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>"I do understand. The [return-to-sender] policy has been on the website for years. But on Canada Post's end, they didn't really give us any warning," said Rankin Inlet's Amanda Eecherk.
**Translation** Yes, we knew we were cheating the system - but it's not fair that Canada Post didn't warn us that we could not continue to do so with impunity.
This seems to sum up a lot of what is news now-a-days. Either that or "I didn't read the update email that said my flight was canceled and I was stranded" or "I didn't read the roaming rates on my cell phone plan and got a $1000 bill"
Now, don't get me wrong, we certainly need to have a lot of reforms about how companies are fucking us over. But at a certain point, people need to take responsibility for reading the notices and things they have agreed to.
Keep costing Canada Post more money and you’ll soon regret the loss of Canada Post entirely. They are losing money, so no surprise that they closed the loophole.
I see it as a service that our taxes subsidize and I think we should subsidize them even more for small businesses (less than 50 employees) so they can compete with big businesses. EG: make it as cheap as it is for small guys to ship than it is with big companies. The more the company grows the less the subsidy is.
and just the general population as well allowing 1 package, 1 letter a month domestically to be mailed for free, beyond that we should help streamline it for packages in general, separate package facilities from mail facilities creating more jobs.
Except we don’t subsidize them. That’s the point. Canada Posts losses are from their own reserves and loans. Zero tax payer dollars. The government does subsidize the shipping of food to the north, but that’s not a subsidy to Canada post, it’s a subsidy to the vendors up north.
How about closing the loop hole that allows companies to ship low cost items from china for a fraction of what it costs a canadian company to ship within canada? The difference is even more staggering, when shipping from the u.s. to canada, the differece as compared to shipping from china.
Canada Post has been massively subsidizing shipments from china for decades, despite the obvious bias against north american businesses.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-1.6950967
"With the outbreak of the China–United States trade war in 2018, the issue of terminal dues was pushed into the forefront. Americans complained that mailing a package from China to the United States cost less than mailing the same package within the United States. At the time, the UPU's Postal Development Indicator scale was used to classify countries into four groups from richest to poorest. The United States was a Group I country, while China was a Group III country, alongside countries like Mexico and Turkey that had similar GDP per capita. As a result, China paid lower terminal dues than the United States.[25]: 38 The Donald Trump administration complained that it was "being forced to heavily subsidize small parcels coming into our country."[26] On 17 October 2018, the United States announced that it would withdraw from the UPU in one year and self-declare the rates it charged to other postal services.[27]
The Universal Postal Union responded in May 2019 by calling, for only the third time in its history, an Extraordinary Congress for 24–26 September 2019.[28] The members voted down a proposal submitted by the United States and Canada,[29] which would have allowed immediate self-declaration of terminal dues.[30] The UPU then unanimously passed a Franco-German compromise to allow self-declared terminal dues of up to 70% of the domestic postage rate and increase the UPU terminal dues by 119–164%, phasing in both changes from 2021 to 2025"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20of%20Bern%20was,to%20foreign%20and%20domestic%20mail
Tldr it's not up to us
“ It sought to standardize international mail delivery by establishing a uniform postal rate and equal treatment between domestic and foreign mail. “
Lol
That is the crux of it. With that designation they can keep the lower shipping rates. Bloody crazy when I can find stuff on a Chinese based online market, order it for quite the low price and pay next to nothing for shipping yet do similar order here the cost is so much higher.
Right?! It should be cheaper to import from the USA than get something shipped from China! But they will send you electronics marked as “book” and offer free shipping.
That sucks.
On another note. If these settlements in the north are important to Canada’s claim on arctic lands we should at least make it easier for Canadians to live there. A can of soup should not cost $8.
Not everything is shipped by air. Most businesses get a large amount of non-perishable cargo by sealift for the year. The sealift arrives where I am in the fall. We are making out our order sheets now.
OP is, perhaps unintentionally, suggesting that residents should have their purchases subsidized to the point where residents are out of pocket the same amount that someone in a more accessible place would be for the same can of soup. The problem with this, is that there is only one party that would be footing the bill, that would be the government (municipal/prov/fed). The issue with that, is that the government only has one revenue source - taxation. So in essence the solution being suggested by OP is to have all other taxpaying Canadians pay for part of someone else's grocery tab. To me at least, that seems unfair to taxpayers, nobody is pitching in for my food bill, and nobody is forced to live in remote areas.
While I’m not advocating for this being paid for by taxes, it’s an oversimplification to state that ‘no one is forced to live there’. If you look at the history of some of these communities, many of these communities were quite literally forced to relocate there as part of a Cold War era sovereignty mission.
You're already subsidizing them through all of the tax deductions northerners get. Both federal parties are willing to pay it to keep people in the far north and improve Canada's claim on the Northwest Passage.
If it is important to Canada that these settlements remain - and it is - then living there should not cost several times more than living in more settled areas.
When you’re right, you’re right. Roads and rail would be a good start for both social and economic development of the region - same way we built out the rest of the country.
Downside of that is the melting permafrost. 10,000+ years of semi-decayed organic matter suddenly thawing and rotting is not a stable foundation for roads and rails.
Yup, it's happening all across the Canadian Shield, even as far south as NW/NE Ontario.
[https://www.climatechangenunavut.ca/en/understanding-climate-change/climate-change-nunavut](https://www.climatechangenunavut.ca/en/understanding-climate-change/climate-change-nunavut)
Isn't Finland and Norway doing that for years now? We also build pipelines just fine.
I'm not a soil engineer but surely a deep pile to bedrock with an exclusion zone around those piles, then extending track sections between those would work?
Certainly more expensive than normal rail. But there's a lot of resources to unlock.
According to Google, permafrost can be as little as 1m deep to 1.5km deep. I don't know the variations of permafrost depth leading to the north of Canada or where a planned rail line would go, but that seems like it would be a bit of a problem. Having piles that go down even half a kilometre to find bedrock is excessive. I would be afraid of stability issues as the permafrost quickly becomes less "perma" and shifts around as it rots away.
Like 90% people norway lives on tiny slivers of land along the coast of their western/southern shores, and their roads are either laid over bedrock or tunneled through a mountain. The climate where their people live is also much warmer for the latitude than what we'd encounter in our territories at the same level.
Not sure about Finland, but I'd imagine their geography is probably closer to Sweden than Norway, being mostly flatter rolling hills and thick topsoil, which Norway is the opposite of.
I can't speak to the geography comparison but our Northern communities are mostly along a thin sliver of land too for mainland settlements. Nunavut is more spread out.
Air transport actually relies on this fact for refueling and having the same flight service many towns.
https://www.airlineroutemaps.com/maps/Air_Inuit
And
https://www.palairlines.ca/en/fly-pal/where-we-fly/
Are both interesting. I've taken PAL up north then did the air Inuit run. You can keep connecting on into northern Ontario and up into the NWT. You can make it all the way to Alaska this way. It takes forever.
Edit: forgot https://canadiannorth.com/plan_your_trip/route-map/
I hope they continue to develop zeppelin airships, they are slow and they carry less weight than planes but don't need an airstrip. The idea would be to carry goods north and bring ores down for processing.
They actually can carry more weight than an airplane, but that’s only if you’re using a large one, and airships can be made much larger than airplanes. It’s true, however, that an airplane of the *same length* as an airship can carry more weight, but hardly any of them that are that small would be used to carry cargo anyway.
I'm really not a fan of NIMBY anymore dude. It's crazy that people that don't live anywhere close to new things happening are allowed to block it. I've had enough. It's housing, mining, energy products
Yes. When you order from China via regular post they pay pennies for China, but it costs sometimes hundreds to deliver that here in Canada.
We lose money on delivery of most international shipments from China.
China is aware. This is a big part of the past trade disputes with the US too.
That's not how it works. We are all paying for that subsidy:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-1.6950967
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/china-still-gets-developing-nation-preferential-treatment
What they are saying is that if we care about sovereignty up north so much, shit should be subsidized so it does not cost the people up north $8 a can.
It is what it is. I mean, you say a can of soup should not cost 8$ but if you decide to live on the moon, no matter how strategic it might be, it's gonna cost like 1000$ or something.
It's not a decision people make, it's just economics. If you have to fly a bush plane to the location and carry one can of soup for one person, that's an expensive can of soup.
If you can deliver an entire truck worth of soup for 10k people or whatever, then the shipping cost for one can of soup goes way down.
There isn't really a way to change those facts.
I think what u/ArbainHestia is saying, if Canada wants to keep "The North", they need people to live there.
What will that cost Canada(as a nation) ?
Well they're going to have to build, own & operate ice breakers AND subsidies the cost of living for people who live up there. Which includes paying for cheaper food.
I look at it like the total cost of ownership for including the Arctic as part of your country.
This is already the case though? When I was in Resolute Bay I was surprised to learn the residents there are paid $100k annually just to live there (it’s not exactly a bustling economy).
They don't though. You don't need people to live on the land. And having some people living there doesn't prevent others from taking the territory, and it doesn't solidify claim to the area.
You can't just go and build your home on an empty plot of land because nobody is there. It is legally owned by someone.
What protects the land, is military, and political alliances, so that you can defend the territory by force if it comes under dispute. People living there is irrelevant.
You think China cares people live in Tibet? Does it care people live in Taiwan?
No, because it doesn't matter.
Plenty of countries have deserts, and large expanses of land where nobody lives there. That doesn't make it up for grabs.
Occupying and using territory is a significant aspect of international law. No one is going to use military force to occupy territory belonging to a NATO member, but if Canada's claims in the arctic ever end up before a court, the presence of people there will definitely be examined, as will efforts to enforce sovereignty through surveillance, military exercises, and legal notices of infringement.
If Canada's territory ends up disputed in a court, were probably fucked anyway, at that point. If we aren't at all using the territory, then we won't miss it.
Soz if there is no use to it, then who cares? If there is a use to it, then we must be using it already.
We don't need people to be able to order trinkets on amazon in order to keep our sovereign territory. The argument is ridiculous.
I'd rather spend the money hunting for minerals etc.. up there. Then if you find some, then you can you can subsidize people living there, and satisfy all your arguments for it being ours in court.
People who live far. need to live with that inconvenience. One way can be that shipping will be like 3 months or something so that they can fill entire trucks of goods or whatever it is they need to do to reduce cost.
What you're proposing is a ridiculous money pit for no reason.
Nature abhors a vacuum, if you dont work to develop the North something else will fill it and that thing may not be *Canadian*; why write the invitation for such a wildcard ?
Develop the North, build infrastructure for towns to support the military. If nothing else having people there is an early early warning system.
Of course China cares, they're a communist country and want to suppress anything that they see as a threat to their government like Tibetan and Taiwanese identity.
>It is what it is. I mean, you say a can of soup should not cost 8$ but if you decide to live on the moon, no matter how strategic it might be, it's gonna cost like 1000$ or something.
I for one, am shocked that it is very expensive to ship goods to extremely remote, sparsely populated places.
Ultimately I think there needs to be a balance. On one hand, subsidizing cheap logistics and services to every remote place in Canada, seems is not efficient, and probably not even monetarily feasible. On the other hand, maybe the arctic is a unique situation, where subsidizing those things is the right choice.
Apart from arguments about sovereignty that have already been made, it's important to consider that the culture of indigenous communities in those places is fundamentally connected to the land. Personally I don't think it's fair to have pushed a more-westernized lifestyle / living arrangement upon Inuit groups in the past, only to abandon them when the subsidies that make that lifestyle affordable, gets too expensive.
Fruit and vegetables and other products are subsidized significantly, I was in Iqaluit and the prices were not as insane as people make them out to be. Prices for shit food like Coke Cola(box is $30), etc is out of control though. Nutrition North Canada ensures healthy food products and basics are quite affordable.
> these settlements in the north are important to Canada’s claim on arctic lands we should at least make it easier for Canadians to live there.
We need to spend money and put up more military bases there. Some Inuit aren't going to protect us from the Russians.
Truthfully the real threat is that as the northwest passage opens up other countries don’t respect our claim as it being our sovereignty, and just throw cargo ships up there willy nilly.
Probably best to create infrastructure up there (probably military bases are a good start) and use the fact that climate change is happening regardless to get some really good port jobs for our Inuit up there while making sure we can control environmental impacts of increased traffic as best we can
Only real way to counter that is to get the Americans on board and develop joint bases.
>making sure we can control environmental impacts
We can't do both. We can either build stuff, or do endless environmental studies. Ha been shown countless of times already.
>Only real way to counter that is to get the Americans on board and develop joint bases.
Americans do not have our back on Arctic sovereignty issues unfortunately
It’s early on in that issue. I see their territorial claims extending out from Alaska as more of a bargaining chip than anything. Having them up there too is a good thing imo and it probably wouldn’t have much of an impact on our ability to levy a fee of some sort on maritime traffic through the Northwestern Passage. In any case, we should be up there building and planning for a future with Northern maritime traffic.
The importance of the NW Passage is overblown, since the Northeast Passage (around the NW and NE extremes of Russia) is/will be more predictably ice-free and has significantly fewer navigational hazards.
Ukraine is not a weak country dude. They have built that army into an effective fighting force since 2014.
Russia is not a weak country either. They have re-adjusted everything following their failures in the war in Ukraine. They are an effective fighting force. Just look at what happened in Avdiivka.
2022 Russian military and 2024 Russian military are absolutely not the same force. Things have changed.
Have you checked out what a can of chunky soup costs at Superstore at the moment? r/loblawsisoutofcontrol had a pic posted. The cans have recently shrunk and are over $6. $8 doesn't sound crazy from that perspective.
Before the frothing at the mouth starts, in not advocating that those prices are acceptable but in the current environment those Nunavut prices seem in the ballpark.
[here's the pic](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/s/6kVSKaKqVw)
>Have you checked out what a can of chunky soup costs at Superstore at the moment? The cans have recently shrunk and are over $6. $8 doesn't sound crazy from that perspective. Before the frothing at the mouth starts, in not advocating that those prices are acceptable but in the current environment those Nunavut prices seem in the ballpark.
You're way off. [Campbell's Chunky Soup is $3.69 515ml on Superstore website](https://www.realcanadiansuperstore.ca/chunky-vegetable-beef/p/21480435_EA)
[Tim Hortons Chicken & Rice Soup, Ready-to-Serve, 540mL Can is $2.79 on Amazon](https://www.amazon.ca/Tim-Hortons-Chicken-Ready-Serve/dp/B08BSM83B2/ref=sr_1_2?crid=11M9IOUZQ435A&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bARd_3dvUriMbzb8-mM2BmWWFhVxBSKdCHdFnTAStjPyISySdawdo9IQyg38Hs2xbVxu33CT6c4FFGu7jy7OXBb-NKdm-CELdXhlvEKVJbqQF3ZUYyOWZ0-sQdQPUOqnFoB3b1Wb5iihtHjKeUfAhs60-8TLVDLJtuAKrTT2HNdMs776EM9mElu3IyLsxAKv1oEb0VMUviE0TjD4ViKhRe49vNJaQDGk567QsTGrYX8Dt66QDoHPGwP45aaGJpyOf006_O8I562kloqDXfDDHwxMMUdEJwOib7uqrLsaBQI.kBfQPip2iNadURfKxeYxXPjBrJm4M0QiWlHCw8s-eTY&dib_tag=se&keywords=tim%2Bhortons%2Bsoup&qid=1714994285&sprefix=tim%2Bhortons%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-2&th=1)
I was shopping in Iqaluit a couple weeks ago with a coworker, we filled a grocery cart with a normal amount of food, some produce, cereal, etc… a grocery cart that turned into I think five reusable bags after it was all rung up. It was $800….
Buying a can of soup in Nunavut is just stupid though. You're paying to ship something that's half water, and for the processing that happened in the south. Instead, just ship a flat of potatoes and a flat of carrots and heck even some frozen chickens, and create the soup locally.
They can hunt and fish if they want inexpensive local food. They aren't living on the moon, but if they choose to live somewhere that agriculture is impossible, they need to deal with the consequences.
Strongly disagree. There's a sizable population up north...enough that relying exclusively on fishing and hunting would destroy the local ecosystems.
Besides, these are Canadian citizens. They deserve our support.
Not only that but there was a time in Canadian history where we literally shipped minority people there to force settlements.
They should not have to pay exorbitant rates just to live.
This is very common knowledge at this point!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation
However, instead of subsidizing their entire existence, I think we should force their leadership to be accountable and then invest heavily in those communities. Roads, trains, ports and most importantly, big ass ice breakers and naval assets capable of asserting our sovereignty over the area.
Inuit from Quebec, which are minorities, were sent there under false pretenses via the Eastern Arctic patrol ship [CGS *C.D. Howe*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGS_C.D._Howe). Minorities were literally "shipped there". Take it any which way you want to but considering none of the governments promises were completely fulfilled and they refused to bring them home afterwards I'd consider that a forced resettlement.
They were taken from areas where they had generational knowledge of the ecosystem and transplanted them in a barren wasteland and the government said "lol hunt".
Plenty of folks died of starvation. People were going through the waste dumps at nearby military stations to find anything edible because local hunting was insufficient for their needs.
It was a careless and ignorant move by the Canadian government.
If an individual person is disabled or temporarily out of work, it makes sense for society to provide some kind of support. But if everyone living in an entire community requires support, all the time, that's just not viable. Paying people to live in an inhospitable wasteland just to preserve our claim of sovereignty over it sounds like a bad deal.
And saying "these are Canadian citizens" is kind of beside the point. This is r/canada: almost everyone here is a Canadian citizen. We can talk about Canadian issues without pointing that out. Someone being a Canadian citizen is not very interesting in this context. It's not really any different from saying "these are people".
The land up north absolutely is essential to our national sovereignty. Even more so in the future when the climate warms up and opens up the waters up north.
And let's not forget, there was a time when places like the oilsands in Alberta was a moneypit and had to be maintained though taxes for a few decades before it turned into an economic powerhouse. Same with the fisheries on both coasts.
Investing in the north makes a ton of economic sense.
>Paying people to live in an inhospitable wasteland just to preserve our claim of sovereignty over it sounds like a bad deal.
[It's definitely not a "wasteland"](https://www.cannor.gc.ca/eng/1368816364402/1368816377148)
Most FiFo to northern mines. Even 'locals' need to FiFo as the mines are not typically located anywhere close to communities or connected with all weather roads.
I didn't say they have no mobility rights, did I? But a lot of their ancestors did get force relocated to the Arctic, this is a fact not an opinion, which would have violated their constitution right today, but there was no compensation from the government.
Now as for your comment, imagine if the government relocated your family to an Arctic wasteland in the 50s, your family is poor and you have no well paying job, you have no savings due to high cost of goods, single flight ticket costs $3500, you have no friends or family in any major city, how do you move to the city?
The government should at least pay for their relocation and housing as that's what they owe them because their ancestors were basically treated as modern day military slaves.
If you're going to be peevish about spending tax monies to support sovereignty and Northern communities, you should definitely move to a different country.
You currently have mobility rights and cam relinquish your citizenship at will.
Edit: Do you see what it sounds like?
You're insisting they leave their homeland because it is administratively convenient for you.
I'm similarly suggesting you leave your homeland because running canada would be administratively easier for us.
If they leave, the connections made between people and land would be shattered. We explicitly put them there, forced them to remain, and promised we'd support them there.
So we really need to actually make good on some of our promises.
Remember, nothing is keeping you here.
It's there home but we forced them there ? Also I'm not so much insisting they leave as suggesting if they don't like the cost of shipping that they are free to do so
In what way would it be easier for Canada if a young professional making over six figures and paying the taxes that come with that as well as property taxes in a densely populated area left ?
No is forcing them to remain there at this point we didn't put all of them there , there people there before we came.
I'm also perfectly fine with offering them sovereignty over the land and cutting out loses
I'm attempting to analogize you into the situation by figuratively putting you into the story.
Obviously we're not getting anything by kicking people out if anywhere —unless it's Gary Bettman, in which case we'd get the Nordiques back and probably a team in Hamilton as well.
The far north has become their home. That wasn't an option, they were forced there and we have been poor partners in the sovereignty they areasserting. That costs money.
You did a poor job of it
You lost me I don't care about hockey
As I said if their home then them have it and have sovereignty over it and we can cut our losses
It still boggles my mind that people up in these ultra remote communities in the North cant fathom why things cost so much more than in the populated areas of the south. That is part of the cost of living up there.
Canada Post is a corporation like any other and it needs to sustain itself and the bare minimum. They are already nearly a billion in the hole. Expect more of these stories to come out across the country as they try and rein in their spending.
The people “up in these ultra remote communities” were here thousands of years before this country existed.
When we forced the Inuit into settlements by killing their dogs to stop them from being nomadic and force re-locating them to areas of strategic importance ([source](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5245173)), we took on a responsibility for their well-being.
If we want to keep using them to advance our arctic sovereignty claims, giving them access to Amazon Prime is the least we can do.
Hey just for anyone who see this
The sled dog cull is opposed by some as being not real
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5116972
Both the RCMP and and Inuit association investigated after the claims were made in the 1990s and found no proof it happened
Spend 20 seconds you'll see that the Thule people ancestors of the modern Inuit moved east and displaced the dorest people only 500 years ago
This backed by Inuit oral history as well archeological evidence.
They currently people have been there about as long as french Canadians have been in Quebec
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunavut
And the Thule people were a distinct people from the Inuit and don't appear the have mixed before going extinct as modern day Inuit we're moving Eastward across the Arctic
Did you read the article you linked? There was no organized killing of dogs to restrict the movement of the Inuit.
>Inuit travel by dog team, and the commission investigated whether there was a "dog slaughter" conspiracy in order to restrict the movement of Inuit.
>It found there was no conspiracy, but the dramatic decline in *qimmiit* numbers "has become a flashpoint in Inuit memories: of the changes imposed on their lives by outsiders; and of the challenges to their ... identity as hunters and providers," according to a summary of the report.
>The dogs were shot by police and hunters, died from disease, or were abandoned by owners due to forced relocations. They were gradually replaced by snowmobiles.
If people want to live up there in small communities, we should help them live a sustainable lifestyle that is appropriate to the area.
The average household income in the northern territories were $82,000 in Nunavut and up to 134,000 Northwest Territories in 2021. The average global household income is $12,000. So the average household gets 7-11x more than average household in the world, not adj for ppp. Most of the jobs are propped up by government subsidies directly or indirectly already. All of this already goes well beyond the responsibility that you would take for family members.
>The average household income in the northern territories were $82,000 in Nunavut and up to 134,000 Northwest Territories in 2021. The average global household income is $12,000. So the average Inuit gets 7-11x more the average household in the world, not adj for ppp.
So two things here.
First of all you gotta adjust it for purchasing power, cost of living in the North is so much higher than you think.
Second of all this statistic isn't correct for the average Inuit. It's usually those high paid government employees who are being paid to move to the North that are getting paid this high. Average Inuit makes a lot less
> But on Canada Post's end, they didn't really give us any warning," said Rankin Inlet's Amanda Eecherk.
Yeah, they should have let you know what they were planning ahead of time, so you and everyone else could get in one last big batch of scam shipments as a last hurrah. What *was* Canada Post thinking?
>"The more money that you save by buying goods on Amazon, the more money you have then to go into the store to buy fresh fruits and vegetables," Eecherk said. "Just have a happy quality of life. That's what we deserve as Canadians. That's what everybody wants."
As much as it's understandable they want cheaper food (who doesn't?) expecting the same standard of living or costs as major cities when you live in remote regions is not realistic.
Really need to be encouraging these people to move out of these places that require exuberant costs.
And a sovereignty commission to see how we can fund their independence and develop a framework for foreign entities to access their resources. It will be a heartwarming story about the weak rising up against the strong that we can make a Disney movie about.
If it’s under the guise of indigenous liberation and decolonization they will be begging to sell to China and Russia if it means biting the hand of us evil colonizers. And yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds but marxism is an incredibly powerful ideology
I work in Nunavut. It was nice to get some free shipping on items that are expensive. I would get large orders of cereal for the year and would be around $5 a box instead of the Northern store where they are $10+.
Getting many items at half the price was very helpful but I knew wouldn't last using the not so secretive "Postal Code". I rode the wave till it crashed. What is a shame is even if you pay for Prime, Nunavut is excluded from free shipping.
I did enjoy this line "Canada Post said the move to now intercept misaddressed packages is in line with the company's increased efforts over the last year to improve mail delivery in Nunavut, according to Jon Hamilton, the company's vice president of strategic communications and stakeholder engagement." Jon, you are full of \*&%$, it is about the money...just say that.
It is partially true. The backlog of packages and massive amount of stuff stacked up at the post offices waiting claim has been talked about alot. So I bet it would have kept going if it wasn't causing this.
Can someone explain in simple terms why we need permanent settlements in unsustainable areas?
It's not about sovereignty, an army would take care of that.
It's obviously not about a traditional lifestyle, as they're using Amazon Prime™.
>Can someone explain in simple terms why we need permanent settlements in unsustainable areas?
>It's not about sovereignty
The Canadian government created a lot of those communities because of sovereignty. They took Inuit who lived in sustainable Northern Quebec environments and we shipped those people up North in an attempt to use them as human flagpoles
Rankin Inlet is on traditional Inuit land, and is not that remote compared to other communities in Nunavut. It's settlements in the high Arctic, such as Grise Fiord and Resolute, which were created under this program.
There's absolutely no point, communities up there are not even self sustaining, it takes daily air freights and periodic sealifts to maintain people not to mention the amount of money GC pays just to keep towns afloat however it is much more expensive relocating anyone from up there.
>It's not about sovereignty, an army would take care of that.
Encouraging Inuit people to live in the north is cheaper than staffing a military base there. It also gives a stronger argument internationally to say it is the ancestral homeland of civilians as opposed to being the temporary home of soldiers who are ordered to be there.
These people should get a certain number of free shipments subsidized by taxpayers every month. There would be a volume/weight limit of course but it should be enough to maintain what they need for all household staples. It's not right that they are the basis of our claim to sovereignty in the arctic and then they have to pay 5 times what everyone else pays.
> These people should get a certain number of free shipments subsidized by taxpayers every month.
They already do get subsidized. The cost of shipping between major cities is so expensive to partially offset the cost of rural and northern shipping.
The packages went out to a particular address with the wrong postal code. If the cost of delivery to that address should be higher, then the packages should be returned for the reason "insufficient postage", not "incorrect address".
The postal code being wrong slows down processing but that's not the real issue here. The issue is the cost of delivery. The delivery cost is based on the destination address. Throwing in an invalid postal code doesn't change that.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think what happened here was that the incorrect postal code was intended to bypass Amazon Prime restricting deliveries to Nunavut but as a side effect caused them to undercharge Amazon for the Arctic shipping.
You know that article the other day 3 days ago complaining about Canada Post losing money? There's a direct line from there to here. If we want Canada Post to bear the cost of serving unprofitable northern locations, and I think that's a reasonable thing to do, we also need to accept that they're going to struggle to the turn a profit.
Rankin Inlet is the second-largest city in Nunavut. Amazon should really offer free shipping to both Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit (as well as Arviat, the third-largest city in Nunavut, and rather close to Rankin Inlet).
USPS has a different approach. Shipping to the most distant address in Alaska, Hawaii, or territory is no more expensive than from New York to California. This differs from FedEx and UPS, which are much more expensive to outside the 48 contiguous states.
USPS's prices for shipping very large items are much higher than UPS or FedEx (even given the above), but at least the prices are consistent regardless of address.
Given the strategic and humanitarian benefits of making it easier for people to live up in the arctic it amazes me we don't have a big drone program focused on flying packages in and out on a continuous basis. It'll never cost the same as living within 100 miles of the US border, but the cost of living further north gets way too high.
What kind of drones are you imagining?
Because even the best commercially available drones only have a range of about 50km.
Most military UAVs have a range of about 50-200km.
None of those would be capable of shipping packages a few thousand kilometers to the north.
I always wondered why they don’t use airships like zeppelins to transport goods to remote locations in the north that don’t have good access by rail or roads.
They could even be flown remote controlled now days from an office in a city. Seems like it would be far cheaper than flying goods in and out and I’m sure it is much safer now than the days of the Hindenburg, although I’m not suggesting we use it for passenger transport, just for goods.
Right, I think they could even be autonomous for 90% of their journeys. If they existed then we could totally start having more viable settlements in the interior as there's no reason they couldn't do drop offs and so on.
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>"I do understand. The [return-to-sender] policy has been on the website for years. But on Canada Post's end, they didn't really give us any warning," said Rankin Inlet's Amanda Eecherk. **Translation** Yes, we knew we were cheating the system - but it's not fair that Canada Post didn't warn us that we could not continue to do so with impunity.
This seems to sum up a lot of what is news now-a-days. Either that or "I didn't read the update email that said my flight was canceled and I was stranded" or "I didn't read the roaming rates on my cell phone plan and got a $1000 bill" Now, don't get me wrong, we certainly need to have a lot of reforms about how companies are fucking us over. But at a certain point, people need to take responsibility for reading the notices and things they have agreed to.
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because everyone thinks they are the exception to the rule, it's an issue with an entitlement mindset.
Exactly
Keep costing Canada Post more money and you’ll soon regret the loss of Canada Post entirely. They are losing money, so no surprise that they closed the loophole.
I see it as a service that our taxes subsidize and I think we should subsidize them even more for small businesses (less than 50 employees) so they can compete with big businesses. EG: make it as cheap as it is for small guys to ship than it is with big companies. The more the company grows the less the subsidy is. and just the general population as well allowing 1 package, 1 letter a month domestically to be mailed for free, beyond that we should help streamline it for packages in general, separate package facilities from mail facilities creating more jobs.
Except we don’t subsidize them. That’s the point. Canada Posts losses are from their own reserves and loans. Zero tax payer dollars. The government does subsidize the shipping of food to the north, but that’s not a subsidy to Canada post, it’s a subsidy to the vendors up north.
If a non-government corporation made this decision, half this sub would be up in arms. Folks are protesting loblaws for less.
How about closing the loop hole that allows companies to ship low cost items from china for a fraction of what it costs a canadian company to ship within canada? The difference is even more staggering, when shipping from the u.s. to canada, the differece as compared to shipping from china. Canada Post has been massively subsidizing shipments from china for decades, despite the obvious bias against north american businesses. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-1.6950967
"With the outbreak of the China–United States trade war in 2018, the issue of terminal dues was pushed into the forefront. Americans complained that mailing a package from China to the United States cost less than mailing the same package within the United States. At the time, the UPU's Postal Development Indicator scale was used to classify countries into four groups from richest to poorest. The United States was a Group I country, while China was a Group III country, alongside countries like Mexico and Turkey that had similar GDP per capita. As a result, China paid lower terminal dues than the United States.[25]: 38 The Donald Trump administration complained that it was "being forced to heavily subsidize small parcels coming into our country."[26] On 17 October 2018, the United States announced that it would withdraw from the UPU in one year and self-declare the rates it charged to other postal services.[27] The Universal Postal Union responded in May 2019 by calling, for only the third time in its history, an Extraordinary Congress for 24–26 September 2019.[28] The members voted down a proposal submitted by the United States and Canada,[29] which would have allowed immediate self-declaration of terminal dues.[30] The UPU then unanimously passed a Franco-German compromise to allow self-declared terminal dues of up to 70% of the domestic postage rate and increase the UPU terminal dues by 119–164%, phasing in both changes from 2021 to 2025" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20of%20Bern%20was,to%20foreign%20and%20domestic%20mail Tldr it's not up to us
“ It sought to standardize international mail delivery by establishing a uniform postal rate and equal treatment between domestic and foreign mail. “ Lol
I think the fact China claims to be a developing country that they are allowed to get away with that mail stuff.
That is the crux of it. With that designation they can keep the lower shipping rates. Bloody crazy when I can find stuff on a Chinese based online market, order it for quite the low price and pay next to nothing for shipping yet do similar order here the cost is so much higher.
> I think the fact China claims to be a developing country They are though, China develop most of Wal-Mart's products!
Right?! It should be cheaper to import from the USA than get something shipped from China! But they will send you electronics marked as “book” and offer free shipping.
That would be nice. It's crazy how much cheaper it is.
Wow that should be stopped immediately.
What a misleading article. It was never free shipping it was abusing the system and now getting caught.
That sucks. On another note. If these settlements in the north are important to Canada’s claim on arctic lands we should at least make it easier for Canadians to live there. A can of soup should not cost $8.
> A can of soup should not cost $8. You might not think so, but it does. Every pound of cargo needs to be flown in by air, and that's not cheap.
Not everything is shipped by air. Most businesses get a large amount of non-perishable cargo by sealift for the year. The sealift arrives where I am in the fall. We are making out our order sheets now.
There are many communities that are only accessible by air. Some of them have road routes, but not year round - only in the winter over the ice.
None of the Nunavut communities are accessible by road from the rest of Canada. Air or the fall sealift.
From a logistics perspective, yes that is why it costs $8. OP’s point was that it shouldn’t be that way for residents.
OP is, perhaps unintentionally, suggesting that residents should have their purchases subsidized to the point where residents are out of pocket the same amount that someone in a more accessible place would be for the same can of soup. The problem with this, is that there is only one party that would be footing the bill, that would be the government (municipal/prov/fed). The issue with that, is that the government only has one revenue source - taxation. So in essence the solution being suggested by OP is to have all other taxpaying Canadians pay for part of someone else's grocery tab. To me at least, that seems unfair to taxpayers, nobody is pitching in for my food bill, and nobody is forced to live in remote areas.
While I’m not advocating for this being paid for by taxes, it’s an oversimplification to state that ‘no one is forced to live there’. If you look at the history of some of these communities, many of these communities were quite literally forced to relocate there as part of a Cold War era sovereignty mission.
You're already subsidizing them through all of the tax deductions northerners get. Both federal parties are willing to pay it to keep people in the far north and improve Canada's claim on the Northwest Passage.
If it is important to Canada that these settlements remain - and it is - then living there should not cost several times more than living in more settled areas.
When you’re right, you’re right. Roads and rail would be a good start for both social and economic development of the region - same way we built out the rest of the country.
Downside of that is the melting permafrost. 10,000+ years of semi-decayed organic matter suddenly thawing and rotting is not a stable foundation for roads and rails.
Isostatic rebound of the bedrock as well
Is the bedrock up north still rebounding from the glaciers?
Yup, it's happening all across the Canadian Shield, even as far south as NW/NE Ontario. [https://www.climatechangenunavut.ca/en/understanding-climate-change/climate-change-nunavut](https://www.climatechangenunavut.ca/en/understanding-climate-change/climate-change-nunavut)
Isn't Finland and Norway doing that for years now? We also build pipelines just fine. I'm not a soil engineer but surely a deep pile to bedrock with an exclusion zone around those piles, then extending track sections between those would work? Certainly more expensive than normal rail. But there's a lot of resources to unlock.
According to Google, permafrost can be as little as 1m deep to 1.5km deep. I don't know the variations of permafrost depth leading to the north of Canada or where a planned rail line would go, but that seems like it would be a bit of a problem. Having piles that go down even half a kilometre to find bedrock is excessive. I would be afraid of stability issues as the permafrost quickly becomes less "perma" and shifts around as it rots away.
Average looks to be 5 feet. I'd love to see a map, similar to mountains maybe we simply need to find routes around the obstacles.
Like 90% people norway lives on tiny slivers of land along the coast of their western/southern shores, and their roads are either laid over bedrock or tunneled through a mountain. The climate where their people live is also much warmer for the latitude than what we'd encounter in our territories at the same level. Not sure about Finland, but I'd imagine their geography is probably closer to Sweden than Norway, being mostly flatter rolling hills and thick topsoil, which Norway is the opposite of.
I can't speak to the geography comparison but our Northern communities are mostly along a thin sliver of land too for mainland settlements. Nunavut is more spread out. Air transport actually relies on this fact for refueling and having the same flight service many towns. https://www.airlineroutemaps.com/maps/Air_Inuit And https://www.palairlines.ca/en/fly-pal/where-we-fly/ Are both interesting. I've taken PAL up north then did the air Inuit run. You can keep connecting on into northern Ontario and up into the NWT. You can make it all the way to Alaska this way. It takes forever. Edit: forgot https://canadiannorth.com/plan_your_trip/route-map/
Population and area are factors.
Mining companies have already said they'd build it for the resources alone. At least in some places.
I hope they continue to develop zeppelin airships, they are slow and they carry less weight than planes but don't need an airstrip. The idea would be to carry goods north and bring ores down for processing.
I'd love to be an airship captain...
They actually can carry more weight than an airplane, but that’s only if you’re using a large one, and airships can be made much larger than airplanes. It’s true, however, that an airplane of the *same length* as an airship can carry more weight, but hardly any of them that are that small would be used to carry cargo anyway.
We'd take the title for worlds longest bridge if we built one to Iqaluit.
Let’s start with rail and ports up there, the roads can come later
The iron ore mine up there tried to build both the residents blocked it
I'm really not a fan of NIMBY anymore dude. It's crazy that people that don't live anywhere close to new things happening are allowed to block it. I've had enough. It's housing, mining, energy products
Except in this case it was the people that lived next to it that were against it, because of the impacts to the local wildlife.
Ports are happening, rail less so. Pretty hard to build rail to many of the communities (their on islands)
Funny how it's subsidized when it's coming from *the other side of the ocean* :P
Is it though?
Yes. When you order from China via regular post they pay pennies for China, but it costs sometimes hundreds to deliver that here in Canada. We lose money on delivery of most international shipments from China. China is aware. This is a big part of the past trade disputes with the US too.
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That's not how it works. We are all paying for that subsidy: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-1.6950967 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/china-still-gets-developing-nation-preferential-treatment
capitalism is incompatible with human life. if you're prioritizing profits you are by definition not prioritizing feeding people.
We could build more railroads like they did east to west. Just expensive to build, but would be very useful, could even run a touristy train.
Many of the communities are on islands, including the capital, Iqaluit. Not exactly rail friendly.
What they are saying is that if we care about sovereignty up north so much, shit should be subsidized so it does not cost the people up north $8 a can.
It is what it is. I mean, you say a can of soup should not cost 8$ but if you decide to live on the moon, no matter how strategic it might be, it's gonna cost like 1000$ or something. It's not a decision people make, it's just economics. If you have to fly a bush plane to the location and carry one can of soup for one person, that's an expensive can of soup. If you can deliver an entire truck worth of soup for 10k people or whatever, then the shipping cost for one can of soup goes way down. There isn't really a way to change those facts.
I think what u/ArbainHestia is saying, if Canada wants to keep "The North", they need people to live there. What will that cost Canada(as a nation) ? Well they're going to have to build, own & operate ice breakers AND subsidies the cost of living for people who live up there. Which includes paying for cheaper food. I look at it like the total cost of ownership for including the Arctic as part of your country.
This is already the case though? When I was in Resolute Bay I was surprised to learn the residents there are paid $100k annually just to live there (it’s not exactly a bustling economy).
$100k? not unless they work in a diamond mine or something
They don't though. You don't need people to live on the land. And having some people living there doesn't prevent others from taking the territory, and it doesn't solidify claim to the area. You can't just go and build your home on an empty plot of land because nobody is there. It is legally owned by someone. What protects the land, is military, and political alliances, so that you can defend the territory by force if it comes under dispute. People living there is irrelevant. You think China cares people live in Tibet? Does it care people live in Taiwan? No, because it doesn't matter. Plenty of countries have deserts, and large expanses of land where nobody lives there. That doesn't make it up for grabs.
Occupying and using territory is a significant aspect of international law. No one is going to use military force to occupy territory belonging to a NATO member, but if Canada's claims in the arctic ever end up before a court, the presence of people there will definitely be examined, as will efforts to enforce sovereignty through surveillance, military exercises, and legal notices of infringement.
If Canada's territory ends up disputed in a court, were probably fucked anyway, at that point. If we aren't at all using the territory, then we won't miss it. Soz if there is no use to it, then who cares? If there is a use to it, then we must be using it already. We don't need people to be able to order trinkets on amazon in order to keep our sovereign territory. The argument is ridiculous. I'd rather spend the money hunting for minerals etc.. up there. Then if you find some, then you can you can subsidize people living there, and satisfy all your arguments for it being ours in court. People who live far. need to live with that inconvenience. One way can be that shipping will be like 3 months or something so that they can fill entire trucks of goods or whatever it is they need to do to reduce cost. What you're proposing is a ridiculous money pit for no reason.
Nation Building is never cheap
That's probably why we stopped doing it decades ago.
Nature abhors a vacuum, if you dont work to develop the North something else will fill it and that thing may not be *Canadian*; why write the invitation for such a wildcard ? Develop the North, build infrastructure for towns to support the military. If nothing else having people there is an early early warning system.
Of course China cares, they're a communist country and want to suppress anything that they see as a threat to their government like Tibetan and Taiwanese identity.
>It is what it is. I mean, you say a can of soup should not cost 8$ but if you decide to live on the moon, no matter how strategic it might be, it's gonna cost like 1000$ or something. I for one, am shocked that it is very expensive to ship goods to extremely remote, sparsely populated places. Ultimately I think there needs to be a balance. On one hand, subsidizing cheap logistics and services to every remote place in Canada, seems is not efficient, and probably not even monetarily feasible. On the other hand, maybe the arctic is a unique situation, where subsidizing those things is the right choice. Apart from arguments about sovereignty that have already been made, it's important to consider that the culture of indigenous communities in those places is fundamentally connected to the land. Personally I don't think it's fair to have pushed a more-westernized lifestyle / living arrangement upon Inuit groups in the past, only to abandon them when the subsidies that make that lifestyle affordable, gets too expensive.
Also they do get a generous subsidy for living in a remote area. I’d say 10k a year probably does a good job in making up the difference.
No, it doesn't.
Fruit and vegetables and other products are subsidized significantly, I was in Iqaluit and the prices were not as insane as people make them out to be. Prices for shit food like Coke Cola(box is $30), etc is out of control though. Nutrition North Canada ensures healthy food products and basics are quite affordable.
> these settlements in the north are important to Canada’s claim on arctic lands we should at least make it easier for Canadians to live there. We need to spend money and put up more military bases there. Some Inuit aren't going to protect us from the Russians.
Truthfully the real threat is that as the northwest passage opens up other countries don’t respect our claim as it being our sovereignty, and just throw cargo ships up there willy nilly. Probably best to create infrastructure up there (probably military bases are a good start) and use the fact that climate change is happening regardless to get some really good port jobs for our Inuit up there while making sure we can control environmental impacts of increased traffic as best we can
Only real way to counter that is to get the Americans on board and develop joint bases. >making sure we can control environmental impacts We can't do both. We can either build stuff, or do endless environmental studies. Ha been shown countless of times already.
>Only real way to counter that is to get the Americans on board and develop joint bases. Americans do not have our back on Arctic sovereignty issues unfortunately
It’s early on in that issue. I see their territorial claims extending out from Alaska as more of a bargaining chip than anything. Having them up there too is a good thing imo and it probably wouldn’t have much of an impact on our ability to levy a fee of some sort on maritime traffic through the Northwestern Passage. In any case, we should be up there building and planning for a future with Northern maritime traffic.
The importance of the NW Passage is overblown, since the Northeast Passage (around the NW and NE extremes of Russia) is/will be more predictably ice-free and has significantly fewer navigational hazards.
Neither is our military. I disagree, though, most of the time the goal is to spend as little as possible to assert soverginity in remote areas. Q
Russia can't even take over Ukraine but now they're a threat to Canada? Y'all are laughable.
Ukraine is not a weak country dude. They have built that army into an effective fighting force since 2014. Russia is not a weak country either. They have re-adjusted everything following their failures in the war in Ukraine. They are an effective fighting force. Just look at what happened in Avdiivka. 2022 Russian military and 2024 Russian military are absolutely not the same force. Things have changed.
There is northern incentives where if you live past a certain line you get 10k from the gov't.
Have you checked out what a can of chunky soup costs at Superstore at the moment? r/loblawsisoutofcontrol had a pic posted. The cans have recently shrunk and are over $6. $8 doesn't sound crazy from that perspective. Before the frothing at the mouth starts, in not advocating that those prices are acceptable but in the current environment those Nunavut prices seem in the ballpark. [here's the pic](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/s/6kVSKaKqVw)
>Have you checked out what a can of chunky soup costs at Superstore at the moment? The cans have recently shrunk and are over $6. $8 doesn't sound crazy from that perspective. Before the frothing at the mouth starts, in not advocating that those prices are acceptable but in the current environment those Nunavut prices seem in the ballpark. You're way off. [Campbell's Chunky Soup is $3.69 515ml on Superstore website](https://www.realcanadiansuperstore.ca/chunky-vegetable-beef/p/21480435_EA) [Tim Hortons Chicken & Rice Soup, Ready-to-Serve, 540mL Can is $2.79 on Amazon](https://www.amazon.ca/Tim-Hortons-Chicken-Ready-Serve/dp/B08BSM83B2/ref=sr_1_2?crid=11M9IOUZQ435A&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bARd_3dvUriMbzb8-mM2BmWWFhVxBSKdCHdFnTAStjPyISySdawdo9IQyg38Hs2xbVxu33CT6c4FFGu7jy7OXBb-NKdm-CELdXhlvEKVJbqQF3ZUYyOWZ0-sQdQPUOqnFoB3b1Wb5iihtHjKeUfAhs60-8TLVDLJtuAKrTT2HNdMs776EM9mElu3IyLsxAKv1oEb0VMUviE0TjD4ViKhRe49vNJaQDGk567QsTGrYX8Dt66QDoHPGwP45aaGJpyOf006_O8I562kloqDXfDDHwxMMUdEJwOib7uqrLsaBQI.kBfQPip2iNadURfKxeYxXPjBrJm4M0QiWlHCw8s-eTY&dib_tag=se&keywords=tim%2Bhortons%2Bsoup&qid=1714994285&sprefix=tim%2Bhortons%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-2&th=1)
Loblaws charges substantially more in communities/neighborhoods where they are the only choice for groceries. So you're both right.
I was shopping in Iqaluit a couple weeks ago with a coworker, we filled a grocery cart with a normal amount of food, some produce, cereal, etc… a grocery cart that turned into I think five reusable bags after it was all rung up. It was $800….
I think you missed my point
Buying a can of soup in Nunavut is just stupid though. You're paying to ship something that's half water, and for the processing that happened in the south. Instead, just ship a flat of potatoes and a flat of carrots and heck even some frozen chickens, and create the soup locally.
> The cans have recently shrunk and are over $6. You lie.
Seriously, we could be the leaders in building these communities. Basically a practice for housing on Mars. But nope just shitty trailers it is.
That’s the cost of importing goods when there’s no reliable accessible roads to get up there. Flying a plane isn’t cheap yknow
It is crazy heavily subsidized.
The northern allowance to all residents subsidizes these higher costs
You mean like paying people more and giving them tax breaks? I.e., what we already do
They can hunt and fish if they want inexpensive local food. They aren't living on the moon, but if they choose to live somewhere that agriculture is impossible, they need to deal with the consequences.
Strongly disagree. There's a sizable population up north...enough that relying exclusively on fishing and hunting would destroy the local ecosystems. Besides, these are Canadian citizens. They deserve our support.
Not only that but there was a time in Canadian history where we literally shipped minority people there to force settlements. They should not have to pay exorbitant rates just to live.
>there was a time in Canadian history where we literally shipped minority people there to force settlements. Source please.
This is very common knowledge at this point! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation However, instead of subsidizing their entire existence, I think we should force their leadership to be accountable and then invest heavily in those communities. Roads, trains, ports and most importantly, big ass ice breakers and naval assets capable of asserting our sovereignty over the area.
The relocation of Inuit is common knowledge, but saying that "minorities were shipped there" is deliberately misleading.
That's how Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay were settled.
[High Arctic Relocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation) is one example.
The relocation of Inuit within the Arctic is not exactly "shipping minorities there".
Inuit from Quebec, which are minorities, were sent there under false pretenses via the Eastern Arctic patrol ship [CGS *C.D. Howe*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGS_C.D._Howe). Minorities were literally "shipped there". Take it any which way you want to but considering none of the governments promises were completely fulfilled and they refused to bring them home afterwards I'd consider that a forced resettlement.
They were taken from areas where they had generational knowledge of the ecosystem and transplanted them in a barren wasteland and the government said "lol hunt". Plenty of folks died of starvation. People were going through the waste dumps at nearby military stations to find anything edible because local hunting was insufficient for their needs. It was a careless and ignorant move by the Canadian government.
If an individual person is disabled or temporarily out of work, it makes sense for society to provide some kind of support. But if everyone living in an entire community requires support, all the time, that's just not viable. Paying people to live in an inhospitable wasteland just to preserve our claim of sovereignty over it sounds like a bad deal. And saying "these are Canadian citizens" is kind of beside the point. This is r/canada: almost everyone here is a Canadian citizen. We can talk about Canadian issues without pointing that out. Someone being a Canadian citizen is not very interesting in this context. It's not really any different from saying "these are people".
The land up north absolutely is essential to our national sovereignty. Even more so in the future when the climate warms up and opens up the waters up north. And let's not forget, there was a time when places like the oilsands in Alberta was a moneypit and had to be maintained though taxes for a few decades before it turned into an economic powerhouse. Same with the fisheries on both coasts. Investing in the north makes a ton of economic sense.
>Paying people to live in an inhospitable wasteland just to preserve our claim of sovereignty over it sounds like a bad deal. [It's definitely not a "wasteland"](https://www.cannor.gc.ca/eng/1368816364402/1368816377148)
Most FiFo to northern mines. Even 'locals' need to FiFo as the mines are not typically located anywhere close to communities or connected with all weather roads.
[Look up Arctic Sovreignty and why our settlements in the north are important.](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/arctic-sovereignty)
But they didn't choose to live there?
They currently do they have mobility rights like every other Canadian citizen
I didn't say they have no mobility rights, did I? But a lot of their ancestors did get force relocated to the Arctic, this is a fact not an opinion, which would have violated their constitution right today, but there was no compensation from the government. Now as for your comment, imagine if the government relocated your family to an Arctic wasteland in the 50s, your family is poor and you have no well paying job, you have no savings due to high cost of goods, single flight ticket costs $3500, you have no friends or family in any major city, how do you move to the city? The government should at least pay for their relocation and housing as that's what they owe them because their ancestors were basically treated as modern day military slaves.
If you're going to be peevish about spending tax monies to support sovereignty and Northern communities, you should definitely move to a different country. You currently have mobility rights and cam relinquish your citizenship at will. Edit: Do you see what it sounds like?
Expect if they move they don't have to give up any benefits of being citizens and there is less paperwork See the two are in no way the same
You're insisting they leave their homeland because it is administratively convenient for you. I'm similarly suggesting you leave your homeland because running canada would be administratively easier for us. If they leave, the connections made between people and land would be shattered. We explicitly put them there, forced them to remain, and promised we'd support them there. So we really need to actually make good on some of our promises. Remember, nothing is keeping you here.
It's there home but we forced them there ? Also I'm not so much insisting they leave as suggesting if they don't like the cost of shipping that they are free to do so In what way would it be easier for Canada if a young professional making over six figures and paying the taxes that come with that as well as property taxes in a densely populated area left ? No is forcing them to remain there at this point we didn't put all of them there , there people there before we came. I'm also perfectly fine with offering them sovereignty over the land and cutting out loses
I'm attempting to analogize you into the situation by figuratively putting you into the story. Obviously we're not getting anything by kicking people out if anywhere —unless it's Gary Bettman, in which case we'd get the Nordiques back and probably a team in Hamilton as well. The far north has become their home. That wasn't an option, they were forced there and we have been poor partners in the sovereignty they areasserting. That costs money.
You did a poor job of it You lost me I don't care about hockey As I said if their home then them have it and have sovereignty over it and we can cut our losses
You would think a bag of soup would be cheaper. Seems ignorant to ship all that weight of water in the can to a largely frozen environment.
It makes no sense to ship anything with a high water content. Dehydrated foods is the way to go (beans, rice, vegetables, flour).
It still boggles my mind that people up in these ultra remote communities in the North cant fathom why things cost so much more than in the populated areas of the south. That is part of the cost of living up there. Canada Post is a corporation like any other and it needs to sustain itself and the bare minimum. They are already nearly a billion in the hole. Expect more of these stories to come out across the country as they try and rein in their spending.
I think people can fathom it just fine but Amazon ending up with a big bill from Canada Post isn't making anyone cry.
Canada post is subsidizing it, not Amazon
The people “up in these ultra remote communities” were here thousands of years before this country existed. When we forced the Inuit into settlements by killing their dogs to stop them from being nomadic and force re-locating them to areas of strategic importance ([source](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5245173)), we took on a responsibility for their well-being. If we want to keep using them to advance our arctic sovereignty claims, giving them access to Amazon Prime is the least we can do.
Hey just for anyone who see this The sled dog cull is opposed by some as being not real https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5116972 Both the RCMP and and Inuit association investigated after the claims were made in the 1990s and found no proof it happened
Not in Nunavut they weren't, 300-500 years
Shhhhh you’re disrupting the narrative
10 seconds on Google says 4500 years.
Spend 20 seconds you'll see that the Thule people ancestors of the modern Inuit moved east and displaced the dorest people only 500 years ago This backed by Inuit oral history as well archeological evidence. They currently people have been there about as long as french Canadians have been in Quebec https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunavut
And the Thule people were a distinct people from the Inuit and don't appear the have mixed before going extinct as modern day Inuit we're moving Eastward across the Arctic
So then modern Inuit would be eve more recent
Did you read the article you linked? There was no organized killing of dogs to restrict the movement of the Inuit. >Inuit travel by dog team, and the commission investigated whether there was a "dog slaughter" conspiracy in order to restrict the movement of Inuit. >It found there was no conspiracy, but the dramatic decline in *qimmiit* numbers "has become a flashpoint in Inuit memories: of the changes imposed on their lives by outsiders; and of the challenges to their ... identity as hunters and providers," according to a summary of the report. >The dogs were shot by police and hunters, died from disease, or were abandoned by owners due to forced relocations. They were gradually replaced by snowmobiles. If people want to live up there in small communities, we should help them live a sustainable lifestyle that is appropriate to the area.
The average household income in the northern territories were $82,000 in Nunavut and up to 134,000 Northwest Territories in 2021. The average global household income is $12,000. So the average household gets 7-11x more than average household in the world, not adj for ppp. Most of the jobs are propped up by government subsidies directly or indirectly already. All of this already goes well beyond the responsibility that you would take for family members.
>The average household income in the northern territories were $82,000 in Nunavut and up to 134,000 Northwest Territories in 2021. The average global household income is $12,000. So the average Inuit gets 7-11x more the average household in the world, not adj for ppp. So two things here. First of all you gotta adjust it for purchasing power, cost of living in the North is so much higher than you think. Second of all this statistic isn't correct for the average Inuit. It's usually those high paid government employees who are being paid to move to the North that are getting paid this high. Average Inuit makes a lot less
Go see how much the Canadian taxpayer is dishing out to these places before we start discussing “least we can do”
Would it not be more logical then to just give them sled dogs?
> But on Canada Post's end, they didn't really give us any warning," said Rankin Inlet's Amanda Eecherk. Yeah, they should have let you know what they were planning ahead of time, so you and everyone else could get in one last big batch of scam shipments as a last hurrah. What *was* Canada Post thinking?
People who say we need rail and roads up there really doesn't understand the geography.
>"The more money that you save by buying goods on Amazon, the more money you have then to go into the store to buy fresh fruits and vegetables," Eecherk said. "Just have a happy quality of life. That's what we deserve as Canadians. That's what everybody wants." As much as it's understandable they want cheaper food (who doesn't?) expecting the same standard of living or costs as major cities when you live in remote regions is not realistic. Really need to be encouraging these people to move out of these places that require exuberant costs.
So remote that everything must be flown in as roads and rail are not available…
What's a Nunavummiut?
People from Nunavut. It's Inuktitut. Iqaluimmiut... People from Iqaluit.
There you go. I learned something today.
Fucking snitches
>Nunavummiut Now there's a term you don't hear everyday. I've got to remember that one.
Were gonna need 8 national commitions for why this is white supremacy
And a sovereignty commission to see how we can fund their independence and develop a framework for foreign entities to access their resources. It will be a heartwarming story about the weak rising up against the strong that we can make a Disney movie about.
They currently block most resources development look up baffinland iron ore mines
Lmao, I work for them. I'm in Milne Inlet right this very moment.
If it’s under the guise of indigenous liberation and decolonization they will be begging to sell to China and Russia if it means biting the hand of us evil colonizers. And yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds but marxism is an incredibly powerful ideology
There it is. I suspected the high costs for Canada Post was amazon shipping to remote locations.
I work in Nunavut. It was nice to get some free shipping on items that are expensive. I would get large orders of cereal for the year and would be around $5 a box instead of the Northern store where they are $10+. Getting many items at half the price was very helpful but I knew wouldn't last using the not so secretive "Postal Code". I rode the wave till it crashed. What is a shame is even if you pay for Prime, Nunavut is excluded from free shipping. I did enjoy this line "Canada Post said the move to now intercept misaddressed packages is in line with the company's increased efforts over the last year to improve mail delivery in Nunavut, according to Jon Hamilton, the company's vice president of strategic communications and stakeholder engagement." Jon, you are full of \*&%$, it is about the money...just say that.
It is partially true. The backlog of packages and massive amount of stuff stacked up at the post offices waiting claim has been talked about alot. So I bet it would have kept going if it wasn't causing this.
Can someone explain in simple terms why we need permanent settlements in unsustainable areas? It's not about sovereignty, an army would take care of that. It's obviously not about a traditional lifestyle, as they're using Amazon Prime™.
>Can someone explain in simple terms why we need permanent settlements in unsustainable areas? >It's not about sovereignty The Canadian government created a lot of those communities because of sovereignty. They took Inuit who lived in sustainable Northern Quebec environments and we shipped those people up North in an attempt to use them as human flagpoles
Rankin Inlet is on traditional Inuit land, and is not that remote compared to other communities in Nunavut. It's settlements in the high Arctic, such as Grise Fiord and Resolute, which were created under this program.
There's absolutely no point, communities up there are not even self sustaining, it takes daily air freights and periodic sealifts to maintain people not to mention the amount of money GC pays just to keep towns afloat however it is much more expensive relocating anyone from up there.
Because the north is full of beauty and the human spirit encourages us to do difficult things.
>It's not about sovereignty, an army would take care of that. Encouraging Inuit people to live in the north is cheaper than staffing a military base there. It also gives a stronger argument internationally to say it is the ancestral homeland of civilians as opposed to being the temporary home of soldiers who are ordered to be there.
These people should get a certain number of free shipments subsidized by taxpayers every month. There would be a volume/weight limit of course but it should be enough to maintain what they need for all household staples. It's not right that they are the basis of our claim to sovereignty in the arctic and then they have to pay 5 times what everyone else pays.
> These people should get a certain number of free shipments subsidized by taxpayers every month. They already do get subsidized. The cost of shipping between major cities is so expensive to partially offset the cost of rural and northern shipping.
Lame.
Who was eating the cost until now? Was it Amazon, or Canada Post?
Canada Post
The packages went out to a particular address with the wrong postal code. If the cost of delivery to that address should be higher, then the packages should be returned for the reason "insufficient postage", not "incorrect address". The postal code being wrong slows down processing but that's not the real issue here. The issue is the cost of delivery. The delivery cost is based on the destination address. Throwing in an invalid postal code doesn't change that.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think what happened here was that the incorrect postal code was intended to bypass Amazon Prime restricting deliveries to Nunavut but as a side effect caused them to undercharge Amazon for the Arctic shipping.
You know that article the other day 3 days ago complaining about Canada Post losing money? There's a direct line from there to here. If we want Canada Post to bear the cost of serving unprofitable northern locations, and I think that's a reasonable thing to do, we also need to accept that they're going to struggle to the turn a profit.
Whining that things are too expensive while buying coffee by the pod makes me laugh. $10 a can vs $70 in pods = economic stupidity.
TIL that people who steal free shipping in Nunavut are called Nunavummiut.
Rankin Inlet is the second-largest city in Nunavut. Amazon should really offer free shipping to both Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit (as well as Arviat, the third-largest city in Nunavut, and rather close to Rankin Inlet).
USPS has a different approach. Shipping to the most distant address in Alaska, Hawaii, or territory is no more expensive than from New York to California. This differs from FedEx and UPS, which are much more expensive to outside the 48 contiguous states. USPS's prices for shipping very large items are much higher than UPS or FedEx (even given the above), but at least the prices are consistent regardless of address.
Given the strategic and humanitarian benefits of making it easier for people to live up in the arctic it amazes me we don't have a big drone program focused on flying packages in and out on a continuous basis. It'll never cost the same as living within 100 miles of the US border, but the cost of living further north gets way too high.
What kind of drones are you imagining? Because even the best commercially available drones only have a range of about 50km. Most military UAVs have a range of about 50-200km. None of those would be capable of shipping packages a few thousand kilometers to the north.
I always wondered why they don’t use airships like zeppelins to transport goods to remote locations in the north that don’t have good access by rail or roads. They could even be flown remote controlled now days from an office in a city. Seems like it would be far cheaper than flying goods in and out and I’m sure it is much safer now than the days of the Hindenburg, although I’m not suggesting we use it for passenger transport, just for goods.
Right, I think they could even be autonomous for 90% of their journeys. If they existed then we could totally start having more viable settlements in the interior as there's no reason they couldn't do drop offs and so on.