Canada Post letter carrier Debbie Gibson puts mail in new Canada Post super boxs' in Calgary, Alberta, October 20, 2014.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
Canada Post may well be the most poked, prodded and analyzed federal entity of all time.
Last week, Ottawa announced yet-another review of the postal service – the third such effort in the past 10 years. Actually, this one is more of a review of the last review.
Canada Post abruptly halted its controversial phase-out of home mail delivery last October, and vowed to work with the new Liberal government to explore "a path forward."
The government is going back to the drawing board once again, and virtually everything is on the table – everything, that is, except privatization and anything that undermines the post office's mission to be financially self-sufficient, according to Public Services and Procurement Minister Judy Foote.
Ms. Foote says the review will come up with "viable options for the future of Canada Post" by April, 2017, at the latest. The objective: finding out what Canadians really want.
This all comes less than three years after Canada Post began a major restructuring aimed at ensuring its financial viability amid a chronic decline in its main business of delivering letters. The five-year effort, which also included a steep stamp price hike and franchising postal outlets, was to have saved up to $900-million a year.
But the centrepiece of the plan was the end of mail delivery to 5.1 million Canadian homes and businesses, largely in and around urban areas. These addresses would be shifted to communal mail boxes, saving as much as $500-million a year. That's more than half the targeted savings that the post office has long insisted are essential to prevent it becoming a ward of the state.
The job had barely gotten started. Roughly 830,000 addresses had been converted when the moratorium was imposed in October, generating annual savings of $80-million, according Canada Post's most recent quarterly report.
Ms. Foote hinted at a few options that may be on the table in the review, including restoring delivery to some or all of those homes, but reducing mail frequency for everyone to two or three times a week.
She also floated the idea of postal banking, a long-held dream of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
The problem with these options is that they've already been studied to death – by Canada Post and outside groups. Most options have drawbacks, including the likelihood they won't generate sufficient revenues or savings. For example, utilities and other big mailers would stop using letters if five-day-a-week delivery was ended.
Canada Post has an existential problem. Letter volume is down by a third in the past decade, while the number of addresses continues to expand. Its parcel business is growing, but not nearly fast enough to make up for its declining flagship mail business – half of which could vanish over the next 10 years as individuals and businesses find faster and cheaper ways to communicate.
The problem goes much deeper than just dwindling mail volume. Rising pension costs are choking the longer-term financial viability of Canada Post. The Crown corporation has more retirees (70,000) than employees (64,000), and a quarter of those are slated to retire within five years.
Like many Canadians, I'm ambivalent about home delivery. I'm fortunate to still have it, but it's hardly the essential service it once was. It's become a delivery vehicle for bills I can get online and advertising I don't want.
Many older Canadians – and businesses – can't imagine life without home delivery. But more than 40 per cent of addresses served by Canada Post, mainly in newer suburbs and rural areas, don't get door-to-door delivery. Millions more apartment dwellers typically collect their mail in the lobby or mail room. And a generation of younger Canadians barely know what a postage stamp is.
Ms. Foote may be sincere when she says she wants to hear what Canadians want from their postal service.
But she may be asking the wrong question.
The Liberals will likely find – as the Conservatives did – that the list of viable options is rather short, unless they're willing to privatize parts of the business (Purolator, for example), or relieve the post office of its mandate to provide universal service without subsidies.
The more important question is what kind of postal service Canadians are willing to pay for?
If Canadians are honest, restoring home delivery may not be at the top of the list.