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“I’m not here to tell you who to vote for, Palecek said, but I am here to tell you that if Stephen Harper is re-elected, you’re not going to have the same public postal service that you’ve been able to count on in the past.”

That is true, of course. Canada Post is already in the midst of phasing out door-to-door delivery for the one-third of Canadian households that still enjoy it, which is expected to save the corporation about $500 million per year. Canada Post will also eliminate between 6,000 to 8,000 jobs over the next five years, mostly through attrition, which will also contribute considerably to cost savings.

With some of these measures already underway, combined with a hike in stamp prices and increased parcel delivery, Canada Post managed to turn a record profit in 2014 — the first time it had returned to profitability since 2010. Those opposed to phasing out home mail delivery like to cite that fact as evidence that we don’t need to cut door-to-door delivery after all, but if anything, it shows the opposite: with the steep and continuous erosion of letter mail volumes — dropping 8.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year, for example, compared to the same period last year — the only way Canada Post can stay in the black is if it continues to cut its operating costs.

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