We don’t get milk delivered to our doorstep anymore, and mail is going in same direction

COFFEE WITH THE ARMCHAIR MAYOR — When I was a kid, my mom would stuff some money in a glass milk bottle and put it on the front step before bedtime.

In the morning, the bottle and money would still be there for the milkman, who came with a full bottle to swap it.

People don’t put money on the front step anymore. There are no more glass milk bottles and no more milk trucks.

I asked Lara Plummer, president of CUPW Local 758 in Kamloops, if maybe it was the same with the post office. Maybe times have changed too much. Maybe we just don’t need it anymore because it’s become too expensive.

We were talking in Blenz for today’s segment of Coffee With the Armchair Mayor on CBC Daybreak Kamloops. “The problem is that people think Canada Post is losing money,” she said.

Plummer acknowledged that, at some times during the year, that’s true, but in others it makes money. The point is, she said, “They’re not like a regular business because they provide a service that other businesses don’t provide.”

What business, she said, would deliver mail and provide service to urban centres and out-of-the-way rural areas alike? The profit areas, she said, in effect subsidize the rural areas, where post office service was cut back last week.

“It feels like Canada Post is attacking the rural communities.”

The switch to community mail boxes from door-to-door delivery hasn’t hit Kamloops yet but it’s been happening for a long time in the surrounding rural areas. That, too, is a money saver for Canada Post.

Is it really such a hardship to walk a block to a community mailbox instead of just stepping outside the front door to get your mail, I asked?

“It’s not that you have to walk a few feet to pick up your mail, it’s what it means to mail,” she said. “When mail isn’t delivered to your house, when you don’t get it every day it changes what mail is all about… It’s what the whole thing means….

“Putting community mailboxes in cities — who wants that? Is it really necessary? They don’t look very nice, they attract garbage, and people throw their flyers on the ground. Do we want those in our cities?”

Oh, yeah, and the price of a single stamp goes up to a dollar as of Monday.

Between six thousand and 8,000 employees will lose their jobs as the cutbacks are phased in during the next couple of years. The Conference Board of Canada says Canada Post loses around$400 million and it will rise to $1 billion if the bleeding doesn’t stop.

So, the answer is higher prices and less service.