Business
Canada’s postal service would benefit from liberalization, privatization, new MEI publication shows
From the Montreal Economic Institute
- Canada Post has accumulated $3.8 billion in losses since 2018.
- The Crown corporation is receiving a $1-billion taxpayer loan to stay afloat in 2025-2026.
- Privatization should include an employee share ownership plan.
Privatizing Canada Post and opening up the sector to competition would result in better services and lower prices for Canadians, shows a new publication released by the MEI.
“Canadians are held hostage by a postal system that is inefficient, strike-prone, and, increasingly, financially non-viable,” says Vincent Geloso, senior economist at the MEI and co-author of the report. “We should follow the lead of European countries like Germany that have liberalized and privatized their postal services, with excellent results.”
Canada Post has a federal monopoly on regular letter mail, making it the only entity legally permitted to deliver non-express letters.
The Crown corporation has run deficits for seven straight years, accumulating over $3.6 billion in losses over the past decade.
Meanwhile, letter volume in Canada has fallen from 5.5 billion letters in 2006 to 2 billion in 2024, a 64 per cent decline.
Canada Post’s market share in parcel delivery has also cratered, falling from 62 per cent in 2019 to 24 per cent in 2024, as private competitors have captured more of the growing market.
In December 2024, more than 55,000 Canada Post workers went on a 32-day strike that ground mail and parcel delivery to a halt causing a backlog of nearly 10 million packages, impacting individuals and businesses alike. The strike reportedly cost small businesses an estimated $1.6 billion.
This past May, another union issued a strike notice and began a nationwide overtime ban, again obstructing delivery volumes. Currently, Canada Post employees are voting on the corporation’s latest offer; if the vote fails, there are fears that another strike would ensue.
“There is an inherent problem with monopolies,” explains Mr. Geloso. “No competition means no incentive to be efficient or innovate, which means higher prices by way of increased costs, and consumers are left with no alternative.”
In 1989, Germany decided to open up its market to a limited amount of competition, and by 2008, the sector was fully liberalized.
Privatization of Deutsche Post started in 2000, and currently, the government holds only a small minority stake in the former monopoly.
Today, over 15,000 firms offer some sort of postal service in Germany. The country’s mail service generally outperforms those of other European countries.
In Canada, the cost of sending a letter is 50 per cent higher today than it was in 1989 (inflation-adjusted).
In Germany, postage prices have fallen by 10 per cent over the same period (after accounting for inflation).
The MEI recommends the following steps to kickstart a two-year process of privatizing Canada Post:
- Offer employees shares: This would give workers a stake in the company’s success and help prevent insiders from taking advantage during the transition (i.e., avoid asset-stripping).
- Avoid regulatory capture: A swift reform process would reduce the risk of special interest groups lobbying regulators to lock in unfair advantages in the law.
“Canada Post’s inability to adapt to the changing market shows that it won’t get better on its own; it needs a massive overhaul,” says Mr. Geloso. “Canadians are paying a lot for a second-rate service; Germany showed us how we can turn this around.”
The MEI Economic Note is available here.
* * *
The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
A resurfaced 2018 video from a Minneapolis-area TV station shows how Somali scammers allegedly bilked Minnesota out of millions of dollars for services that they never provided.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley touched off a storm on social media Friday after he posted a photo of one day-care center, which displayed a banner calling it “The Greater Learing Center” on X, along with a 42-minute video that went viral showing him visiting that and other day-care centers. The surveillance video, which aired on Fox 9 in 2018 after being taken in 2015, showed parents taking kids into the center, then leaving with them minutes later, according to Fox News.
“They were billing too much, they went up to high,” Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman told Fox 9 in 2018. “It’s hard to imagine they were serving that many people. Frankly if you’re going to cheat, cheat little, because if you cheat big, you’re going to get caught.”
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Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was accused of engaging in “systemic” retaliation against whistleblowers in a Nov. 30 statement by state employees. Assistant United States Attorney Joe Thompson announced on Dec. 18 that the amount of suspected fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid program had reached over $9 billion.
After Shirley’s video went viral, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the agency was already sending additional resources in a Sunday post on X, citing the case surrounding Feeding Our Future, which at one point accused the Minnesota government of racism during litigation over the suspension of funds after earlier allegations of fraud.
KSTP reported that the Quality Learning Center, one of the centers visited by Shirley, had 95 citations for violations from one Minnesota agency between 2019 to 2023.
President Donald Trump announced in a Nov. 21 post on Truth Social that he would end “Temporary Protected Status” for Somalis in the state in response to allegations of welfare fraud and said that the influx of refugees had “destroyed our country.”
Business
Disclosures reveal Minnesota politician’s husband’s companies surged thousands-fold amid Somali fraud crisis
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest financial disclosures reveal seemingly sudden wealth accumulation inside her household, even as Minnesota grapples with revelations of massive fraud that may have siphoned more than $9 billion from government programs. The numbers, drawn from publicly filed congressional reports, show two companies tied to Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, surging in value at a pace that raises more questions than answers.
According to the filings, Rose Lake Capital LLC — a business advisory firm Mynett co-founded in 2022 — jumped from an assessed range of $1 to $1,000 in 2023 to between $5 million and $25 million in 2024. Even using the most conservative assumptions allowed under Congress’ broad valuation ranges, the company’s value would have increased thousands of times in a single year. The firm advertises itself as a facilitator of “deal-making, mergers and acquisitions, banking, politics and diplomacy.”
Archived versions of Rose Lake’s website once showcased an eye-catching lineup of political heavyweights: former Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli, former Sen. Max Baucus, and prominent Democratic National Committee alumni William Derrough and Alex Hoffman. But as scrutiny surrounding Omar intensifies — particularly over whether her political network intersected with sprawling fraud schemes exposed in Minnesota — the company has quietly scrubbed its online footprint. Names and biographies of team members have vanished, and the firm has not clarified whether these figures remain involved. Omar’s office offered no comment when asked to explain the company’s sudden growth or the removal of its personnel listings.
Mynett, Omar’s third husband, has long been a controversial presence in her political orbit, but the dramatic swell in his business holdings comes at a moment when trust in Minnesota’s oversight systems is already badly shaken. Federal and state investigators now estimate that fraud involving pandemic-era and nonprofit programs may exceed $9 billion, a staggering figure for a state often held up as a model of progressive governance. For many residents, the revelation that Omar’s household wealth soared during the same period only deepens skepticism about who benefited from Minnesota’s expansive social-spending apparatus.
The financial story doesn’t stop with Rose Lake. A second Mynett-linked entity, ESTCRU LLC — a boutique winery registered in Santa Rosa, California — reported an assessed value of $1 million to $5 million in 2024. Just a year earlier, Omar disclosed its worth at $15,000 to $50,000. Despite the dramatic valuation spike, ESTCRU’s online storefront does not appear to function, its last social media activity dates back to early 2023, and the phone number listed on its website is no longer in service. As with Rose Lake, Omar’s office declined to comment on the winery’s sudden rise in reported value.
The House clerk has yet to release 2025 disclosures, leaving unanswered how these companies are performing today — and how such explosive growth materialized in the first place.
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