Sunday, May 8, 2016

Postal Banking in Canada - Update



CBC is reporting that the Liberal government has created a pannel to hear from Canadians about the future of Canada Post. Saving door to door delivery is on the table. So is the possibility of creating a Postal Bank. I oppose the privatization of Canada Post not because I'm a dinosaur but because I oppose increased taxes. Canada Post is a cash cow for the government. It is an efficient company that makes profit and pays dividends. If they privatized Canada Post they would lose all that tax revenue and have to raise taxes to make up the difference.

Yes I used to work at the Post Office. I used to be a Letter Carrier for over 10 years. I was metaphorically, a child of a mixed marriage. My father was LCUC and my mother was CUPW. I could speak at great lengths about the shotgun wedding between the two very different unions and the subsequent animosity and raiding. Yet like any other child from a bad divorce, I recognize that every parent and every person has good and bad. I want to remember the good from both my parents and move forward in a positive direction. Increasing business revenue is a good thing.

When I was with Canada Post I launched a group called CUPW New Vision. It was to trade unionism what nouvelle cuisine was to the culinary arts - a new refreshing way to look at the classical traditions. At the time I mentioned the possibility of creating a bank at Canada Post to increase business revenue. France, Germany and England had already done so. Why not us?

It appears that the new union has picked up on the idea and have embraced it. That is something I can support. We need to think of ways to reinvent ourselves so that we are productive and profitable in the new market. The music industry certainly has. We can too. The Huffington Post claims Canada Post operated a savings bank for 100 years, between 1868 and 1968. The National Post claims it was disbanded in 1968 after the banking industry objected to the infringement on their monopoly. Clearly this is something we should reexamine. Peace.

Support Postal Banking. Let some of those massive profits reduce consumer tax.

Update: It appears I'm not he only one that thinks creating a Postal Bank would be a good idea. Ellen Brown wrote a very interesting book entitled The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity. The Watershed Sentinel is reporting that "One of the most important legal cases in Canadian history is slowly inching its way towards trial. Launched in 2011 by the Toronto-based Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER), the lawsuit would require the publicly-owned Bank of Canada to return to its pre-1974 mandate and practice of lending interest-free money to federal, provincial, and municipal governments for infrastructure and healthcare spending." Obviously the big banks are opposing this with a passion and is the very reason voters should be supporting it. A Postal Bank could accomplish the exact same thing. Obviously we'd need a new CEO of Canada Post that has the vision to follow through with it.



Note: After 1974 the national debt started snowballing out of control because of the increased interest payments. "Obviously something went terribly wrong after 1974." Canadian Citizens Coalition for Monetary Reform. That was when the Basel Committee discouraged borrowing from a nation’s own central bank interest-free and encouraged borrowing from private creditors.

The Tyee is reporting that "(COMER) a very small and low-budget Toronto think tank have been steadily winning court battles initiated in 2011 that would oblige the Bank of Canada to return to its pre-1974 practice of lending the government money virtually interest free. But the mainstream media has boycotted the story."

This is important because: "Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation's laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation." -- William Lyon Mackenzie King, prime minister of Canada, 1935

Turns out another blogger agrees with the reestablishment of a Postal Bank.

7 comments:

  1. Postal banking is a very good idea. It would permit people to have bank accounts without having to do business with the big 5 who are just in it for their share holders. At least this way the people of Canada would benefit.

    I support the Canada Post having a banking division. You can already purchase money orders there and I've been using that for 40 years.

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    1. It would also be very beneficial for people living in rural areas.

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  2. Can you cite where it says the post office has been profitable? I can't cite the opposite, but my feeling was that the post office has been hemhorraging money ever since the Internet got really popular. I'm willing to be wrong on this, as you've been closer to the heart of the matter than I.

    I'm happy keeping the government smaller though and do see the same fit here. There's already a lot of options out there. However, if they can make it profitable, safe, and convenient, I say why not. Problem is that those wishes seem to be a stretch--regardless of who is in power.

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    1. I most certainly can. It's right here: http://yourpublicpostoffice.ca/pays_dividends.html

      You've bought into the bullsh*t. The truth is, "Since the mid-1990s Canada Post has been profitable every single year -- except in 2011 when the company locked out 50,000 of its workers in an effort to weaken the union and its contract. In that time, Canada Post has fed over a billion dollars into the public purse."

      http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/02/05/Ten-Myths-about-Canada-Post-Cuts/

      Privatizing Canada Post would reduce tax revenue and consumers would have to make up the difference. Nice try.

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  3. Canada Post makes a great deal of their money delivering not only packages, now that a lot of people buy on line, but from flyers which are included in your mail.

    If there weren't money in it for some one the cons would never have started talking about "privitizing" Canada Post.

    A country's postal service should always remain with in the "package" of citizen services. it makes it possible for everyone to communicate. Not every one has a computer. Not everyone can afford or has courier services.

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    1. Exactly. They want to privatize it for their buddies like BC Rail because there is money to be made. At the taxpayers expense of course.

      We could have done what Christy Clark intended and extract a dividend from BC Hydro to balance the budget. If Gordon Campbell hadn't privatized the power brokers that sell power to the public company at above market rates. If he hadn't committed that act of fraud, BC Hydro wouldn't be in debt and we could extract dividends from it to balance the budget and reduce taxes like we do from Canada Post.

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  4. I'm all for it, stick it to the financial gangsters in the big 5.

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