Braille stamps will be issued by Canada Post as part of its 2008 stamp selection in recognition of the Guide Dogs of Canada. A first in North America, the stamps will be available with commemorative envelopes to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Montreal Association of the Blind.
Read MoreCanada Post is pleased to announce it has successfully negotiated a new four-year collective agreement with its largest bargaining agent, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). The new agreement will be in place until January 31, 2011.
There are approximately 50,000 employees represented by CUPW who are responsible for the collection, processing and delivery of mail in mostly urban centres across the country. A separate bargaining unit is responsible for delivery in rural Canada.
“This negotiated agreement exemplifies the strong commitment of Canada Post and its thousands of employees across the country to ensuring our customers and all Canadians continue to receive the highest possible level of service,” said Moya Greene, President and CEO.
Ms Greene also recognized the professional and business-like approach adopted by the negotiating teams throughout the bargaining process.
“This allowed the parties to focus on fairness and respect for employees while also recognizing the essential need to look after the interests of customers,” she said. “The new agreement signals the determination of Canada Post and our dedicated workforce to move forward together to take on the very real competitive challenges of the marketplace.”
The new agreement, replacing the one that expired January 31, 2007, provides a wide range of improvements in compensation and working conditions while helping the Corporation to better manage benefit costs for the future.
The Canada Post Group of Companies is a key enabler of the Canadian economy. We deliver more than 40 million messages, pieces of mail and parcels every business day. Our 72,000 employees and 6,600 post offices, as well as the 14 million physical addresses we serve, are each a key link in our network that connects Canadian businesses and consumers from coast to coast to coast.
The tentative agreement was reached February 8 and was ratified during voting by the union membership that concluded April 22, 2007.
Read MoreFedEx Home Delivery has outgrown its facility on the north side of Fort Wayne and plans to relocate to the FedEx Ground facility in New Haven that was built three years ago.
FedEx planned to start construction early this month on a 15,000-square-foot expansion of the 55,000-square-foot FedEx Ground facility. Executives expect the new location to be operational in August.
The relocation to New Haven is part of a nationwide expansion for FedEx Home Delivery.
The company is looking at adding nine new hubs and expanding 37 existing hubs, as well as relocating or expanding close to 300 local facilities, such as the one serving the Fort Wayne area.
Currently, FedEx Home Delivery operates a network of more than 500 distribution hubs and local terminals throughout the United States and Canada.
Bloomberg reported late last month FedEx Corp. has been growing more rapidly in U.S. ground shipping than its larger rival, United Parcel Service.
FedEx Ground volume rose 12 percent in the most recent quarter, while UPS gained 3.6 percent, according to analyst Donald Broughton of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis.
Read MoreHydro One Networks customers now have the option of receiving their electricity bills via the web. Canada Post has joined forces with Hydro One Networks to offer these bills online through epost, Canada Post’s online mail delivery service. Customers will be able to sign up to receive their Hydro One Networks bills electronically through the free epost service at either www.epost.ca or at the online banking sites of major Canadian financial institutions.
Hydro One Networks business, commercial and residential customers who sign up for a free epost box™ (a personal electronic mailbox) will be able to subscribe to these bills and view them in a safe, secure manner online. Once the client has viewed their bills, he or she can then pay them by linking to the online banking sites of most major financial institutions. The bills can be stored in the epost system for up to seven years.
Hydro One Networks joins many other Mailers in Ontario offering the epost service. In addition to their electricity bills, Hydro One Networks customers who register with epost can receive and pay more than 200 other documents from 100 companies (called Mailers) available to epost’s three and a half million registered users.
Read MoreI cannot agree with Mr. Bank’s assessment that Canada Post has ‘shockingly high postal rates and shipping fees.’
The Canadian parcel delivery market is in fact one of the most competitive in the world, and Canada Post fights for share against large and efficient multinationals such as UPS, FedEx, and DHL, as well as thousands of smaller regional and local players. As a result, Canadians have many practical shipping choices for different levels of service and price from competitors.
EBayers do complain that they cannot compete with United States Postal Service rates, as they compete with other U.S. sellers in a continental marketplace dominated by U.S. buyers. This false logic compares U.S. domestic rates with Canadian cross-border rates, which are naturally higher. Postal administrations and private couriers alike structure their processing and delivery networks on a national footprint. Crossing from one network to another duplicates costs, while customs clearance adds more still.
It is simply unrealistic to expect that a Canadian-based eBayer selling to a Californian, and therefore obliged to pay international shipping rates for fulfillment, would be on equal footing with an American eBayer offering a competing item and could fulfill using a domestic U.S. service. It is not uncommon to see prices for cross-border delivery, from any of the couriers serving the Canadian market, that are double or triple the price for similar service within Canada, or for domestic service within the United States.
Canada Post has a statutory mandate to operate on a financially self-sustaining basis and is prohibited by law from cross-subsidizing its parcel business with revenues from lettermail. Our parcel services are provided on a purely competitive basis and are priced accordingly.
Within this competitive context we have annual price increases, as do our competitors, necessary to cover rising costs. Mr. Banks is wrong to say that our prices have doubled on average over the last four years. Since his reference point is the U.S. market, it is surprising that Mr. Banks did not mention the impact of the Canadian-dollar exchange rate over this period, which clearly would have had a much greater impact on ecommerce and eBay Canada sales volumes in to the United States.
Canada Post has been actively encouraging the growth of ecommerce in Canada. Canada Post engaged in a strategic partnership with eBay in order to integrate shipping within the eBay/ PayPal online marketplace. Not only does this afford eBay sellers and buyers significant convenience and time savings, it also provides eBayers with savings of 8% to 9% on their shipping costs.
Louis O’Brien, president, parcels division, Canada Post Corp.
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