Latest news with #postalservice
National Post
2 days ago
- Business
- National Post
FIRST READING: Here's just how much money Canada Post is hemorrhaging
Article content Canada Post, meanwhile, cites 62,000 employees, including part-time workers and managers. Article content If the $1.3 billion loss is averaged across all those 62,000 employees, that's $20,967 each. If averaged just across CUPW members, it's $23,636. And if you consider that Canada Post lost $1.3 billion in 2024 while maintaining 25,000 front-line mail carriers, it averages out to $52,000 per carrier. Article content The number of retail post offices in Canada stands at 5,700. This ranges from a post office counter at the back of a Shoppers Drug Mart to an ever-dwindling number of dedicated post offices, mostly in large urban centres. Article content Some of those are more profitable than others, but in 2024 Canada Post lost an average of $228,000 for every one of those retail post offices. Article content You could also average out the loss by the corporation's vehicle fleet of 15,300. The 2024 loss averages out to $85,000 for every truck and postal van. In other words, with the money lost in 2024, Canada Post could have replaced every single one of its vehicle fleet with a luxury EV. Article content Article content The corporation notes multiple times in the report that even as mail delivery becomes increasingly unprofitable, they're having to serve more addresses than ever before. Article content In 2006, there were 14.3 million recognized addresses in Canada. As of the latest count, there are 17.6 million – a total increase of 3.3 million. To put it another way, every day since 2006 has yielded an average of 502 new addresses that have to be serviced by Canada Post. Every three minutes yields another address that Canada Post is legally required to service. Article content If last year's operating loss was shared equally across all of those 17.6 million addresses, Canada Post lost $76 for every single one of them. If averaged out across the 21,800 delivery routes served by the corporation, it's a loss of $60,000 per route. Article content Article content Article content Although the Carney government has controversially planned to not release a budget until the fall, that doesn't mean they won't be spending incredibly high quantities of money in the interim. The just-released main spending estimates show that the Liberals are planning to spend $486.9 billion across the fiscal year. This is 7.75 per cent higher than the expenditures during the last year of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – and he ultimately resigned in part due to criticisms that he was spending too much. The National Post's John Ivison noted that whatever Prime Minister Mark Carney's rhetoric about fiscal prudence, more money is being spent everywhere, and on everything. 'My rough calculation is that 63 departments will see their budgets rise beyond the rate of inflation, compared to the previous year's Main Estimates, and only 14 will have their budgets cut,' he wrote. Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content There was a brief flurry of drama in the United States this week that could have saved Canada a lot of trouble. On Wednesday, the United States' Court of International Trade ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump did not have unilateral authority to impose international trade tariffs. If the ruling had held, it would have instantaneously ended the Trump trade war with Canada — as well as its on-again, off-again trade war with basically everyone else. But it didn't hold; the United States Court of Appeals restored Trump's unilateral tariff powers the next day. And this is where we should mention that the U.S. Congress could rescind Trump's tariff-making powers anytime it wants. It just doesn't want to. Article content Article content
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
"We know who's who, and if it's addressed wrong, still gets to them"
Post Office volunteer Peter Sander, sorting mail at the small Colville post office. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round The mail always gets through in one of New Zealand's remotest regions, thanks to some dedicated volunteers who run the local post office. While rural mail services are shrinking, Colville, in the north-west of Coromandel Peninsula, has a thriving mail service based in the small community's original post office, with a band of volunteers taking turns behind the counter and sorting the mail. Even if it's just "Mike the Man" for an address, someone will know who it is, according to volunteer Peter Sander. "It's quite hard case at times. "We know who's who, and if it's addressed wrong, still gets to them." Follow Country Life on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , iHeart , or wherever you get your podcasts . Sander used to run a holiday camp in the district, not far from Colville, which consists of a volunteer-run general store and community hub serving a 1500-strong community all the way up to Port Jackson in the north. Volunteering has been an important part of his life, he told Country Life . "Sometimes we'll only get one or two customers in a day … buying stamps or whatever, but that's okay." New Zealand's postal system underwent sweeping changes in the late 1980s and many small post offices closed. But not Colville's, thanks to the locals. With a limited rural delivery service, they saw the need for a hub where people could pick up their parcels, mail could be sent, and visitors could buy stamps or a postcard. Sander, standing by the post boxes at the post office. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round "The local people thought, hang on, because they started it right back in 1896, started with telecommunications, and then later on they wanted three times a week mail delivery, because there was a lot of gold mining and farming done in the area." Sander said right from the early days, the community was involved in setting up the post office, even milling the timber from White Star Station, a local farm, pit sawing and carting the timber and raising money to pay for the building works too. "They've got a paddock there that's named the post office paddock." The Colville post office sells stamps and memorabilia, catering for locals and visitors alike. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round Visitors are interested in the history of the place, Sander said, and it's a centre for much more than just post. "They come in and read the information, sign the visitor's book, and they can't believe what we do here. We show them the old scales, and we used to have a thing here saying what to do if you get held up with a gun from the old days." Volunteers also run the incorporated society which is behind the service. It earns a small amount of income from 10 percent of stamp sales and donations. The post office volunteers sort the mail and serve customers. It's been volunteer run since 1986. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round "Everything's tracked and electronic, we do that, and we've got to scan it all and track it through. "We get about $1000 a year or something, which is enough to buy a can of paint. Occasionally, people will come and give a nice donation for us to hold their mail for them, because they've gone away for a month or so. So they might put 10 or 20 bucks in the donation box for us to do that. "That's how community works." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Colville people ensure the mail gets through
rural farming 15 minutes ago An hour's drive from the northern tip of Coromandel, you'll find a tiny post office run by volunteers. As rural postal services shrink, the small community here - population about 15-hundred - has taken things into its own hands to ensure the old motto "the mail must get through"
CBS News
3 days ago
- General
- CBS News
St. Paul man sentenced for robbing Twin Cities postal workers at gunpoint
A St. Paul man who pleaded guilty to robbing two Twin Cities postal workers at gunpoint has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison. Rubin Adams entered guilty pleas for two counts of armed robbery of a mail carrier in December. On Thursday, a judge handed down concurrent sentences of 132 months in prison and five years of supervised release for each count, according to court records. One count each of theft of postal service keys and mail theft against Adams were dropped. Prosecutors said Adams robbed mail carriers in Edina and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on Nov. 18 and Nov. 19, 2023, brandishing a gun and demanding mailbox keys in each instance. Authorities tied Adams to the robberies using surveillance footage, cellphone data, social media videos and a GPS-enabled ankle monitor he was wearing due to charges in Georgia. The judge also ordered Adams to pay nearly $78,000 in restitution.
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: Sheriff hunts for a missing postal worker and tussles with a cult
The longest mail route in the U.S. runs more than 300 miles through Wyoming's unforgiving Red Desert, and Blair McGowan, the delivery person, has gone missing. Her disappearance is odd, not just because McGowan has always been reliable but because her personal delivery vehicle, a 1968 International Travelall that looks like a hearse and has a quarter of a million miles on it, was left behind. Authorities in Sweetwater County haven't made any progress, so Mike Thurman, the postal inspector, asks Walt Longmire, sheriff of (fictional) Absaroka County, to find her. The desert is way out of Longmire's jurisdiction, but Thurman is family on the sheriff's wife's side, so he agrees. So begins 'Return to Sender,' Craig Johnson's 22nd installment in a series that inspired a TV show that ran for 6 seasons on A&E and Netflix. Given the size of the desert and the length of time McGowan has been missing, Longmire puts his chances as 'not likely.' Going undercover as a postal worker, which fools nobody, he and his dog named Dog head off into the desert in the ancient Travelall and follow the woman's delivery route. Johnson is known for creating memorable characters, and perhaps the most memorable this time is Dog, a German Shepherd-Saint Bernard mix who is as smart and loyal as they come. The Travelall emerges as something of a character in its own right, with its quirks and an odd body shape plastered with Flower Power, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Age of Aquarius stickers. Eventually, Longmire discovers McGowan in the clutches of a weird-as-they-come religious cult, shoots it out with its gun-toting members, and commits several remarkable acts of heroism. Near the middle of the story, the author inserts characters and elements from a previous novel that might confuse newcomers to the series. Fortunately, that section, which hints at what may be coming in the next instalment, is short. Johnson's plot is suspenseful and fast-moving, the prose is tight, and the landscape is vividly drawn. ___ Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including 'The Dread Line.' ___ AP book reviews:
