Over the past few weeks, Canada Post has been a hot topic at Perrin’s. Today, we just received news that Canada Post has locked out its employees in response to rotating strikes. In my opinion, Canada Post had little choice. Rotating strikes has led to uncertain delivery times, which has driven businesses to choose alternate methods. Instead of sending 100 parcels a day with Canada Post- we were down to less than 10 and the balance with UPS. If other companies are doing the same (and I would assume they are) then Canada Post continues to incur regular operating expenses, with greatly reduced revenues- resulting in huge losses! What other reasonable option did they have but to lock them out?

All in all, this postal strike is a huge inconvenience to business owners across Canada. But it can be exceptionally devastating for companies that are situated in remote areas of Canada. As Canada is such an enormous country, shipping companies can’t afford to provide services in these areas. Canada Post is the shipping company that is guaranteed to ship anywhere within Canada. This means that businesses running in these remote areas are entirely dependent on Canada Post for shipping out products, bills and receiving payment. If the strike continues this could pose major problems for these companies.

As online banking has increasingly become the norm, letter mailings have dropped drastically. With the current postal strike, companies are further encouraging payment via internet. Has anybody else notice the advertisements on the radio? More often, companies are suggesting you sign up for e-billing, which allows the customer to both receive and pay bills via the internet. With the Postal Strike, Canada Post is, unintentionally, forcing customers to change their methods of billing from paper to online. Canada Post is thus partly responsible for driving their own customers away.

We do hope to see a quick resolution, so that we can provide all of our customers with the best possible service of their choosing.