Canada

As the postal workers’ strike stretched to four weeks, one argument against them has resounded loudly: that the post office is a quaint relic of a bygone era. Past its due due, no longer worth defending, it would be better supplanted by the digital giants or privatized entirely.

At least this is what the corporate class, right wing politicians, and the establishment media want you to think.

While the postal service is indeed threatened by a digital crisis, its purpose has in fact barely been realized.

Few people stop to think that there are actually twice as many post offices as Tim Hortons, making it a retail network unlike any other in the country. Working with this understanding, eight years ago the postal workers put forward Delivering Community Power, a comprehensive plan to transform Canada Post into a vibrant 21st century public service.

Though this plan has recently barely gotten any media coverage, it had enormous appeal: they proposed converting their fleet of cars to electric vehicles and setting up electric charging stations at post offices, introducing check-ins for seniors living at home and farm-to-table food delivery, and offering public banking services that could help low-income communities and bankroll renewable energy projects. (By way of disclosure, I helped launch this campaign, in my pre-Breach life.)

The plan’s environmental potential freaked out conservative pundits, one of whom was inspired to invoke a notorious anti-government quip. “Ronald Reagan often said the nine most terrifying words in the English language were ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ Not even Reagan could have imagined,” William Watson wrote in the Financial Post, “that people would one day be saying ‘We’re from the post office and we’re going to save the climate.’”