The Ben Mulroney Show - The Political Stunt That Killed Canada Post’s Last Chance at Relevance

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Guests and Topics: -The Political Stunt That Killed Canada Post’s Last Chance at Relevance with Guest: Erin O’Toole, President President of ADIT North America, former Conservative Party of Canada Leader If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag, is that from Win winners? Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt? Did she pay full price? Or those suede sneakers? Or that luggage? Or that trench? Those jeans, that jacket, those heels? Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners find fabulous for less. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for finding us wherever you consume your audio. You might find us as a podcast on a streaming app or you might find us on the

Chorus Radio Network. Wherever your ears find us, we welcome them. Thank you so much. And look, as somebody who, in all fairness, does not know the entire history of Canada Post, my humble opinion was they jumped the shark last year when they decided to take advantage of the holiday season to try to get a better deal on the backs of hard-working entrepreneurs who depended on their service in that very busy Christmas season. That was my opinion as a guy who doesn't know the history, but that is not necessarily the case. Our next guest would submit that they jumped the shark years ago and here to tell us that very specific story is Aaron O'Toole, the former leader of the Conservative Party who played a role in 2015 in this very

incident and he wrote about it in The Walrus. Aaron, welcome to the show. Great to be back, Ben. Okay, so let's cast our regard back to 2015. Tell me about the stunt that you think changed everything for Canada Post. Well, I said that it involved jackhammers and jokers. And the joker in this case, the unserious politician was Denis Coderre, who you know, then was mayor of Montreal. But before that, he'd been a cabinet minister federally as a liberal and the Liberal MP and a colleague of Justin Trudeau's.

He took a jackhammer in 2015, just before the election, that would see us and the Harper government lose to Trudeau, to destroy the cement base of what was a community mailbox. And he had a hard hat on, it was a big stunt. And a couple of weeks later in the election, Justin Trudeau stood beside him and basically supported that and put in a policy attacking us for trying to modernize Canada Post. And what had happened a few years earlier is Canada Post had come up with a great plan. Everything was going to be about parcels in the future. The last mile delivery. People weren't sending mail. Billions of fewer pieces of mail, Ben. Like billions. Yeah, well I think you've got a number in your piece.

1.4 billion fewer pieces of mail per year over like just a few years earlier. So they saw, Aaron, so they, the Canada Post saw the iceberg that was the future and wanted to turn the Titanic and were prepared to do so. Well put then, you know, and even worse than that, Canada was growing, not as crazy in pace we have in the last few years, but Canada Post was faced with the double whammy of having more addresses to deliver to, more homes, more businesses with the population rising, and less money because there were a

billion pieces of letter mail. And they saw the package phenomenon. I said at that time, you know, 10 years ago, you know what this is like, people would order a couple things online. There was no Amazon drop-off every day that you see now. So Canada Post saw this. Lisa Raitt was the minister at the time responsible for Canada Post. It was a Crown Corp. In fact, Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre, created the Crown Corp and made it self-funding, self-directing. And we supported this plan because we saw too, this was changing.

People weren't going to the mailbox every day unless it was on their doorstep and it was mainly junk mail so we supported it they were going to change I think they would have avoided this whole crisis we're in now Ben yeah but dumb politics got in the way Denny Coderre and the jackhammer and then and then Justin Trudeau putting it in their platform in 2015 and that really tripped up Canada Post. So, you know, I agree now it's awkward. They're pushing away more customers by by ill time strikes and things like this. So this is an example. I wrote it because dumb politics hurt the crown for modernizing. Yeah, in December 2013, the Canada Post put out a fivepoint plan to get back to profitability.

And those five points are end doorstep urban delivery, transition all homes to community mailboxes, dramatically increase the price for stamps, use tiered pricing for mail, expand retail postal outlets and close many smaller postal offices, negotiate new collective agreements for labor, including lower salaries and shift to a defined contribution pension to limit pension liability and streamline operations. So what I'm gleaning from your piece, Aaron, is that innovation and nimbleness that is required in these big organizations in an ever changing world, those are habits that are learned over time and had Canada Post been able to get this

plan across the finish line, I think it would have imbued that institution with a sense of innovation, a need to innovate, and a habit of innovation that would have prevented a lot of the problems that we've seen accumulate over the past few years? 100%. You know, and the big, the big controversy, of course, was some neighborhoods and in Toronto, Montreal, old leafy neighborhoods like, like the one I live in now in Toronto, they had doorstep mail delivery. And so it was going to take that away and push people to a community mailbox. But 68% of the country at that point, Ben, were already on some form of community mailbox. So it was fair.

Everyone would have gotten Monday to Friday delivery, but they would have had to maybe walk, 20 to 100 meters to go. And it would help save them. Well, Aaron, unless you're a shut-in, unless you're a shut-in, you leave your house every day. So all of a sudden it just becomes a new habit. It becomes a new thing. It becomes a new thing and eventually

that new thing just becomes a thing and you give it no thought. I mean, had we been having these community mailboxes since then, there's an entire generation of people who would have just grown up with it at this point. 100%. I lived out in the Burbs in Curtis and in Boltonville Bend and most families I knew at the time with community bell boxes Would only check it once or twice a week Maybe because you weren't you weren't getting the mail so people's habits and consumer desires were already changing And Canada Post tried to say yeah We need to be part of this last mile that this sort of last to the doorstep

That that Amazon and a few others have perfected and now you see with all the e-commerce a bunch of private providers so they really could have been part of that that solution and it was I called it the worst stunt in my little over a decade in politics with a jackhammer yeah hard hat and then somebody running for prime minister supporting such a stunt like that but proof proof was in the pudding. Danny Cudare lost the next election and maybe it was a sign of what was to come. No, well, listen, I really appreciate that you wrote this because first of all, most Canadians don't know this and it's important for people to be held to account even after

the fact. And the Trudeau government got elected on this stunt. You know, they promised us evidence-based policy, and in the face of evidence, they went in the other direction to, you know, I don't know, gin up some anger against the conservatives. 100%, you know. And the one mayor that should not have engaged in a stunt was the one mayor who had been a federal cabinet minister not many years before, and he would have known from those cabinet meetings the struggle the Crown Corporation was having to meet the modern times. But it was the most crass politics, we got dumb decisions.

When I wrote the piece, I sent it to my friend Lisa Raitt, who did a great job at the time defending that plan. And it's just another example of, gosh, we could have had a better outcome if there was not some silly games played. But I wrote it because it's a good case study for us to learn and avoid in the future. I completely agree. I'm thankful that you wrote it because you've added context for me on this very important conversation we're having about an institution that while I don't rely nearly as much on

Canada Post as say I might have 15 years ago, there are a great many people and a great many businesses that still do. And because it's now facing this existential threat that could have been avoided years ago, it's we need to know that this could have been avoided years ago. We need to know that this could have been sidestepped years ago. So I want to thank you very much, Aaron. I hope you have a great weekend, and I know we'll talk again soon. Thanks, Ben. And I want to thank the Walrus for running it. We need more smart conversations like the ones you have on your show. So thank you. Thank you, my friend. Bye bye. and experience the lifestyle you've always dreamed of in stunning BC. We're curing cancer here. Are you in?

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