Six locations will open by Feb. 1, with three additional outlets expected in Staples within the coming months.
The first six locations are:
- Oakville, 2460 Winston Churchill Blvd.
- Newmarket, 17810 Yonge St.
- Toronto, 180 Eglinton Ave. E.
- Strathroy, 425 Caradoc St. S.
- Tillsonburg, Tillsonburg Town Centre, 200 Broadway St.
- Welland, Seaway Mall, 800 Niagara St.
Honestly I don’t mind this. If this reduces the cost to the government it is a very small inconvenience to me as a user. Sure, Staples gets some extra foot traffic but if that is a significant cost reduction I don’t mind. In general I don’t think the government should be advertising private companies but this is very, very minimal.
I don’t have much problem with Canada Post in Shoppers either. I think that was a decent experiment and turned out well.
I think this is a world of difference between privatizing something. They are basically just subletting property rather than renting a whole unit. If that reduces cost of business that can lead to better service or budget shifted elsewhere I am happy to try it. If the quality of service drops we can consider it a failed experiment and roll back.
@kevincox @veeesix So, why won’t they release their business case showing that? They’re banding about figures of $1M savings over a year, or maybe three years (depending on source) but nothing to back it up. A rather piddly sum given the size of their budget.
Did they even do a proper business case for it? It smells too much like this is just a payoff to his business buddies, and the fact that they’ll be putting largely #unionized #ServiceOntario workers out of work is just gravy.
#onpoli
This is privatization as this is straight up franchising government service. Once something is privatized it will never come back to the public domain.
Just as an example, Drive test, never under government control once franchised under the previous PC government.