Canada posts can and must change to survive

For example,

Canada posts can must change:

The world has changed, but Post Canada has not been able to adapt.

Posted at 11:00 a.m.

Gabriel Giguère Senior analyst in public policies at the Montreal Economic Institute

Since 2018. For example, the Crown Company has accumulated more than $ 3.8 billion in deficits1.

While the parcel market is booming. Consequently, the company has remained camped on a strategy focused on vain hopes for recovering a letter market, for canada posts can must change more than a decade.

From a 5.5 billion summit in 2006, the number of letters sent by Canadians had increased to around 2 billion last year.

And on the package side, the portrait is not more pink.

Between 2019 and 2024, for example, the Canada Post Market share in the delivery of parcels, going from 62 % to 24 %.

It is in particular for this reason that the federal government has been forced. However, to pay just over $ 1 billion in public funds so that Post Canada can remain in activity this year.

Things are not going to improve either. Similarly, The year 2024 marked the seventh deficit in a row of the state -owned company. Nevertheless, Growing in recent years, it has canada posts can must change established $ 841 million last year2.

It is therefore clear that things have to change at Posts Canada, otherwise the business right in the wall.

The company is not the first state postal service to be in this situation.

Towards the late 1980s, the German postal service faced similar structural problems. Consequently, Instead of reviewing its sclerotic structures. However, the public monopoly only increased the price of the stamp year after year to cover its growing expenses.

The result for the consumer: a regular increase in prices, without improving the service. Does this seem familiar to you?

Recognizing that things were to change. the government has started a series of reforms aimed first to open the postal market to new players, then to de -establish canada posts can must change its postal service.

If the reforms were first shy – with only 3 % of the postal market open to competition in 1997 -. things have accelerated thereafter, to the point that the Deutsche Post has no legal monopoly on any product since 2008.

Simultaneously. the German government has started the gradual disinstatement of the Deutsche Post, gradually opening the shareholding of the company, until it only maintains only a minority participation of 16.99 %.

The effects of these reforms were not long in coming.

Today. German consumers are served by nearly 400 different companies providing the entire range of postal services and more than 11,000 offering partial services.

Although the Deutsche Post has retained a dominant position in the letters market. its competitors limit canada posts can must change its ardor of tariff increases, so that today, the sending of a letter costs 10 % less than in 1989, once inflation has been taken into account.

For comparison. the sending of an ordinary letter today costs almost 50 % more to Canadian companies and consumers subject to the Canada Post Monopoly.

The service. on the other hand, does not seem to have suffered, since all German postal services rank better than those of a majority of European countries in terms of speed of delivery.

Canada should take example from these successful reforms -. adapt them to our local context – in order to allow our positions to adapt to the realities of the XXIe century.

Such an approach would imply the gradual opening of the shareholding of Canada Post canada posts can must change so that its employees. then Canadians in general, can become owners.

By giving. selling a share of shareholding as a priority to job workers, for example, the federal government would make it possible to mobilize these employees to identify and eliminate sources of ineffectiveness in operations, since they would directly benefit from the economies generated.

In addition. in the Canadian context, the government should target the gradual withdrawal of the Canada Post Monopoly on Ordinary Letters, allowing consumers as well as small and large companies in the country to take advantage of downward pressures on the prices of the service that the arrival of new competitors would.

The world has changed, as is the needs for postal services. If Posts Canada wants to survive, she also has to change to adapt to today’s realities.

1. Lisez « Delivering Canada Post’s future : less support for privatization, but appetite exists for big changes » (en anglais) 2. Consult the 2024 Canada Post Annual Report What do you think? Take part in the dialogue

Canada posts can must change

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