• rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

    How “profitable” are our fire departments? Our wildfire services?

    How much “revenue” does the RCMP bring in?

    Are our road crews and highways divisions being sufficiently “economically viable”?

    All this hand-wringing about Canada Post is an alt-right psi-op designed to be one of many wedges designed to facilitate trickle-up economics; to impoverish the working class in favour of the Parasite Class.

    Canada Post has no business being privatized. It exists to serve Canadians independently of any profit margin, and I would eagerly argue in spite of any “losses”.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      14 hours ago

      You’d think it would be obvious that public services exist because they’re necessary rather than to bring in profit, yet here we are.

  • Nils@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    I am old enough to remember IMF “forcing” countries to privatize their services and industries (well, they still do).

    It is beyond me Canada doing the same without being under duress, just for the sake of ideology.

    I understand that in some places, for some services, it brought some prosperity, but they had guardrails in place. Like enforceable regulations and strong unions that covers the whole industry rather than a single company. But there are also places in which just creating those guardrails made public industry efficient without the need of privatization.

    Mail/logistics is something that scares me to be fully privatized. From the difference in employees quality of life, to the quality of services, to the formation of monopoly or cartels.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Let’s just farm out our mail services to america. How about that? Or are we trying to get away from that old tried and true ‘leaning on another country’ act. Maybe our own band of Canadian privateers? No. We are getting back what the people used to own so screw privatization. Unions…if you are still united and not just big business, I’m looking at you.

  • dom@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Is there any public service that isn’t under attack with the threat of privatization?

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      20 hours ago

      In short - no. There’s money to be made in privatization so it’s always on the menu unless we elect people ideologically opposed to it.

      BTW you should see Dirty Business if you haven’t. It’s a really well made expose on the effects of Thatcher’s privatization programs on today’s Britain.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      Canada post needs to modernize and face reality, not just continue for historical reasons.

      It’s pretty ridiculous to have a guy in a truck drive around to each house to deliver junk flyers. The world has gone digital.

      • dom@lemmy.ca
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        15 hours ago

        There is far more to mail delivery than junk mail. Yes a lot is digital, but the post still serves very real needs. And it is a service. Its not there to make money.

  • GameGod@lemmy.ca
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    23 hours ago

    The situation kinda sucks but it is what it is. Basically, we’ve got private delivery firms with non-unionized employees and gig workers taking up the more lucrative package delivery business, with the crappy money-losing mail business going to Canada Post. Uniuni, Dragonfly, and Intelcom are replacing Canada Post. But Canada Post’s union shot themselves in the foot by going on strike multiple times, for long enough that businesses switched away from using them because they’re seen as unreliable now.

    The gig worker model seems to be more efficient and clearly the investors of these companies agree, so I don’t see any economic force that’s going to stop things from continue in the direction that they are. There is still competition here though between these companies for small parcel delivery, so it’s keeping shipping prices down.

    P.S. this is also the model for private healthcare in Ontario that they’re attempting - farm out the lucrative procedures to private clinics, with the expensive and risky treatments being done in public hospitals. So watch for that…

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      Except the gig economy is far less efficient. All it does is take money from your pockets and put it in really rich people’s pockets.

      What happens when you work as a gig worker? You lose benefits, you lose a union, you don’t get minimum wage, you’re just poorer than you would have been if you had that job before it went gig. Of course your job security is totally shot. But it’s not like the price of delivering a package went down. Of course it went up.

      So somebody got that money that you’re no longer getting. Moreover, if you’re replacing a public service with a for-profit private service, then the people who own the company are going to make sure they get their cut. They’d like to pretend that they will streamline things, but in reality we typically find that they just charge more because nobody can stop them.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        20 hours ago

        What the actual fuck - they sold SCI? Fuck me.

        Reading these few points, I think the scheme is pretty clear. Sell all profit generating parts of Canada Post to private capital, then say Canada Post is losing money without mentioning that. Use the money-losing narrative to manufacture consent for further privatization. Fuck me.