October 16 is the 40th anniversary of the creation of Canada Post Corporation under the Canada Post Corporation Act, intended to make the postal service more autonomous: to help it compete against other parcel and courier services, to maintain financial self-sufficiency, and to improve labour relations in the postal service after several conflicts in the 1970s and 80s.
Among other things, the Act defines a letter, and grants Canada Post its “exclusive privilege” to deliver letter-mail, while leaving it to compete with private-sector operators in other products and services. The CPC Act was actually passed unanimously in the House of Commons!
CUPW, with the Canadian Labour Congress’ support, had campaigned for many years for the creation of Canada Post as an independent crown corporation, and expected to be able to achieve more in bargaining than we could bargaining directly with the Post Office Department, including to negotiate for service expansion and job creation. CUPW played a part in negotiating the text of the Act. There are many things in the Act that, while they still affect us today, today’s members may not be familiar with: