Tag: Canada Post

The federal Minister responsible for Canada Post, Lawrence Cannon, says he will decide within days about the status of the country’s international mail delivery sector. The Crown corporation has won court rulings that essentially gives it monopoly power over the 100-million dollar sector and, as a result, could push private-sector providers out of business. “We are actually looking at that issue now and we will take note not only of that issue but we will be
advising this House as to what we want to do in the coming days,” Mr. Cannon told the House of Commons. Companies in the international mail delivery industry, or re-mail, have been pushing Ottawa to change the law governing Canada Post to ensure the Crown corporation cannot exercise monopoly control over this sector.

Back in the late 1980s, Canada Post thought the best way to deal with growing competition for international mail was “to provide consistently competitive outbound service levels, and consistently good inbound service.” That might sound like heresy coming from a public sector monopolist, but in the early 1990s the Post Office went even further to embrace the spirit of competition. For four years it actually owned a slice of a private company that was competing for international mail. But those days are behind it. Gone is any trace of private-sector mindset as the Crown corp falls back on the monopolist’s credo, “Don’t join ’em, beat ’em.” The weapon of choice to administer that beating is a legal cudgel that, the Post Office seems to believe, just gets thicker and more threatening with time.