The extreme left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives or CCPA, where the “alternative” they allude to is socialism, even though they’re too chicken to admit it, has suggested that the federal government expand the failing state-owned Canada Post, and get it right into the financial services sector.
I’m still waiting for them to break into the fast-food hamburger business, and yoga pants. I mean they got all those increasingly useless (due to technological “evolution,” natch) post office outlets!
Socialists, liberals — progressives generally — always suggest expanding and throwing more money at their failed ideas, to make them finally succeed. This is a course of action which has never worked, ever. Google Canada’s health care. Or Greece. Or to save time, socialism writ large.
As you might have heard, the state-owned Canada Post is failing, as all state-owned “businesses” eventually do, and they have announced they’re stopping home deliveries, and increasing the price of home delivery stamps to a buck each. Hold the home delivery.
This latest example of a state-owned “business” failing isn’t all bad. Let me just slip in this spot-on tweet (if I do say so myself) I made this week with regard to this news:
#cdnpoli – Canada Post is losing tons of cash. On the bright side they're doing WAY better than the state-owned CBC.
— Joel Johannesen (@JoelJohannesen) December 11, 2013
All state-owned businesses get more expensive and crappier over time, while private enterprise gets cheaper and better. That’s a fact the CCPA left out of their 80+ page research/propaganda.
I will not cower, as does CCPA, and hide behind ridiculous, BS monikers, such as “Policy Alternatives,” designed solely to fake you out. This plan of theirs is socialism, disguised in happy-face, “Alternative” clothing.
Their inarguably socialist suggestions include the outright state ownership of what would amount to a full-service banking business. Indeed, in their words, it “could develop a full banking system … [c]reate a chartered bank wholly owned by Canada Post.” In fact it would be so full service that it would go against all that the left has recently protested against — that dastardly concentration of services in the financial sector. When you have no sound principles, you’re bound to get mired in hypocrisy  — so it’s OK with them in this one instance!
Here’s an excerpt of their plans for the state to compete against private sector — i.e., the state competing against citizens:
Brand new services could consist of:
• access by all banks and credit union customers to their accounts to deposit or withdraw cash, as is the case in the UK;
• savings accounts and low-fee chequing accounts;
• low-interest credit cards; and
• prepaid debit cards. In the future, services could be extended to:
• mortgages;
• small-business loans and agricultural loans;
• insurance products;
• mutual funds and stocks; and
• special new products for low-income and Aboriginal peoples.
The CCPA’s “research” includes examples of several European socialist-light countries where the concept has been tested, but they 
then fail to mention how several European countries are currently going bankrupt as a result of their creeping socialism, exactly as exemplified in this idea for Canadian socialism.
Also highlighted is the mind-blowing fact that the left-wing Canadian Union of Postal Workers [CUPW] supports the idea. Yes! It’s true! Look! “The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has been a major supporter of the idea of Canada Post offering financial services …”
Are you over your shock yet? Hold your intolerant and possibly racist judgy judgment though, because one of the reasons given by the Union for its support is, “It would provide meaningful work and new and interesting jobs for CUPW members.” Who knew? And you see, meaningful and interesting jobs are unavailable in the private, non-union sector. We must rely on the state for our very lives. Now that’s progressive.
I cling to my zany belief that meaningful and interesting work can be found raising families, and working in the private sector for any number of exciting firms, or maybe even starting your own. But then I’m a sane conservative guy.
And whadoyaknow, the socialist NDP digs it too. The CCPA reports that “The New Democratic Party has supported the expansion of financial services in Canada Post.” The NDP plans include the notion to run on it in the 2015 election. This was mapped-out at their 2013 convention. They cite an NDP resolution to that effect:
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the NDP will work with labour, community groups and other interested parties to develop a plan to implement postal banking and other service expansion at Canada Post.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVE D that this plan will be a component of the NDP platform in the 2015 election.
“Unfortunately, the resolution was not discussed on the conference floor,” the CCPA lamented in their propaganda. Happily for them, though, they also found some positive reference to the concept from the Green Party. They made no mention of the position taken by the Communist Party of Canada, but I feel certain they would endorse the move in exactly the same way as the CCPA, the NDP, and the Green Party does. They, too, call themselves Canada’s progressive party. (Also, “Canada’s future is socialism!”)
By the way, the liberal-left (unionized) media will ask no questions of any of the progressive parties. Trust me. They’ll only ask Conservatives about abortion, and the illusive “hidden agenda” — still hidden after half a century!
The CCPA report notes that the “Conservatives and Liberals have no public positions on this issue.” But do dismay nonetheless, fellow true conservatives. The Liberals are a progressive party. And the aspirational sounding name “Conservative” notwithstanding, they are too. There are more than just a few progressive-left numbskulls in each party, and so it wouldn’t shock me in the least if MPs from either of those two parties latched onto this idiocy. After all, they both vocally support the socialism-reliant, state-owned CBC, a state-run healthcare system, Via Rail, and so much more just like them.
The CCPA wants to turn Canada into a socialist state, with all the attendant government intrusions into your life, the social engineering, the market engineering, the economy engineering, the central planning, the state control, the fomenting of reliance upon the state, and the awful construct of the state competing against its own citizens in business for profits.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Proud To Be Canadian. But Maybe Not. - Tuesday December 17, 2024 at 2:07 pm
- Say something. - Friday October 25, 2024 at 6:03 pm
- Keep going, or veer right - Monday August 26, 2024 at 4:30 pm
