Canada

I am old enough to remember IMF "forcing" countries to privatize their services and industries (well, they still do).

It is beyond me Canada doing the same without being under duress, just for the sake of ideology.

I understand that in some places, for some services, it brought some prosperity, but they had guardrails in place. Like enforceable regulations and strong unions that covers the whole industry rather than a single company. But there are also places in which just creating those guardrails made public industry efficient without the need of privatization.

Mail/logistics is something that scares me to be fully privatized. From the difference in employees quality of life, to the quality of services, to the formation of monopoly or cartels.

Let's just farm out our mail services to america. How about that? Or are we trying to get away from that old tried and true 'leaning on another country' act. Maybe our own band of Canadian privateers? No. We are getting back what the people used to own so screw privatization. Unions...if you are still united and not just big business, I'm looking at you.

The situation kinda sucks but it is what it is. Basically, we've got private delivery firms with non-unionized employees and gig workers taking up the more lucrative package delivery business, with the crappy money-losing mail business going to Canada Post. Uniuni, Dragonfly, and Intelcom are replacing Canada Post. But Canada Post's union shot themselves in the foot by going on strike multiple times, for long enough that businesses switched away from using them because they're seen as unreliable now.

The gig worker model seems to be more efficient and clearly the investors of these companies agree, so I don't see any economic force that's going to stop things from continue in the direction that they are. There is still competition here though between these companies for small parcel delivery, so it's keeping shipping prices down.

P.S. this is also the model for private healthcare in Ontario that they're attempting - farm out the lucrative procedures to private clinics, with the expensive and risky treatments being done in public hospitals. So watch for that...

Is there any public service that isn't under attack with the threat of privatization?