A striking Canada Post worker stands at a picket line outside a delivery depot in Burnaby, B.C., on Monday.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The Canada Post plan for restructuring is thoughtful, and would allow the corporation to gently prune its ranks while preparing for the disruptive effects of technology and rising private-sector competition.
Under that plan, the minority of Canadians still receiving home delivery would be shifted to community mailboxes over a half-decade. Operations would be streamlined and the workforce reduced, but largely through attrition. All told, the plan allows for methodical change without painful upheaval.
There is, however, one small problem with that plan: It was axed a decade ago by the stubbornly self-destructive postal workers union and the newly arrived Trudeau Liberals, intent on erasing the decisions of the Harper government, never mind their merit.
The Liberals promised to restore home delivery to all Canadians, but quickly abandoned that commitment, instead allowing an odd netherworld in which a minority of Canadians enjoyed the apparently inalienable right to doorstep service while everyone else trudged to retrieve their junk mail and occasional letter.
Now, a decade later, Mark Carney’s Liberals are putting forward changes to Canada Post’s mandate that will allow it to finally make the reforms it contemplated in its 2013 strategic pivot. But the transition will be much more painful, particularly for front-line workers, who have been – and continue to be – spectacularly ill served by union leadership determined to protect a labour model that threatens the existence of Canada Post and the jobs of its workers.
Canada Post workers at risk of widespread job losses after Ottawa orders an overhaul
As the government pointed out last week, Canada Post has racked up a cumulative $5-billion in losses since 2018. Just in 2024 alone, losses hit $1-billion. This year is projected to be worse, a record $1.5-billion in red ink. Since 2019, Canada Post’s share of parcel deliveries has plummeted from 69 per cent to a mere 24 per cent.
If Canada Post were a private business, it would be headed toward insolvency. Instead, the federal government has issued a loan to the post office of up to $1.034-billion, despite the Crown corporation having a formal mandate to be financially self-sufficient.
Dire as that situation was, it was before the Canadian Union of Postal Workers called a snap strike last week to protest the Carney government’s (long overdue) move to restructure – and who knows, perhaps even save – Canada Post.
The framework unveiled by Public Works Minister Joël Lightbound takes aim at the same problems as did the abandoned 2013 plan. But the pace of deterioration at Canada Post in the intervening dozen years means that change will necessarily be far more painful.
Door-to-door delivery will be wound down, for eventual savings of $400-million. That is merely the start. Some rural post offices will be shut down. The government is also easing delivery standards so that non-urgent mail moves by ground rather than air, saving $20-million annually.
What to know about the Canada Post strike
Canada Post has until the second week of November to present its strategic plan to the government. A centrepiece of that plan should be the corporation’s push to implement “dynamic routing” that adjusts delivery routes depending on that day’s volume of mail and parcels.
On one hand, that change seems somewhat obvious: why walk fixed routes in an age when households get just two letters a week? But the implications are potentially huge: big gains in efficiencies, and lower labour costs.
Naturally, CUPW is adamantly opposed to that measure, correctly observing that dynamic routing will lead to job losses. It’s hardly surprising coming from a union that protested the introduction of postal codes in the 1970s as a job killer.
The union and some labour experts have expressed their horror that the federal government has inserted itself into ongoing labour negotiations with the new marching orders for Canada Post. To the contrary: There is no better time for Ottawa to make clear to both management and the union that fundamental restructuring is required. It is a slap to the face of union leadership, true – but perhaps that can snap CUPW out of its 1970s mindset.
The reality is this. There will have to be significant job losses at Canada Post, with those cuts far deeper than what might have sufficed a decade ago. And the severity of those cuts will grow every day that CUPW remains on strike and further drives Canada Post customers into the arms of its competitors.