Wanderings – Three ways to save Canada Post money

Too often, people are quick to point out problems but not offer any solutions. Clearly, there is a big problem with Canada Post. The national mail service is on track to lose another billion dollars this year. Since 2018, the Crown corporation has lost $4.5 Billion – the ‘B’ is capitalized as that is a lot of money to lose.

Despite the opinions of various experts and pundits, Canada Post is a needed and essential service. Under that premise, and in an effort to offer solutions, here are three ways to save Canada Post money.

First up, end parliamentary postal privileges. These mailing privileges of Members of Parliament are known as franking privileges. Members of Parliament are allowed to send out various mail items to the residents of their riding. Some MPs use it rarely; others use it all the time. Locally, our MP uses his franking privileges frequently. These are seen on the floor and table at our local post office along with discarded flyers and various junk mail.

Recently, the MP worked with a community group to advertise an event in the area – via a nicely-printed flyer addressed and sent under the franking privileges. While this is technically allowed through the Franking rules, is it appropriate? No.

The federal government pays Canada Post $22 million for Parliament’s Franking Privileges. A stamp is $1.44. That means the government pays for 15,277,778 letters from MPs per year, or about one letter to every household once per year. In this riding, there are nearly 50,000 private dwellings. Based on that math, that’s easily 300,000 mailed items so far this year by this MP. Multiply that by 337 other MPs and its no wonder Canada Post is going broke! If Canada Post charged commercial rates for mail that would be covered by franking privileges, the company’s deficit would drop by either volume of unpaid mail, or higher revenues from mailing. A win-win!

The second way to save Canada Post money is to consolidate Service Canada and ServiceOntario offices into post offices. Most post offices have space to add two wicket spots, one for each government service. Why wait on the phone for hours to talk to the Canada Revenue Agency when you can go and fix the problem while picking up your mail? Not only would this make post offices a one-stop-shop for all things government, any federal or provincial service department taking space in a post office would have to pay rent – that’s real estate money for the post office.

Think of it, you could get your mail, your drivers’ licence, a new health card, and fix your tax account, all in one place.

Real estate is the third way Canada Post can save money. In some communities, the post office occupies prime real estate areas, often with nice green lawns. Green lawns do not make the mail go faster. Sell or lease out that land for commercial use. An A&W would fit nicely next to the post office here in town. Go get your mail, fix your taxes, get your licence renewed, and get a Buddy Burger.

In larger cities, there are post office locations with vacant or mothballed spaces. Commercial leasing would bring in revenue. And for a company sorely lacking revenue, why shouldn’t every commercial opportunity be explored and seized upon? Post offices are higher traffic draws, so having a business in or next to a post office is a plus.

A bonus revenue idea would be to give post offices employees the ability to write parking tickets. The number of people who park on the wrong side of the street at my local post office, they could balance the budget in the matter of weeks.

While some push to privatize the postal service, that would be a mistake. Having a post office which is more nimble and responsive to Canadians is what is needed. A few cost-saving-ideas like above just may help.

This column was originally published in the November 5, 2025 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.