Pollution and Sustainability

My son's high school recently put on an informative forum and play about the environment for Earth Day. They showed a clip from Youtube about that talked about how all the currents in the Pacific Ocean are taking all the litter and garbage and swirling it around into one big dump.

It mentioned how all the plastic that gets dumped into the ocean doesn't decompose it just breaks down into smaller pieces and how the ocean has become full of it and this is what the fish and birds are eating.

They talked about how our current linear system of extraction, production, transportation and dumping simply will not work indefinitely. We are consuming the resources. We are running out of resources and running out of places to put the garbage. They talked about the importance of a circular system that is sustainable for future generations.

Interesting indeed. We also talked about the "Who killed the eclectic car" video as well as the role big corporation have in this doomed system. They talked about how 51 corporations now have more money on hand then world governments. Without question, large oil companies have been responsible for war.

Time for Real Change at Canada Post

Not that I give a rat's ass about Canada Post any more, it's just that the latest in a long string of unfortunate events is further evidence of why I have beef with Moya Greene as she leads a once great (Publicly owned) company down the toilet. Again.

Obviously the term business is an important word when planning for the success of any company. We have good business and we have bad business. Remember the phrase, the customer is always right? Well that phrase does not exist at Canada Post. Not under Moya Greene's leadership at least.

You remember Moya Greene. She's the one who said all her public sector managers who have extensive experience in the field are stupid. She even rejects public accountability because she says the pubic are stupid while she claims to know everything about business since she derailed CN and crashed Bombardier's stock.

Her first official act at Canada Post was to unilaterally close the Quebec City Post office and have all the BUSINESS mail that is sent across the street in Quebec City redirected to Montreal where it is sorted and then returned to Quebec City for delivery. That is called delaying the mail.

Obviously every small town can't have it's own sortation plant. Two factors need to be considered when centralizing sortation plants. The first is distance, the second is volume. Montreal isn't a huge distance from Quebec City but the volume of mail Quebec City has is. Redirecting that much mail isn't good business. It doesn't save that much if any money but it does delay the service standards of the mail.

You remember the term customer service right? Any "expert" on business *should* be familiar with that term. Not Moya Greene. Her answer is be the big banks and slash services forever. Well that just won't work in a service based industry. Even TD knows that. They have extended their hours and after expanding their SERVICES they have seen a dramatic rise in BUSINESS REVENUE. Imagine that.

If you slash all your services in a service based industry you have nothing left to sell and your business revenue is reduced. Kinda like not picking up mail on the weekends. The competitors do. Picking up mail several times a day and delivering it twice a day may not be fiscally advantageous but why go to the other extreme and stop all mail pick up on Saturdays?

So here we are once again, deja vu. If you mail a letter across the street in Victoria or anywhere on Vancouver Island, Moya Greene will send it by ferry to Vancouver to be sorted then back by ferry to Vancouver Island to be delivered again. That is bad BUSINESS. That might not be a huge volume of mail but the the distance is when you amplify that with ferry and fuel costs. You do remember fuel costs don't you?

Canada Post lies again and claims that local mail will still be processed in Victoria but how are they going to separate it? We don't have separate boxes for internal and out of town mail anymore. If you say they're going to sort the out of town mail by postal code then you are in essence saying you are going to sort it twice which increase labour costs.

Before Moya Greene, if I mailed an Express post envelope on a Saturday morning, I knew it would arrive at the BUSINESS destination Monday morning. Not any more. Delaying that service is bad business. I remember Moya Greene asking me once in Vancouver what I have against bankers. I then asked her how not picking up the mail on the weekends increases business revenue. She thought for a minute, said nothing then motioned for her driver to move on. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Then we have MacLean's. Her "special advisor" Anthony Wilson-Smith used to be chief editor at McLean's. That's how she got them to print that cheap article trashing the Union. I used to think very highly of MacLean's magazine. Not any more. Now it's just become a political tabloid.

Here we have McLean's claim that the Tories love Canada Post and deregulation is out. Then why is Moya Greene so obsessed with Privatization that she finds some other huckleberry to write a new report because she didn't like the last report BUSINESS wrote about privatization of the postal SERVICES.

I think it is definitely time for a change at Canada Post. We changed and streamlined the Union, now we need to address the leadership vacuum in the company. Moya Greene was a Liberal appointment. Liberals were supposed to be a healthy balance between the left and the right. Now they just seem to take the worst from both sides and run with it.

If the Tories love Canada Post and can see it as the tax paying revenue creating cash cow that it is, then perhaps we should select a Tory CEO and leave Moya Greene to derail Tim Hortons, the last Canadian institution he hasn't wrecked yet.

If the Tories say they aren't going to deregulate the Post Office then walk the walk and put someone other than an axe murder who's going to slash and burn the company to the ground. Put someone with a New Vision who will increase BUSINESS revenue. Maybe even consider a Postal Bank. Imagine that.

Time for some real change at Canada Post. Let's keep Tony Wilson-Smith and get rid of Moya Greene.
Save the Dream, Stop Moya Greene.

Oh but wait... turns out the Tories are still trying to partially deregulate the Post Office by reducing it's Business Revenue. Looks like the death of Reform and the return of Mulroney to me. What a fiscally irresponsible scam that was.