Post Office Reform

This report provides certain information on Canada's 1981 postal reform initiative, which created the Canada Post Corporation (CPC). Knowledge about Canada's experience with postal reform is useful to Congress's efforts to reform the U.S. Postal Service. This report presents information on selected aspects of: (1) universal mail service in Canada, (2) CPC ratemaking, and (3) key events affecting CPC since its creation in 1981. Charts and tables.

For example, while the transmission and distribution systems of electricity and gas are true natural monopolies, competition is feasible in the generation of electricity and the production of gas and the retailing thereof. [...] The strategy is thus likely to enhance competition in hitherto protected and unprotected segments of the sector, to the benefit of users of mail services in both classes. [...] Failure to rethink the role and mandate of Canada Post, given the dramatic technological transformation that is occurring in the communications sector, would be - in the words of Geddes (2003) commenting on the US Postal Service - to acquiesce in "a slow-motion train wreck." Lessons From Other Countries We turn to postal reform in other countries, under the following themes: the ownership effect; [...] The Ownership Effect In the international arena, the approaches to ownership include: maintaining the status quo, where the post office is a government department or has no commercial objectives; corporatization, where the post office becomes a government-owned corporation with commercial objectives; and privatization, where the post office is sold and no longer controlled by government. [...] Further, it is designated a limited liability company, to ensure that government does not underwrite the Post's performance and that the board of directors places the interests of the business first, ahead of the government's interest.