Mail bag
I wish all mail carriers were like Melanie ("Canada post wants to eliminate my job. Here's why you should care," Voice of the City by Melanie MacKenzie, December 19). The points she makes are valid. The aged are the ones who will be the greatest affected by this policy. Try telling an 80-year-old with a hip replacement to walk eight blocks in snow, wind or rain to get their mail. Some elderly people have no one else to do this for them. For the head of Canada Post to state that getting the elderly walking is good for their health has got to be the most foolish justification for doing away with personal delivery. —posted by BCsteve at thecoast.ca
Thank you Melanie for your understanding about what it is like to be a senior citizen in Canada. We need to protect this profitable public service for ALL Canadians. —posted by Jacqueline Evans
Thanks, Melanie. Many well-made points here. I was especially struck by your assertion that Canada Post has made money in 17 of the last 18 years. That is certainly not what is generally being described in the media. But, all the same, I do agree that public services don't need to make money if they are providing value---as Canada Post does.
The most upsetting notion is that because most of Canada is on superboxes, the rest should be too. I grew up in St Margarets Bay, and we had a superbox and that worked fine. Why? Because in the country YOU DRIVE EVERYWHERE! —posted by Nyima
I don't know why everyone has gotten it into their heads that Canada Post should even be a profitable business, even though it made lots of money up until Chopra's disastrous and idiotic leadership. It's service, just like transit is, so trying to make it into some kind of Google thing is absurd. Once you put a road down, you don't expect it to make money, do you? It's exactly the same---the road is a service, a service to the tax-paying public, just like CP is.
The right wing has tried to change how we view these things, demonizing anything that doesn't show a profit. Hell, they want to privatize indutries such as the LCBO, even though it makes something like a billion dollars a year for the Ontario government. But what they actually want is to put those profits into the hands of big-named businesspeople. Talk about trying to obfuscate things in their favour! —posted by Geoff Wakefield
Melanie is the most amazing mail delivery person! It was a sad day when she left our route on Gottingen Street. She did more public relations for Canada Post than its entire corporate communication machine could even hope to accomplish in a year. —posted by epicurean
D'oh removal
I lived in Halifax for over 30 years. I remember when it moved to the clear your own sidewalk policy ("Sidewalk of shame," Reality Bites by Tim Bousquet, December 18). It worked great---for two out of three houses. It was usually the house on the corner with a number of apartments and sidewalks on two streets that didn't bother. They would of course turn to ice. This would be the same houses year after year, and storm after storm, so enforcement was either non-existent or didn't work
What the city is trying to do is the right thing. Give them credit for that. This major fail by the subcontractors should lead to much more accountability on their parts and it should improve significantly, immediately. Bitching about the good old days is also a fail. —posted by dm7b5
They came by after most had already shovelled and those who hadn't---their sidewalks were already frozen solid. They did manage to take chunks out of trees and raised flower beds with their oversized Bobcats, which actually makes it less than useless. No sand in the south end either. No one's gonna leave their walk unshovelled for 36 hours unless they're on vacation or incapable/incompetent. —posted by doubtful
