The Canada Post strike is causing some challenges for local businesses.
But Paul MacKinnon, CEO of the Downtown Business Commission, says the strike isn’t causing a major disruption.
He says businesses have become really adaptable because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s so many more options now [for mail] than there used to be, and people are just much more sophisticated around shipping that, my sense, at least, is that it hasn’t been as much of an inconvenience,” said MacKinnon.
More than 55,000 Canada Post workers went on strike Nov. 15. They’re calling for better wages, working conditions, and benefits.
According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, about 61 per cent of small businesses had issues with cash flow during the postal workers strike in 2018, mostly because of delays with invoices and cheques and the high cost of delivery alternatives.
Although MacKinnon says there are alternatives, sometimes businesses will have to ship through multiple delivery service companies if they’re sending an item nationally or internationally.
He also says he wants to collect more information about how the strike affects businesses to quantify it and to help in the future.
The commission also provides a lot of resources for businesses, he says. More and more, they don’t have the time to do anything other than operate their own business, he says, so they are leaning more on groups like them and the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.
“It just kind of reminds us the onus is on us to make sure that, when these kinds of things happen that we’re both, you know, on the front lines in terms of advocacy, but also just on the front lines in terms of getting good information to them that they can use,” he said.
