Canada Post can’t play mega-corporation
Lily Ryan
Canada Post’s service received more attention than any other issue this past year. Indeed, folks talk more about the mail service than municipal politics, the near-surface nuclear waste facility, and even the ever-popular topic of feral cats.
For a newspaper, the postal service is part of the very foundation. Imagine the impact that a strike has on newspaper publishers during a municipal election campaign! This strike comes a few years after Canada’s love affair with Facebook and Instagram began. Just a year ago, Canada Post decided to ban all newspapers containing flyers, effectively eliminating the coupon and flyer business that traditionally helped fund newspaper operations. Talk about unfair competition!
Yet, many callers to the newspaper insist that Canada Post is a public service. The notion that government services should be run like a business has vanished, just like the idea that Facebook would willingly pay taxes to Canada on all the Canadian ads they booked. Canadian money has gone south, drained from newspapers across the country. This link
is key. People no longer imagine that mega-corporations care about integrity or the needs of the average Canadian.
Canada Post cannot be run like a mega-corporation. Similarly, union members cannot view the mail service as just another large corporation. This perspective is similar to how newspapers were seen as flyers last month during the strike actions prior to the general strike declared on September 29.
Newspapers are not flyers. They are not product wrapping. Newspapers must be considered what they are: integral to the current and future social fabric. Society cannot consistently bleed out one arm of the social fabric and ask it to do more, as it has done with newspapers in the last decade. On the one hand, newspaper content is being made available online for those who prefer to read it that way. On the other hand, AI (artificial intelligence) is learning language using newspaper content. The result? AI companies pay nothing to newsrooms yet drain their funding. Then, Canadians are told that mail delivery is too expensive and should be eliminated because everything is online.
This situation cannot continue without a frank look in the mirror. Canada Post’s newspaper delivery is an essential service that Pontiacers should be able to depend on. If a new
category of mail needs to be created for local newspapers, then do it. Charge the Pontiac Journal a fair price that isn’t gouging and stop the unfair competitive practice of scooping up the flyer business by banning newspaper delivery if there is a flyer tucked in the paper.