COLLINS: Is there any future for Canada Post?
CANADA POST IS DEAD in its present form. The question today is whether the corporation can change enough to survive. And that is what the government needs to decide.
Remember those old scenic Xmas cards, showing the neighbourhood postie making their rounds, chatting with people in the neighbourhood, petting the animals, looking much like Santa himself? People are out and about, renewing friendships, having fun with each other. Idyllic times, but not to last.
As the need for speed increased on one end, so on the other end, the decline in social interaction. The need for faster and faster ways to transfer information led to rapid change. We had the Pony Express, stagecoaches, ships, trains and post offices throughout the routes to act as way stations and staging grounds. The beginning of the end of an era, later brought to a screeching halt by the emergence of the internet.
The postal service tried to be all things to all people. Instead, it became nothing to many people. There were lots of ideas floating around, but the Canada Post did not try to superserve any of those areas — they simply “average-served” several areas and didn’t stand out anywhere. The pride of ownership is gone.
