The Communist Party of Canada demands that the Liberal government live up to their promises made during the Federal election surrounding Canada Post and immediately restore door-to-door delivery service for the nearly one million households who have had this service cut.
Part of the Harper government’s legacy of attempts to privatize the postal service, bust the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and attack workers’ wages, pensions and working conditions, was cutting the door-to-door mail delivery to 800,000 people and the installation of “mega-box” mail delivery. After CUPW and allies, including the Communist Party, fought against this bid to reduce service as part of the broader privatization agenda, Justin Trudeau promised to reverse the cuts during the 2015 Federal election.
After a lengthy review and delays by the Trudeau government, the federal government released a report in late January of this year announcing that previous plans to cut door-to-door delivery to an additional four million households would be canceled. This has demonstrated once again that mass, independent political action on the part of the labour movement can be effective in fighting back and winning jobs for their members and strengthened public services for all.
The government’s refusal to reverse the already implemented cuts and the further delay in forwarding decisions about the direction of Canada Post to the crown corporation’s board of directors, shows that the fight is far from over. In fact, many addresses, especially in rural areas, never had door-to-door service to begin with and are sorely in need of an expansion of delivery services.
The Communist Party of Canada continues to stand in solidarity with postal workers and supports CUPW’s demands to implement an expansion to the public post office to address climate change, and maintaining the service’s financial self-sufficiency with expanded public services including postal banking. Postal banking in particular would expand banking and financial services to communities left high and dry by the monopoly banks who have raked in record profits while closing branches and charging higher and higher fees. Many countries operate publicly owned postal banks, as did Canada until 1969.
Furthermore, the Communist Party of Canada calls on the Federal government and Canada Post to negotiate in good faith with postal workers in upcoming bargaining this year and break with the recent history of attacks on workers and their union.
Special resolution of the Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, Feb 11th, 2018