The National Farmers Union (NFU) is standing in solidarity with Canada’s postal workers as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) strikes against the federal government’s plan to lift a decades-old moratorium on rural post office closures.
The NFU says removing post offices from small and farming communities would further weaken already strained rural services, from healthcare to mail, and deal another blow to the social and economic fabric of the countryside.
“A public postal service is a public good and a duty of government,” said NFU president Jenn Pfenning in a release. “We stand beside CUPW workers to reject the government’s attack on a national asset. Dismantling the public postal service would be a disservice to Canadians that would undermine our national sovereignty for the sole benefit of corporate billionaires.”
The NFU has long backed postal workers, endorsing the seven-year Rural Dignity movement that led to the 1993 moratorium preventing the closure of rural post offices. The group argues that local post offices are “community hubs” that foster connection, commerce, and identity in Canada.
