Canada Post lost $269M in 2013 as mail volumes continue to fall

[Locutus]

OTTAWA - Canada Post lost $269 million in 2013 as its mail volumes continue to decline, according to figures released Monday.

Transaction mail - letters, bills, statements, all of which make up roughly half of Canada Post's revenue - have fallen 30% since 2007.
Canada Post recently hiked the price of postage stamps and announced it would end door-to-door delivery in favour of community mail boxes in an attempt to stem losses.

"These losses are driven by the historic shift from paper to digital communications," Canada Post said in a statement.

"This shift reduces Canada Post's revenue from transaction mail, while its cost base remains largely fixed."

The company's operating costs were offset slightly by gains made from the sale of corporate real estate. A Vancouver mail processing plant sold in January 2013 netted $109 million.

Though parcel revenue went up 7.2% from 2012, the company said it wasn't enough to "offset larger declines in transaction mail."


Sun News : Canada Post lost $269M in 2013 as mail volumes continue to fall

 

[QuebecCanadian]

Of course. It was inevitable. I don't understand why so many are outraged that they want to abolish home delivery. It makes sense. They're not in business to lose money.

 

[SLM]

Certainly not a surprise, aside from dealing with the volumes of paper mail that comes with dealing with an estate, the only mail I receive is advertising. Everything else comes by email, either directly or by notification. If I choose to print out a paper copy, that's my business.

Of course having said that, we are moving or being directed into more and more of an online/digital world for our day to day business and then along comes something like Heartbleed or the latest cyber attack on vendors for credit card information, and I can understand the trepidation that some have with it.

 

[petros]

They never lost money until the lock out and only since with the massive hacking of services.

 

[SLM]

They never lost money until the lock out and only since with the massive hacking of services.

They should have restructured years ago but being a Crown Corp, quasi-bureaucratic at minimum, they are a slow moving machine. Most people of our generation or younger have been moving away from paper mail for years. They just never kept up the pace.

 

[petros]

They should have restructured years ago but being a Crown Corp, quasi-bureaucratic at minimum, they are a slow moving machine. Most people of our generation or younger have been moving away from paper mail for years. They just never kept up the pace.

It's been crippled then paraded around as a failure.

 

[SLM]

It's been crippled then paraded around as a failure.

The way it's structured was incredibly relevant for a number of years. But not keeping pace with the rapid changes affecting it's customer base is what has crippled it. There could still be a place for the post office, it just needs a complete rethink. A lot of institutions with outmoded ways of operating probably do.

 

[Spade]

I have a solution to the financial problems at Canada Post. If anyone wants to read it, send me a stamped self-addressed envelope.

 

[SLM]

I have a solution to the financial problems at Canada Post. If anyone wants to read it, send me a stamped self-addressed envelope.

Fine but you'll have to go into town to pick it up now.

 

[petros]

The way it's structured was incredibly relevant for a number of years. But not keeping pace with the rapid changes affecting it's customer base is what has crippled it.

Like having to drive to drop off mail? Remember when there was a box down the block?

 

[SLM]

Like having to drive to drop off mail? Remember when there was a box down the block?

I can remember as a child in a small northern town always going with my grandparents to the post office in town to pick up and drop off the mail. (Now we just need to go to Shopper's Drug Mart, which is at least handy because I also need shampoo.)

The last time I received something unsolicited in the mail, gosh I can't even remember when that was. The last time I actually mailed something is even longer ago. Paper mail has minimal relevance in my life and has for many, many years. More and more people are becoming the same way I'd wager. It's long past the time when change became necessary.

 

[Spade]

Fine but you'll have to go into town to pick it up now.

Don't mind, got to get the horses shod at the ferrier's anyway. While I'm at it, at the general store, think I'll buy my wife a bolt of muslin so she can sew the girls new dresses.
PS to Colpy
Calm down, that's muslin I'm a gettin'.

 

[SLM]

Don't mind, got to get the horses shod at the ferrier's anyway. While I'm at it, at the general store, think I'll buy my wife a bolt of muslin so she can sew the girls new dresses.
PS to Colpy
Calm down, that's muslin I'm a gettin'.

Yes perhaps this whole traveling to town thing is a bit antiquated. If only there was a way to deliver information directly into the comfort of our homes. Oh I don't know, say, electronically. Wouldn't that be progressive?

 

[Spade]

Hears this here Tesla's workin' on it. Dunno, with my luck, most likely I'll be dead and gone 'fore that happens.

Sorry, must go milk Molly. She's a bellerin' so loud, you can here her pret'n near five counties away.

 

[petros]

Yes perhaps this whole traveling to town thing is a bit antiquated. If only there was a way to deliver information directly into the comfort of our homes. Oh I don't know, say, electronically. Wouldn't that be progressive?

So I can accept it and print it at my cost? Will I get a rebate for choosing to wire up and print?

 

[SLM]

So I can accept it and print it at my cost? Will I get a rebate for choosing to wire up and print?

Do you really believe your not already on the hook for printing costs already? You will save at least $0.80 though.

 

[petros]

If I'm already paying to have it mailed how am I saving by paying for hook up, paper and ink?

Take your unprinted emails in for a tax audit and see what happens.

 

[Spade]

"I love emails more than I love paper."
- From a Grimm faery tale

 

[SLM]

"I love emails more than I love paper."
- From a Grimm faery tale

No more paper cuts.

 

[tay]

Amid fears that job cuts and service changes spell imminent privatization of Canada Post, the postal workers' union is renewing calls for the Crown corporation to consider revenue-generating alternatives.






Instead of reducing service and cutting workers, the union renewed calls at a recent meeting in Ottawa for the post office to diversify its offerings, and learn from the many countries across the globe where post offices do more than manage mail and package delivery.


In countries like France, New Zealand and the U.K., postal offices serve as widely-distributed sites where citizens can access banking services, an approach that experts say generates cash flow for the post office, improved banking service to "under-banked" communities, and provide much-needed competition for commercial banks.


In Canada, over 1,700 bank branches and hundreds of credit union branches have closed over the last two decades, and of the 615 First Nations reserves across the country, only 54 are served by a local bank or credit union. An estimated three to eight per cent of adult Canadians have no personal bank account.




Researcher John Anderson published a Oct. 2013 paper arguing in favour of Canada returning to its earlier policy of delivering some financial services through the post office. Canada had postal banking for 100 years after it was created in one of the country's first laws in 1868, Anderson pointed out. The service stopped in 1968.


Anderson suggested that a return to postal banking would not only invigorate Canada Post's cash flow and address concerns about the sustainability of a post office in the digital age, but would also create more accessible banking opportunities for underserved communities and individuals at a modest cost, given the post office's existing infrastructure across the country.


He said that a Canadian postal banking system might serve non-governmental bodies, as the French system does, or provide targeted services to First Nations communities and individuals, as New Zealand's system does.






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