I dread December through March at Brock. It is not just the exams and dark skies, but the cold and icy daily trek from Lot 2. For Canada Post workers, that’s the job; bone chilling, frost biting, wind whipping walks; eight hours a day, five days a week, four to six months out of the year.
Our postal workers face everything, from the scorching effects of climate change in BC to the monsoon-like storms out east, all while braving the arctic — where no other mail carriers will go — year-round. This isn’t a job, but a calling. Canada Post, though a corporation, is a service that sees all Canadians get their mail delivered wherever they are.
The work of the postal service goes unnoticed until there is a labour disruption, and it is only then that those who question the full breadth of the services provided by Canada Post understand what a loss it is to no longer have them. Mailboxes are left empty and my OSAP cheque is stuck in the mail.
The Canada Post Corporation (CPC) has been in collective talks with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) for nearly two years. This collective bargaining led to a strike in December of last year. After four weeks on the picket lines, Ottawa forced postal workers back to work. Since then, our postal service has been working without a collective agreement for 10 months.
The strike in December was generated by CUPW seeking at 22-24 per cent wage increase for members over a four-year term — essentially an inflationary raise as the cost of living continues to rise. The union was unsatisfied with Canada Post’s offer to meet them halfway and falling far short of their demands. A ruling from the Canada Industrial Relations Board resumed Canada Post’s operations and established a full inquiry into Canada Post’s structuring and the development of ideas on how to move forward.
The result of this inquiry was wide reaching and controversial, declaring Canada Post in “existential crisis: it is effectively insolvent, or bankrupt.” The CPC hadn’t turned a profit since 2017 and was running a seven-year deficit of $5 billion. Recommendations from the inquiry showed the remaining four million addresses for which Canada Post still delivers door-to-door but now must transition to communal mailboxes — a decision that could save the corporation $400 million a year.
On Sept. 25, Ottawa released a plan to modernize the post officially beginning the end of home delivery, citing that Canada Post is on track to lose $1.5 billion in 2025 and that currently the company is losing $10 million a day.
As a response to the government implementing these changes, CUPW once again went on strike on Sept. 25 — their second strike in less than a year, as Canada Post begins implementing wide scale change without any due diligence to the workers it will affect and no hopes for an agreement on the table.
The underpinnings of these actions are not solely a labour dispute — it’s a debate on whether Canada Post should remain a public service or evolve into something more private.
As the union put it:
“When public services are cut, inequality grows, and it’s the public that suffers. Postal workers are fighting to not only keep reliable and affordable services in communities across the country, but to provide even more services. Unlike private companies that deliver only where it’s profitable, Canada Post keeps communities linked and Canadians connected — and that matters.”
Canada Post goes where no one else will go and to keep communities connected. If Canadians are the ones who suffer from these changes, why are we not being given a voice in the face of these major decisions? If Ottawa describes Canada Post as a liability, then Canadians deserve to understand how liable they are if the postal service keeps running as it is now.
As Ottawa frames the corporation as a burden on taxpayers, it’s worth asking if the real problem is expecting a public service to behave like a profit driven business.
Canada Post is not failing — it’s being failed. It does not serve customers; it serves citizens. Treating a public service like a failing business misconstrues what that service was built to do. The Canada Post Corporation is one of the few truly universal systems Canadians still share. Downsizing risks dismantling that universality for good.
Canada Post’s mission is not to enrich shareholders — which is solely the Canadian government — but to connect citizens wherever they live. Their service offerings have expanded with over 3.3 million addresses in a relatively short amount of time, with Canada Post servicing 17.5 million addresses five days a week. This promise of universal service is given in exchange for a legal monopoly on all letter mail.
Before Canada Post became a crown corporation in 1981 it was government run. In the ‘70s, the postal department was losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The goal of incorporating was to make CPC self-sustaining, more efficient, adaptable, flexible and less politically toxic.
This shift created permanent tension, running the postal service like a business while providing a public service to Canadians won’t work without its fair share of hiccups. It’s this dual mandate that causes Canada Post’s deficits to appear dramatic on paper. As a corporation, they are failing; in the context of Canada’s broader fiscal picture, the public service of Canada Post is more negligible.
Rhetoric that Canada Post is a taxpayer liability seeks to displace the sizeable losses Ottawa is estimating from this year. Singling out Canada Post as financially irresponsible as our deficit balloons reads as hypocrisy and masked austerity.
This narrative shifts public anger onto union workers fighting for fair wages, safer working conditions and fair representation. Canadians are left wondering why their mailboxes are empty and not about the corporations structural under funding and neglect of public infrastructure in the face of this widespread growth.
Dismantling Canada Post would be nothing short of dangerous. It would erode small businesses and worsen inequality and rural access to the services it provides all Canadians. Privatization may not be on the table immediately but it’s clearly on the horizon and there is no shortage of corporations ready to take its place or buy it out.
Canada Post keeps competitors honest — effectively acting as a price ceiling that prevents gouging. The only reason Amazon can deliver just about anything in a day for free is because they need to be better than Canada Post; that choice affects their profits too.
If Canada Post were to go private, we would no doubt see the costs for shipping skyrocket from its competitors. Not to mention that privatization would lead to profit driven decision-making possibly neglecting the most northern parts of Canada which are either too costly or not profitable for other private companies to currently ship to.
The federal government is not currently seeking privatization, but the changes they are proposing are permanent. Once a service is gone, it’s gone forever. The decision to stop door-to-door mail services, if implemented, would mean the end of home delivered mail for good.
At this point, I don’t know when my OSAP cheque will arrive, but if waiting an extra week means defending a service that still binds the country together, it’s worth it. Canada Post’s struggle isn’t about mail, it’s about what kind of country we want to be: one driven by profit or one committed to serving citizens, no matter where they live.