It's a New Day for Canada

[Urbane]

Hardly the makings of an epic new day!

There are a lot of things to be happy about George. There were before the election too and it's not all doom and gloom. We live in the greatest country in the world and with the election of a new Liberal majority government there's a breath of fresh air now in Ottawa. The NDP has been returned to third party status and the Conservatives are the official opposition and that sounds good to me. How fortunate we are that issues like door to door mail delivery are on our list of things to discuss because the problems in most other parts of the world are actual problems!

[Queen K]

And thankfully the door to door issue has been suspended.

[JOF585]

Would you prefer to pay more for postage and a little more in taxes to have door to door delivery or would you prefer to have lower costs while picking up your mail at a community mailbox?

Canada Post is mandated by Parliament to be self-sufficient and is not supported by taxpayer dollars since 1981.
Receiving mail cost you nothing. You didn't pay for the postage. The sender did.

[Urbane]

Canada Post is mandated by Parliament to be self-sufficient and is not supported by taxpayer dollars since 1981.
Receiving mail cost you nothing. You didn't pay for the postage. The sender did.

Yes, Canada Post became a crown corporation in 1981 and the hope is that Canada Post will continue to be self-sufficient and not rely on taxpayer dollars. It's true that you don't put a stamp on mail received but I think you need to look at the big picture here and that includes the cost of mailing. Perhaps when the new government looks at the issue of community mailboxes they'll also consider whether or not Canada Post should be privatized like the Royal Mail in the UK was a few years ago.

[maple leaf]

Yes, Canada Post became a crown corporation in 1981 and the hope is that Canada Post will continue to be self-sufficient and not rely on taxpayer dollars. It's true that you don't put a stamp on mail received but I think you need to look at the big picture here and that includes the cost of mailing. Perhaps when the new government looks at the issue of community mailboxes they'll also consider whether or not Canada Post should be privatized like the Royal Mail in the UK was a few years ago.

I suspect the Liberal government will study it and then continue with the mail boxes.Election promise "check"

snip;
“Canada Post is temporarily suspending future deployment of the program to convert door-to-door mail delivery to community mailboxes,” the company said in a statement Monday. “We will work collaboratively with the government of Canada to determine the best path forward given the ongoing challenges faced by the Canadian postal system.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... icle269817

80/

[GrooveTunes]

It's a new day for Canada but here's something that isn't new. People tend to be in favour of things as long as they don't have to pay for them. There's a poll right now on Castanet asking if you'd prefer your mail at the door or at a community mailbox. Guess what? Just over 50% want their pizza ads delivered to the door while the just under 50% are divided more or less equally between "community mailbox" or "don't care." Now, what would the result of the poll with this question:

Would you prefer to pay more for postage and a little more in taxes to have door to door delivery or would you prefer to have lower costs while picking up your mail at a community mailbox?

There are countless other issues that fall into the same category of people wanting a service but not necessarily wanting to pay for that service.

That's not the way CP works. They raised prices and cut service a while ago. There are many ways for CP to expand services and continue to not take taxpayers money and be self sufficent. It just needs a CEO who has vision and not one that has private mailers on his priority list like they do now.

[Urbane]

That's not the way CP works. They raised prices and cut service a while ago. There are many ways for CP to expand services and continue to not take taxpayers money and be self sufficent. It just needs a CEO who has vision and not one that has private mailers on his priority list like they do now.

Point taken. Perhaps CP could be run better and it makes sense for CP to expand in those areas where they're doing well (e.g. parcel deliveries). What other suggestions do you have for Canada Post?

[Atomoa]

Canada Post should become a ISP and offer cheap, high speed service.

They wont be farting around with Netflix-like services and TV channels so they can keep costs down.

Undercut the Telecom monopoly.

[Captain Awesome]

Somehow I don't see a business venture organized by the govt that is long famous for its efficiency using govt workers with high wages and huge pensions delivering something that is cheaper than what we have right now. If anything, it will become money-losing black hole that will require ever-increasing influx of funds to keep going. The capital needed to organize another Internet provider is sky high too, especially in Canada, and especially Canada-wide. And even if you build it, the infrastructure needs to be constantly updated to keep up with the speed requirements.

Would be cheaper to subsidize Telus or Shaw.

[The Green Barbarian]

. All those people in Vancouver that own multi million dollar homes and only claim 30k a year income certainly believe it too.

Irrelevant

[The Green Barbarian]

There are countless other issues that fall into the same category of people wanting a service but not necessarily wanting to pay for that service.

The same goes for man-made climate change. You can get 90% of people to say they at least somewhat believe that mankind is affecting the environment, but a tiny percentage of those people want to actually pay even a dime to do anything about it, because of course they know that even if it is somewhat true, giving money to David Suzuki and other shysters and opportunists to go to climate parties isn't going to stop it.

[George+]

Climate parties?
like The Green Party?

[JLives]

Canada Post should become a ISP and offer cheap, high speed service.

They wont be farting around with Netflix-like services and TV channels so they can keep costs down.

Undercut the Telecom monopoly.

They should also become a bank and offer a few financial services like check cashing, money transfers and small loans with lower interest/transaction rates.

[The Green Barbarian]

They should also become a bank and offer a few financial services like check cashing, money transfers and small loans with lower interest/transaction rates.

That makes more sense.

[Urbane]

It's never easy in Ottawa:

Andrew Coyne: Trudeau facing a Senate conundrum
October 30, 2015

If you want a preview of what Justin Trudeau’s government might soon have to contend with, have a look at what has just happened in Britain. Earlier this week the House of Lords voted to defeat a package of cuts in tax credits for the working poor, a centrepiece of the Conservative government’s recent budget.

It’s not the first time a government bill, passed by the House of Commons, has been defeated in the Lords, but it is unusual in that the legislation, though not technically a money bill, is nevertheless plainly concerned with government finance. Centuries-old convention regards such matters as the exclusive purview of the Commons; more to the point, so does the Parliament Act 1911.

Enacted to resolve the crisis arising from the defeat of the 1909 Liberal “people’s budget” in the Lords, the act eliminated the Lords’ historic veto over bills passed by the Commons. Henceforth, they could only delay legislation for a maximum of two years (since reduced to a year); a month, in the case of money bills.

In Canada, by contrast, no such limitation exists on the Senate’s powers. While the Senate has only a U.K.-style suspensive veto over constitutional amendments — if an amendment has not passed the upper house within six months, the Commons has only to pass it again to make it law — it has an absolute veto over ordinary legislation of any kind, including money bills. (Though the latter must originate in the Commons.)

And while convention might be thought to restrain the unelected Senate from exercising the powers it holds on paper, that has proved less and less to be the case. Recent years have seen the Senate defeat, obstruct or otherwise deny passage to bills on matters such as the regulation of unions, the Kyoto climate accord and abortion — not to mention the countless other bills that have expired, for lack of Senate approval, with the close of each Parliamentary session.

Now senators are threatening to do so again. Ten years of Conservative government have left the Tories in firm command of the upper house, primed for battle with the new Liberal majority in the Commons.

Memories of what happened when the tables were reversed — the blockade of legislation enacting the Canada-U.S. free trade deal in advance of the 1988 election, a similar blockade of the goods and services tax after it, plus various shenanigans in the early Harper years when the Liberals still controlled the Senate — have Tories vowing revenge.

Not that they will vote down just any old bill. But as Conservative Sen. Bob Runciman put it recently, “there may be some things that (Justin) Trudeau and some of his colleagues are very supportive of [but] that an overwhelming majority of Canadians are not comfortable with.” In other words, they will pick their spots for maximum partisan advantage. As another Conservative senator told The Canadian Press, “I don’t have any responsibility to pass Liberal legislation.”

Well, no, but they don’t have any right to reject it, either. They, of course, have the power to do so. But there is simply no legitimate justification in a democracy for a patronage House to overturn the will of the people’s elected representatives. These are not independent judges, comparing one law to another in light of precedent and constitutional scholarship, as they do in any law-based society, but explicitly partisan appointees, approving or rejecting bills for whatever reason enters their head — a practice followed in few other places in the democratic world.

At any rate, it poses a serious challenge to Trudeau’s authority. Should Conservative senators make good on their threats, it is not obvious how he should respond. In former times, it would have been easy enough: with 22 vacancies currently in the Senate, he could just appoint enough Liberals to give him a majority. He could even create new Senate seats, as Brian Mulroney did to get past the GST blockade. But Trudeau has just been elected on a pledge to appoint senators by “a new, non-partisan, merit-based process,” and in any case has already kicked the existing Liberal contingent out of caucus (they now sit, not as Liberal senators, but as senator who are Liberals). So in theory he cannot count even on their votes.

There would appear to be two avenues open to him. One would be to amend the Senate’s powers under the constitution, along the lines of the U.K.’s Parliament Act or the current provision governing constitutional amendments: a maximum six-month suspensive veto, say, after which bills would be deemed to have passed.

Conventional wisdom holds this would be next to impossible, given the applicable constitutional amending formula: seven provinces with 50 per cent of the population. But presumably he would have the support of Liberal governments in Ontario and three (perhaps soon to be four) Atlantic Canadian provinces. And would the NDP premiers in Alberta and Manitoba, or Brad Wall in Saskatchewan, given their personal and party commitments to Senate abolition, balk at merely clipping its wings?

Still, perhaps this would be seen as too risky. But it does not actually require a constitutional amendment to limit the Senate’s powers. The Senate could vote to constrain itself, via changes to its rules. Rather than pack the upper house with partisan appointees, then, in violation of his election commitment, Trudeau could simply make any new appointments conditional on the candidate’s agreement to vote for this amendment.

Enticing the rump of senators-who-are-Liberals to do likewise might be trickier. It might even require welcoming them back into the Liberal caucus. Though not in violation of any election promise, this would certainly entail a major about-face, which would be somewhat embarrassing. But Paris is worth a mass.

National Post
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... -conundrum