The Post Office-At it again

To begin two questions:

Is mail delivery an essential service and if so why were Postal Workers given the right to strike?

If mail delivery is a public service why was it made a Crown Corporation, a for profit corporation?

The last Postal contract was dictated in essence by government legislation when that strike/lockout was ended by Act of Parliament and a rather mean-spirited act it was.

Knowing that any strike/lockout is likely to be ended by Parliament Post Office Management has little impetus to bargain seeing binding arbitration as likely to come down in its favour.

One of the major issues at present is Employee Pensions. Those of us with long memories will remember a time when Corporations were arguing that they be allowed to raid bloated pension funds to support their operations. The Civil Service Pension Fund was invested in the National Debt at 0.5% interest at a time when my own Savings Account was earning 20% interest. Those days are gone.

We've been hearing a great deal lately about the actuarially unsound nature of the Canada Pension Plan. The Baby Boom Generation of which I am a part have been retiring at a rate that has seen a third of all government employees retire in five years. Couple this with Governments laying off employees by the hundreds of thousands to save costs and we are left with too few present employees making contributions to keep pension plan reserves healthy. Technological Change and efficiencies have further reduced the number of employees making contributions, at Canada Post down 10,000 from 60 to 50,000.

You may remember that USPS famously declared their pension shortfall at $700,000,000.00. Should the Civil Service Pension Fund be bled down to zero those costs will be borne by the Government of Canada's General Revenue. Canada Post Deficits are a similar drain on the Government of Canada. The question remains, should future employees be liable for the short-sightedness of past governments?