The Ben Mulroney Show - Why is Canada Post's business model failing?

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Should we have Mandatory Road Tests for the Elderly? -Why is Canada Post's business model failing? -Is it time to incentivize overnight deliveries? 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

Hey Spotify, this is Javi. My biggest passion is music, and it's not just sounds and instruments. It's more than that to me. It's a world full of harmonies with chillers. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show and we're opening up the phone lines because we want to hear from you on the following topic. So the family of a Guelph woman who was run over and killed by a 95 year old driver who was backing out of a parking spot is

Calling on the government to raise the fines in cases involving death and to institute Mandatory road tests for drivers over 80 now as the law currently stands a road test is only ordered if the person's vision test Raises concerns so I want to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. Should there be a road test for drivers over 80? And if you agree with that, how frequently should it happen? Do you have a member of your family

whose abilities behind the wheel are in decline? I mean, it happens, right? Look, we saw it play out in real time in the the US election, where I wouldn't trust Joe Biden behind the wheel of a car. And there's no disrespect to him. He's 80 what 485. And my dad near the end of his life was was was absolutely he had he was weaker he was he'd lived a great life and and and and he needed help sometimes getting out of a chair and his balance wasn't great and you know it happens it there's there's no shame in that it's an

acknowledgement of a reality. And so give us a call at 416870 6400 or one triple eight two to five talk like if you have So give us a call at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. Like if you have someone in your family who's in cognitive decline, they might have perfect eyesight. That's irrelevant. It's not irrelevant, but it's not germane to the conversation.

And oh, we've got Pete. Pete, welcome to the show. How you doing? I'm well, thank you. Good, yeah. My father, who's no longer with us, he was, I guess in his mid-80s, Joe. How you doing? I'm well, thank you. Good. Yeah. My father, who's no longer with us, he was, I guess in his mid eighties and he was pulling out of his church parking lot and he hadn't put a seatbelt on yet.

He was in the process of doing it and this is up in Bob Cajun. So the OPP happened to be driving by and saw him putting a seatbelt on. They pulled him over and gave him a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. That ticket caused him to have to go and do a drive test. The issue is there's an awful lot of people who have great cognition at 75 and a lot of people that I see on the road that can't seem to drive at 45. So where do you put the limit on the age? I have no trouble with it, but I think we should be like a lot of European countries where we have more involved testing in general, whether it's on an annual by

annual basis for everybody, or, you know, I don't think there should be a cut off as far as age goes. I think everybody should be required to do a little bit better. Well, I think I think you're right. I think a lot of the traffic we have in the city of Toronto, for example, is because people don't know how to drive. And that's the I'll stand by that. But look, I mean, you have to have rules that you have to have systems in place. And if we, for example, believe that you become

a senior citizen at 65, you're eligible for for retirement at 65. Maybe it's maybe it's 65. Or maybe it's at 75. And yes, there are plenty of people at 75 with a zero cognitive decline. But I'm sure there are studies out there that show you where that so that delta starts widening. At that point, that's when you start. That's when you start testing the idea of testing everybody all the time is way too onerous of a system. But here's another point that I want to bring up way too onerous of a system. But here's another point that I want to bring up. This 95 year old who killed, who killed this woman, they received a $3,000 fine.

And the family's like, there's no deterrence in that. They wanted a fine as high as 40 grand. I think the total is six, the highest possible is 60 grand. So not only does a family feel that the courts valued the mom's life at $3,000, but they could have gone as high as 60. Now, if I had a 95 year old parent in my family and they still had their license and I heard news that if they killed somebody I'd have to pay fork over 40 grand. That parent would never see the driver's side of a car ever again. The deterrence factor doesn't seem to be weighed in

to the justice system nearly enough. Who do we have waiting on the line? We've got Chantel. Chantel, welcome to the show. Oh, sorry, it's Mary. Hello, Mary. I think it should be mandatory. Yeah. And like you said, probably at 65. And the way I why the reason why I think that way is my mom is 77. Yeah, she her memory has started declining quite badly. And but she still thinks that she can take her car go to the grocery store or whatnot. And she she doesn't realize that her memory is declining. And that's the problem. Yeah, yeah. And we as a family can only recommend so much if this were mandatory, then that's what you do.

That's what you do. And it's not a judgment call and it's not anyone looking down on people of a certain age. It's a recognition that at a certain age, the number of people, the percentage of people who could be in cognitive decline presents a risk and we need to test against that risk. Welcome to the show Baker Baker what say you. anything wrong with testing somebody once they get over 80 tests them once or twice once a year or every two years that's fine that's not a bad idea but I think they should focus more on the young drivers instead of like coming after the most experienced drivers on the road we need a lot of driver

education in the beginning of things and we need more enforcement on the road because I'm a professional driver I drive about 3,000 kilometers a week yeah stuff that I see on the road is unbelievable it's like this they do they't seem to enforce it. I see these guys weaving in and out of traffic doing the most dangerous things. And as far as fining, I'm not really sure putting up the fines is the best idea. But how about a chaperone to say, okay, when you're over 70 or any older age, maybe you should have a sponsor, a chaperone, somebody else to keep an eye on you. And instead of making it a financial thing, if the older person makes mistakes and gets points, the younger person that's looking after them should have a responsibility. Yeah, Baker, you make a good point, thank you.

Maybe it's like a reverse graduation of license, a reverse graduated license like we have here. I mean, back when I was a kid, I got my license and that was it. I was free and clear to be, to drive wherever and whenever. That's not the case in Ontario anymore. Maybe after a certain age, yeah,

maybe you have to have somebody in the car with you. But no, when I'm talking about the financial onus, that's the case of death caused by, no one wants to put a 95 year old in jail or in prison. It doesn't serve the public. But a message has to be sent that if you kill somebody at a certain age that the justice extracted will be a financial one that your whole family is going to feel. And also, by the way, we also have to look at justice for the victim. The victim's family deserves to know

that that person's life was valued at more than three grand. There's the whole, the value system of the justice system, in my opinion, is off kilter. We're not valuing the things we need to be valuing. We're not prioritizing the things we need to prioritize. We got time for a couple more calls before the break. Steve, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you doing today? I'm well, thank you.

Good. Yeah, my dad at 91 got into a minor, minor fender bender, nothing serious, but the police wouldn't pull his license. So I called up his dad. I called up his doctor, told him what happened. We've got us somehow get his license So I brought him in told him was in a regular checkup. They did a minor We call it You know minor test on time that he couldn't drive anymore Like an early dementia What was it and with that with them with that form in the police were able to pull his license because he couldn't tell the difference Between 40k 50, 50 miles. Yeah.

Yeah. And it should, Tom, good on you for being responsible, but it shouldn't be the responsibility of a family member to trick their elderly parent into going to get a test so that the police can do what's in the best interest of the community. If you're a small business owner, then you're going to remember that the Canada Post workers decided to try to get a better deal, get job security on your backs during the most

important part of your calendar year, the fourth quarter, the holiday season. They decided to strike at the time of year where you make most of your money to show their employer how vital they are and the service that they have and they provide is to you and to the country. And you suffered. You couldn't get your deliveries out. You couldn't service your customers. I'm sure a lot of you felt the pinch. Some of you probably had to close up shop, but they wanted job security

and they were gonna get on the backs of entrepreneurs who have no job security because by definition, they bet on themselves But they did it and they were forced back to work and but they were gonna show us how vital they were well We just found out that Canada Post is facing insolvency and In remarks before the auto an Ottawa based, the newly installed CFO of Canada Post said that the company was projected to quote, run out of cash by the end of July 2025, and that its losses are expected to increase, a projection that didn't include the strike.

Last week, the federal government extended a more than $1 billion loan to Canada Post to maintain its solvency and ensure it can continue its operations. This is an unsustainable model. Unsustainable. It's falling apart, it's collapsing around its own inefficiencies and the changing dynamics of an increasingly technologically savvy community. Canada Post has been bleeding money for years.

Their own CEO says it's not sustainable. The strike has showed a lot of people that they can live without them or survive with a watered down, less intense, labor-intense version of Canada Post. So what is it? Can we live without them? Can we not live without them? Are they essential? Do they need to be subsidized? What say you what is the future of Canada Post in a world of your creating? Welcome, Mike to the show. Hey, Ben, great show. Great topic. You know, I was a young man, beating about what kind of career to get in, my parents said, you know, you should work for the government.

You'll always have a job and you'll always be paid well. And I'm afraid that's the case in this situation too. And actually I did work for the government for a lot of years. I was a teacher, but I think the problem is, and I see my city workers working and it's just, you know, they just have it so easy. And I think I'm not saying Canada Post is exactly that way I think the letter carriers work hard yeah they do they absolutely do I can guarantee you there's people above the letter carriers all the way to the top and there's redundancy and it just needs a and just needs a major makeover and as I said to your to your

producer I said why not do mail every other day? Like I have one of those super mailboxes, I go once a week. Yeah, remember when that was the solution? Like that was the last crisis we had. Okay, well, what we're gonna do, we're gonna aggregate and everybody's gonna get a super mailbox in their community and they're gonna have to drive to it or walk to it.

That was supposed to solve some problems. And here we are today with even more problems. And I thank you, Mike, for your call. I don't need the mail every day. I find it actually really annoying to get the mail every day. There's a lot of waste in there. I could go once a week. And maybe what happens is in order to ensure that bills get paid on time, I don't know, maybe the government needs to mandate from insurance companies, credit card companies, everyone for whom bills are due through the mail, that the amount of time to pay it

is extended by a week or two. So instead of having four weeks to pay your credit card bill, I don't know, and I'm just musing here, I'm blue-skying. Maybe the government says, okay, instead of four weeks that you have to pay your credit card, you get five weeks. So that if something does miss the mail carrier

and you don't get it on week one, you get it on week two, you still end up with four weeks to pay your credit card. But I don't know that anyone needs the mail every day. And then there's also the question, again, blue-skying here, and I'd love your thoughts on this at 416-870-6400. Also, you can call 1-888-225-TALK. Could we privatize Canada Post?

I mean, it's it's a crown corporation. It provides a service. Air Canada used to be a crown corporation that got privatized. Petro Canada, the gas station was a crown corporation, it got privatized, they both still exist today. They both still exist today. They both, they turn profits. Maybe, maybe we need the private sector to come in and find the efficiencies that government can't.

Negotiate these contracts the way a government probably can't. Let's, let's, oh fantastic, fantastic Mike Mike is a letter carrier welcome to show Mike. Hey how you doing? I'm well. So I think the big issue is regarding the strike we didn't want to go on strike nobody wants ever go on strike. We gave them a vote Mandy right so that's so it's more of a negotiation tactic it ended up could be Edward went on strike. Yeah, we don't want to hurt anybody. Yeah. And like my contention, what angered me Mike is it was a decision made not by you but by people far higher up than you that that because

I was saying all the problems and all the concerns and all the grievances that the union has those will still exist on January 1st. And to pull that move when they did, I thought was just a terribly opportunistic and detrimental. Also, it took people like me who might've sided with the union and put me on the other side of the fence immediately.

Yeah, this corporation has run so badly. It, I can't even, I would need a whole show dedicated to it. Give me your your your top two things that the people at home don't know that you know. So right now they've changed the delivery system on how we actually deliver mail. Nobody knows that. Dan and Post and all the infinite infinite wisdom. What we used to do is we used to have a sorting case which was essentially our office for our own route. We would come in sort of mail. We knew where there was dogs. We knew where there's hazards. We knew there was issues. We knew all that. We tire mail. We go out and deliver our day, right? Yeah. Now Canada Post and all their wisdom, the management said, you know what? You're not

doing that anymore. We're gonna have somebody sort your mail for you and the rest of the mail is gonna come in two different sections and you've got to kind of merge it all together out on the road with all your flyers. You're not going to know anything about any of your route. And so it's just, it's a, so they saw they solved the problem that wasn't a problem. Their issue was we want you on the road longer delivering. Yeah. So let's take you outside and put you on

the road. But now it's an actual cluster F. Mike, Mike, I got a couple more calls I want to get to before the break. But I thank you very much. I know you do hard work and you're a valued member of your community. And I appreciate that you dropped some knowledge on us. Let's say hi to Fred. Fred, welcome to the show. Hi, Ben. How are you today? I'm well, thank you. Well, my personal opinion, I haven't used Canada Post in I don't know how long. The best thing I did was contact them so they could put a no ad mail in my super mailbox. Yeah. So I get three or four letters a week, I can go two weeks without getting any mail. Bills are paid online. I agree with you about paying the bills, maybe give us an extra week or two. Yeah, exactly. I think that the find some efficiencies, reduce the size,

Exactly. I think that the find some efficiencies, reduce the size and just and reduce the amount of time that is the amount of days that the mail is delivered and give people more grace periods according to the government. Thank you very much. We got time for Ian's call. Ian, what do you think about Canada Post's future? You know, a couple of months ago, I would have thought, you know, post offices, they're a dying breed. They're not gonna happen. Then they went on strike and my boss started actually paying me to go pick up checks from clients.

And then I read that a check investor bought with the Royal Mail in Britain for 8.1 billion. So there's obviously a business model for this type of thing. Yeah. We just don't have the people in charge to run it because it's quite obvious someone thinks you can make money delivering mail. That somebody out there is going to look at that in a way that they look at the Canada Post in a way that's never been looked at before. And I guarantee you there is an entrepreneur out there who would be willing to take a risk

on privatizing Canada Post and making a go at turning it into a profitable business. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and we're going to continue with your calls on a brand new subject. I mean, it's not a new subject. Congestion in the City of Toronto is nothing new. But there is a story on the cbc.ca that presents various suggestions on how to deal with congestion in the City of Toronto. Now, the general consensus is none of these ideas on their own will solve the problem. None of them individually is a magic bullet, but if you stack them together, we could move the needle.

And one of them is one that I hadn't heard of before. And I think it's something worth discussing. The Toronto region board of trade president says, there should be incentives for businesses to do deliveries overnight, to avoid clogging up roads during the day. Businesses, the role is going to be to support hopefully the action plan because governments aren't going to make any big

moves if they don't feel there's a lot of support behind them. And I want to hear from you. 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. Should companies be incentivized by the city to reroute their deliveries overnight? And if they are, would they even be able to convince their employees to work overnight? Would businesses allow them access to bring goods in overnight? There's there are a lot of moving parts, but I think it's worth a conversation. 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. You know, it would be consistent with I mean, I think I support this because it would be consistent with my

belief that construction should be happening overnight. You know, there's a, I drive my kids to school sometimes if I'm not on the radio or before I was doing this show, I would drive them to school some days. And I always found it really interesting that as, as families are trying to drive down the street that leads them to the school, seems like that's when the construction at the next door condo unit would start with trucks coming in and out and stopping the traffic at the very time that people need the roads the most. If they were to work overnight,

then a lot more work would get done and they wouldn't be causing traffic. That road is for me to get from point A to point B, not for you to clog up. You can use it when I'm not using it, but I should have priority at that time of day. And then the same argument would be for, for delivery trucks, you know, so give us a call at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. You know, we've all experienced it. You can see it down the road, a block down. There's a delivery truck with this hazards on, clogging up one lane of traffic, creating a bottleneck, slowing everyone down at the one time a day that you really wish you could just get to where you need to go.

And I've heard this before for certain companies, delivery companies or paper shredding companies. There's one particular paper shredding company that I always see. They bake in the cost of tickets into their business plan. They expect their drivers to get tickets, so they don't care if they block traffic. So maybe rather than trying to use the stick of a ticket against them, and they are clearly immune to that stick, maybe we try a carrot approach

and we incentivize them somehow to operate at night when everyone's asleep and not trying to go to work, where there are far fewer cars on the road, so that if they do double park they will not be creating a choke point and a bottleneck. Like this is, to me, on its face makes a lot of sense, but maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there's some part of that that doesn't make any sense to you. Bill, welcome to the show. Brian, good morning. Happy Tuesday from London. Happy Tuesday. Thanks for calling.

One other component is maybe we need to go back to warehousing what do you use a great new user train systems more for delivering a product get some of the trucks off our road because just in time deliveries meet there picking up from the factory and taking it to the end user just in time words before they started down that path uh... these don't have warehouses all around where it'd be more the major deliveries to the warehouse and then local deliveries out of that warehouse. So sort of like what Amazon is doing,

but on smaller scales. But that would alleviate a lot of the transport trucks in the city and on the highways. Well, thank you very much for your call. I appreciate that. Tony, welcome to the show. You're a delivery guy. Hey, Ben, how are you? I love your show. Thank you very much. You're awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I deliver. I've been with a certain company for like 30 years now.

How do you basically hire the staff of those companies to be able to receive all their stuff? Yeah, no, listen, I know the knock-on effects would be myriad and complex. But I think it's, listen, the city's at a breaking point. I mean, we're paralyzed at this point. So I kind of think we should be talking about every opera, every option and every opportunity. So so but you still you don't think it would

work. Pull the streetcars off the road that cause all the traffic. Oh, listen, streetcars streetcars hold up a lot of traffic. They're terrible. Oh, yeah, having those overnight wouldn't work. I mean, you can't have anybody there to sign for packages. You can't have shipping having those overnight wouldn't work. I mean, you can't have anybody there to sign for packages, you can't have shipping receiving guys there. Doesn't work. Well, I listen, thank you very much. I did suspect that it's not as simple as just having a delivery, a delivery truck go out at midnight instead of noon. I do appreciate that, that

there has to be someone there to receive the package. And sometimes it's not just like a little, a letter that they're delivering. Sometimes it's, you know, tons of materials. So I get it, but this might not work for every delivery, but it might work for some deliveries. And if you could get, I don't know, 30%, 20% of the trucks to figure it out and 20% of the trucks to figure it out. And 20% of the businesses to figure out,

that's 20% fewer stops. That's 20% more freedom to roam in the city. And again, if you stack that with the four other recommendations, then maybe you're getting somewhere. Hey Noah, welcome to the show. Hey Ben, I appreciate you taking my call. Absolutely. I kind of disagree a little bit with the idea. Okay. I work in the chemical distribution industry. And I think a lot of

the time, if you're not in, you know, some of these smaller manufacturing jobs that kind of power the province and power the economy from behind the scenes, a lot of these are small businesses, there's nobody working these late hours overnight. And generally speaking, you know, if everybody's working overnight, you know, those people are gonna want somewhere to go and eat. And there's not always a restaurant open at those hours. There's not always a place you can quickly go

and get takeout. You kind of shift the entire economy to needing to kind of work in this more 24 hour cycle. And also there's there's a discussion about you know, accidents are more likely to happen when people are tired and when people driving overnight. I think I don't think it would necessarily be as beneficial as you think and I don't think it would be great for people at large to have to work overnight and it would be more than just the delivery drivers because you just need more than that to keep those people powered and keep those people running. Yeah and listen I take

your point all fair points to make but when you look at the other side of the equation and you look at the lost the lost productivity of people stuck in traffic and you and the frustration the people less willing to come into the city and spend their disposable income. These are lost opportunities for the city. This is lost revenue for the city. And so if we could displace some of the daytime traffic and congestion caused by double parking delivery trucks, some of it, I know you're not going to be able to some of it, I know you're not gonna be able to to get rid of all of it, then there is value in exploring that.

And as far as there's more accidents in the daytime, I would submit that there's probably less if there's less cars on the road. If there's less to hit, there's gonna be less accidents, but that's just my idea. Home Network is here. I love it. Discover the best shows and your favorite trusted experts all under one roof.

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