Canada Post has been lamenting in the newspapers about its accelerating loss of business volume. Being a skeptic by nature and a former postmaster to boot, I see this as an opening gambit in what will be planned service cuts that will affect every present user of postal service and rural users most of all.
I began my long career with the post office when it was a government department. Dedication was the watchword then. The minions of the department, scattered all across Canada, had an unshakeable esprit de corps and the comforting knowledge that the people in the higher levels of management had all begun their careers in the post office, OHMS, which means On His (or Her) Majesty's Service. Being one of the faithful retainers of the Monarch compensated somewhat for incomes and working conditions only marginally better than those endured by the fellow who mucked out the stall at the livery barn.
In those years, being a rural postmaster wasn't just a job; it was a calling. We all understood that the mail must go through. Usually it did. We were all obliging because our patrons (we didn't call them customers) were friends. Every one of us associated the sights and sounds of Christmas with mountains of Christmas cards. Some of us even took time on Christmas Eve to deliver parcels to shut-ins who would otherwise have been without one or more tangible expressions of love on Christmas morning. We always knew who these people were.
That wholesome scene changed a long time ago. After the Post Office Department became Canada Post, conferences became fashionable. I remember voicing the opinion that the volume of letter mail would drop because of improved telephone service and increased use of computers. I believe I said information could be sent electronically, but objects - such as day-old chicks or Stanfield's long johns - couldn't be. Nobody listened. I was too low on the corporate totem pole.
The crown corporation called Canada Post was invented by a Liberal government and is an expression of the economic philosophy called neo-liberalism. The main tenets of this faith are that any business that makes no profit should not survive. It should never be buoyed up by government subsidies because the intrusion of government into the world of business is always harmful because government subsidized businesses are always inefficient. Sometimes this is so and sometimes it isn't. Subsidies are not inherently evil. Subsidies knitted together the system of branch railway lines and post offices that provided a basis for economic growth through the settlement period. Subsides to business which underpin economic activity don't disappear into thin air. They make private businesses more efficient.
I, along with 29 others in Saskatchewan took early retirement. We were at the top of our salary scales and had gone from being loyal employees to becoming excess baggage. We were harried into quitting by people who were instructed to be harriers. Expect more of the same. More salaried employees will be replaced by part-timers. More outlets will close. Hours of service will be restricted. Letter carriers will begin to disappear. Rural Canada will absorb another unnecessary blow. All of this will come to pass because subsidy has become a dirty word.
