I cancelled my internet service the other day.
I've been spending too much time watching Netflix and not enough time reading in the evenings, so it's time to cut the cord for a bit. While discussing my decision with the service representative, I was told that I would need to ship my router back to them in a box they provided.
However, said box is at the mercy of a possible postal strike, which I found quite fitting, given the internet's havoc on postal work over the last 10 years.
It sounds like the brilliant set up to a short film: a man attempts to cut back on the niceties of life in the digital age but is foiled by the intransigence of the preceding age. As he keeps trying to ship his package to avoid being charged fees and penalties, he could run into more and more difficulties, perhaps even being outed as unCanadian as he attempts to circumvent Canada Post in its moment of labour unrest. When I do reconnect, I might just make this movie.
I've looked into the reasons behind the current dispute between our federal government and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. As always there is a litany of grievances, but the go to talking point that keeps being brought up is pensions. And depending on who you ask, it's specifically the idea of a new pension plan for new workers that is significantly different from how the old pension plan worked. I'm no labour expert, so I'll leave you to investigate that further.
However, the issue of pensions is stuck in my mind, mostly because I don't believe that I will ever receive one unless I work a government job. If I felt like being conspiratorial, I might even say I don't believe any millennial can trust that they will ever retire, let alone have a decent pensioner's income from anything less than decent family wealth investment going back at least a generation. Between inflation and the government plundering CPP for leverage, it's all very bleak.
But let's keep our eyes on the present.
The fact is that this dispute has a great deal of political weight attached to it.
People are divided over how to deal with Canada Post, as its future is unclear: the competition is more innovative, the economy is changing, and the Canadian workforce is aging rapidly.
Given the specific mention of pensions as related to hiring, this current dispute is really a microcosm of the economic issues facing Canadians all over the country.
Obviously, there are no easy answers to the problems we're facing as households, workers and citizens. But it might help if all sides, regardless of industry and location, admitted that a great deal of yesteryear's economic methods are not working, just as assumptions about consumption and investment for goods and services have also been miscalculated for generations.
To put it bluntly, we didn't get to our state of economic anemia in one day.
Likewise it will take years of intelligent political and economic will to correct our course to one where we leave recovery and return to widely shared prosperity. Also, what we call prosperity might need redefinition as well - which may be the hardest pill to swallow.
In the meanwhile, it is my sincere hope that I am able to ship back my router before penalties ensue; I'll be waiting for my box from Canada Post on my porch, where I hope to read a few books before the snow flies.
