Canada Post Gets Computers

FTLComm - Tisdale - Tuesday, October 23, 2001

We got our first home computer in 1981, twenty full years ago but it was not until October 11 that Canada Post got around to installing computer terminals and all the trimmings in the Tisdale outlet. This is the first real innovation in the way the post office does business since the ending of rail car sorting in the early sixties. The new terminals can scan the high speed mail code with its wand or swiper on the keyboard, you can use your debit card to pay for a service and the conventional til has been replaced with the computer point of sale (POS) technology. It is sort of ironic that the Post office would make this move to modernise so very late. Several strikes ago it lost almost all parcel service to couriers while email, telephone services and online systems have dramatically reduced the flow of business mail. Fax technology seemed to wipe out conventional correspondence more than a decade ago. Today's postal system is essentially an advertising service. The bulk of its revenue and what almost all that it carries is massive amounts of advertising. Tons of fliers and what are contrived to look like weekly newspapers but are only advertising fill mail boxes each and every day so that if you don't pick up your mail for a few days or weeks all you will miss is the latest prices from the chain retail outlets. The post office is no long a vital part of life in Canada, things have changed.