For the life of me, I can't understand why the Conservative government wants to involve itself in the Canada Post lockout. There are far more benefits from not getting mixed up in the dispute between the dying Crown monopoly and its overpaid workers.
Almost no one cares yet that the mail is not being delivered. So there is little to be gained politically from passing back-towork legislation, unless the government is looking to defuse an ugly situation before it becomes ugly (although there was no indication the postal lockout would ever have become ugly).
No doubt there are small businessmen and women (and some large businesses, too) whose invoices and payments have been disrupted. I also know a woman who is impatiently waiting for word from an exclusive pre-school about whether her progeny has been accepted. And our kids are waiting for tickets to an event that may already have occurred by the time the tickets arrive.
There are probably millions of such tiny inconveniences now being foisted on Canadians as a result of the lockout. Yet each time the mail is cut off, there is less sympathy among Canadians for a continuation of our public-monopoly postal service. And there is less need for one, too.
The current lockout will undoubtedly encourage hundreds of thousands of Canadians to sign up (finally) with their banks, credit card companies, oil companies, department stores, utilities and others for electronic bill delivery and payment, and for direct deposit of cheques, too. The business Canada Post loses from the current labour dispute will never come back because a) there are alternatives to the mail -lots of them -and b) the alternatives are superior in terms of speed, cost and efficiency.
Whenever and however the lockout is resolved, there will be even fewer Canadians than there are now using Canada Post. The 17% drop off in firstclass mail volumes in the past five years will be topped by a 30% drop off over the next five.
It's simply no longer necessary for a government or a government-owned entity like Canada Post to have a monopoly over the mail. All over Europe, government postal services have been privatized. The result has generally been faster, more efficient delivery. In Germany, for instance, the privatized mail service brings letters six days a week and has a much better one-and two-day delivery record for first-class mail than Canada Post. Indeed, Deutsche Post DHL has become larger than UPS and FedEx combined.
The longer the current disputes goes on, the more public pressure could have been brought to bear on privatizing here, too.
So just why would the Tories want to bring in back-to-work legislation and perhaps even invoke closure to ram it through Parliament?
The simplest explanation is: Doing so is the path of least resistance.
Sending posties back to work will rile fewer voters than would a contentious debate over privatization, and the Tories already have a fall full of contentious debates planned -getting rid of the long-gun registry, taking away the Wheat Board's monopoly over Prairie grain, adding seats in the House of Commons for Ontario, Alberta and B.C., and ending direct taxpayer subsidies for political parties.
Still, the willingness to end the postal lockout with legislation amounts to choosing bullying over boldness. It is easier to force a settlement and ignore the question of privatization than it is to make the case for getting rid of Canada Post, even though the latter is more in keeping with the Tories' freemarket slant.
Full Article
Source: National Post
Almost no one cares yet that the mail is not being delivered. So there is little to be gained politically from passing back-towork legislation, unless the government is looking to defuse an ugly situation before it becomes ugly (although there was no indication the postal lockout would ever have become ugly).
No doubt there are small businessmen and women (and some large businesses, too) whose invoices and payments have been disrupted. I also know a woman who is impatiently waiting for word from an exclusive pre-school about whether her progeny has been accepted. And our kids are waiting for tickets to an event that may already have occurred by the time the tickets arrive.
There are probably millions of such tiny inconveniences now being foisted on Canadians as a result of the lockout. Yet each time the mail is cut off, there is less sympathy among Canadians for a continuation of our public-monopoly postal service. And there is less need for one, too.
The current lockout will undoubtedly encourage hundreds of thousands of Canadians to sign up (finally) with their banks, credit card companies, oil companies, department stores, utilities and others for electronic bill delivery and payment, and for direct deposit of cheques, too. The business Canada Post loses from the current labour dispute will never come back because a) there are alternatives to the mail -lots of them -and b) the alternatives are superior in terms of speed, cost and efficiency.
Whenever and however the lockout is resolved, there will be even fewer Canadians than there are now using Canada Post. The 17% drop off in firstclass mail volumes in the past five years will be topped by a 30% drop off over the next five.
It's simply no longer necessary for a government or a government-owned entity like Canada Post to have a monopoly over the mail. All over Europe, government postal services have been privatized. The result has generally been faster, more efficient delivery. In Germany, for instance, the privatized mail service brings letters six days a week and has a much better one-and two-day delivery record for first-class mail than Canada Post. Indeed, Deutsche Post DHL has become larger than UPS and FedEx combined.
The longer the current disputes goes on, the more public pressure could have been brought to bear on privatizing here, too.
So just why would the Tories want to bring in back-to-work legislation and perhaps even invoke closure to ram it through Parliament?
The simplest explanation is: Doing so is the path of least resistance.
Sending posties back to work will rile fewer voters than would a contentious debate over privatization, and the Tories already have a fall full of contentious debates planned -getting rid of the long-gun registry, taking away the Wheat Board's monopoly over Prairie grain, adding seats in the House of Commons for Ontario, Alberta and B.C., and ending direct taxpayer subsidies for political parties.
Still, the willingness to end the postal lockout with legislation amounts to choosing bullying over boldness. It is easier to force a settlement and ignore the question of privatization than it is to make the case for getting rid of Canada Post, even though the latter is more in keeping with the Tories' freemarket slant.
Full Article
Source: National Post
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