EDITORIAL: Canada Post heads for the scrap heap

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Canada Post is dying, not with a bang but a whimper, a reality its management and union refuse to accept.

As things stand, its days are numbered and it will inevitably be privatized.

There was a time — lasting for decades — when a postal strike was a national crisis, back when Canada Post held a virtual monopoly on delivering the mail.

But that was then, this is now, and the status quo is no longer an option for the federal crown corporation.

The last time Canada Post turned a profit was 2017.

It lost $3 billion before taxes from 2018 to 2023.

Mail volume dropped from 5.5 billion letters in 2006 to 2.2 billion in 2023. During that same period, the average number of letters households received per week plummeted from seven to two.

The government ordered an end to the most recent postal strike, which lasted from Nov. 15 to Dec. 17, 2024, declaring the two sides at an impasse.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reported that small and medium-sized businesses lost more than $1 billion as millions of parcels and letters sat idle during the busy holiday season.

The back-to-work order eventually led to a forced vote by its 55,000 employees on Canada Post’s final contract offer in May.

They rejected it, but by a margin of less than 70%, which is not a ringing endorsement of their union’s recommendation to vote it down.

Another sign workers know the writing is on the wall is that they have not returned to the picket lines, instead taking the less drastic protest measure of refusing to work overtime.

In May, a government report on the state of Canada Post recommended changes it must make to survive.

They include phasing out daily door-to-door delivery to individual home addresses, except for businesses — which many Canadians haven’t had for years — closing rural postal offices, expanding community mailboxes and hiring more part-time workers to reflect daily mail volumes, which the union rejected.

So the two sides are again at an impasse and moving the dispute to binding arbitration — how many strikes were settled in the past — won’t deliver the fundamental change Canada Post needs to survive.

The real choice management and labour face is to change, or die.