I just went in to switch sales & shipping off to Canada in my business policies and its not possible (I could have sworn it was possible). The only North American 'countries' we can toggle are the US, Bermuda, St Pierre & Miquelon and Greenland. We cannot shut off sales or shipping to Canada, so for those of us who thought there might have been an option apart from continuing to play this rousing game of chicken and shutting down to avoid a potential pile up of INRs, there is none.
I did shut down for ten days a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed the lack of hassle and never ending problems ecommerce seems to have become. It was a lovely ten days of out of sight, out of mind.
Trudeau is in a real pickle, his parties policy is to not intervene in labour disputes and here he has three giant whoppers right on his hands, the Montreal port shutdown, the Vancouver port shutdown, and this one lingering, right at the absolute worst possible time of year. All the labour minister does is tell the union and the employer to 'get it done", well neither are getting it done are they. In CP's case, I dont think they want a deal, I think they are bargaining in bad faith waiting for an arbitration order or back to work legislation so they can stick with the status quo while they continue trying to bust the union by claiming they are broke. I think they want amazonian drone employees who work 16 hour days using their own vehicle being paid minimum wage who can be fired for cause if they screw up on anything. The truth I suspect is that management are so bad at their jobs of running Canada Post they cant afford to offer their staff anything more at all, and they certainly wouldnt consider wage cuts themselves. My career in the civil service taught me the most useless people in any large organization are in management. How do you run what used to be a near monopoly into the ground like they have? Im sure a thousand page book could be written about this - the incompetence is no doubt breathtaking.
The union strike notice today is just brinksmanship to try to push CP into putting forth a better deal but I suspect their intent is to wait for govt to intervene and legislate everybody back to work if they choose to go. This is pure speculation at this point but Im not sure the Liberals are going to do this, Trudeau doesnt seem to want to do anything about anything these days that could cause him to lose power. If Singh Poileivre and the BQ guy start sabre rattling about this, then we might see some action taken. Meanwhile every single Canadian who has bought something online not on Amazon is stuck on the sidelines watching this stupid game play out that cares nothing for the collateral damage it is creating. Think of the money ebay stands to lose from Canadian sellers shutting down as a result of this, its not chump change (compared to the Americans it is, but you know what I mean).
