About the only thing as consistent as Canada's postal service is disruptions to that service.
I certainly do not want to begrudge my fellow Canadians who work for Canada Post their high-paying, secure livelihoods, but taxpayers also cannot keep bailing out a failing business.
As a Crown corporation, Canada Post used to have the advantage of a monopoly on letter mail. It has always had the disadvantages of being a monolithic bureaucracy with high overhead costs, particularly wages.
So, as the parcel delivery business has boomed, the corporation has struggled to adapt and compete.
And the part of the business on which it has a monopoly is no longer profitable and private parcel delivery services are simply more nimble and cheaper.
As another potential disruption in service looms, Canada Post has been bleeding money since 2018 when it lost $276 million. 2020 was worse at $779 million, but the worst year of all was last year when the red ink topped $841 million.
At the beginning of this year, the Canadian government committed $1.035 billion in what it called "repayable funding" to help the corporation avoid insolvency.
I call it throwing good money after bad, as the old saying goes. To pay back that so-called loan, Canada Post would have to make some money, which it is increasingly incapable of doing.
We have to face facts, if something doesn't change, and quickly, we will very soon have no universal postal service.
Canada is not alone in this situation. Last year, PostNord, Denmark's national postal service, announced it would stop delivering letter mail at the end of this year citing a 90 per cent drop in mail volume since the turn of the century.
Meanwhile, other European nations have privatized or liberalized their postal services. Even Great Britain has privatized the Royal Mail, which had been a public service for 499 years.
Right now, clinging to a postal service that is a relic of another century is an exercise in nostalgia. It has become a sacred cow, so to speak.
I'm not sure anybody has the magic solution to Canada Post's woes, but if we're going to get to a solution, we have to stop living in the past.
