something isn't to make money, judging it on how much money it makes is useless.

Bullshit. They cry bankrupt every time contract negotiations come up. They just wasted millions on those fucking useless C250 trucks that are so poorly designed that they can't hold large boxes. They aren't broke, there is no financial crisis, they just don't want to pay the people actually doing the work.

Public services shouldn't be profitable.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In its annual report released late Friday afternoon, the company predicts "larger, unsustainable losses in future years" without major changes to its operating model.

Canada Post has struggled to compete post-pandemic with the rising number of new, privately owned delivery companies that use what it calls a "low-cost labour" business model.

"These competitors grew rapidly, leaning on their low-cost-labour business models that rely on contracted drivers to provide lower prices, plus greater convenience with evening and weekend service," the report said.

Earlier this year, the company sold off its IT and logistics departments as part of a transformation plan to save the beleaguered national mail service.

"Canada Post is committed to leading that change, building on the improvements we've made across the organization over the last few years," the company's president Doug Ettinger said in a news release.

CUPW and Canada Post are currently at the bargaining table to discuss the next collective agreement for workers, who are looking for cost of living increases.

The original article contains 425 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Listen, I'm all for public services and all that. I'm just curious to know why we are subsidizing post when emails exist.

Because post is more than just letters, it's parcels too. Canada Post is infrastructure that ties the whole country together, not just the denser, more profitable cities. Imagine if there were only for-profit postal services in the country. What would it cost to send a parcel to 100 Mile House, or Baker Lake, or whole swathes of the country that only speak French? Think of all the things that go out by post, like Carbon tax rebate cheques and voting information. It'd introduce a massive disparity in service and access to basic services, and so we socialise that cost across the country.

There are always ways to improve of course, but you asked specifically about why the system was socialised.
- Interesting. Never used post services before to send stuff, which is why I asked. Makes sense now.
Support cheques (direct deposit is optional for practically everything).

Sending official, original documents (anything related to passport applications).

Physical copies where required by contract (things like Strata AGM packages, some loan/investment documents).

The days of regularly sending your mom a handwritten letter are surely gone, but there’s still enough need for a postal service to exist.

I think where they really fucked up was with the junk mail. They got drunk off making money delivering pounds of paper advertising every day, and as people grew to hate it and opted out, and as businesses saw it wasn’t worth it, all of a sudden the junk mail side hustle no longer subsidized the cheap postal fees.
You're not "subsidizing post". Canada Post is a completely separate entity that generates it's own revenue. They don't receive any money from the government.