Should your mail be delivered daily? Canada Post wants Ottawa to rethink its mandate

Marina von Stackelberg

Canada Post wants the fed‐ eral government to consid‐ er changing the legislation that requires it to deliver letter mail daily- a man‐ date the Crown corpora‐ tion says no longer reflects modern realities and is causing it to lose money.

"If you have a community mailbox, a lot of people check it once or twice a week," said Jon Hamilton, vice-president of communi‐ cations at Canada Post.

"We need to work with government to ensure the regulatory framework aligns with today's needs."

The postal charter, which dictates how frequently

Canada Post delivers mail, hasn't undergone any signifi‐ cant changes since it was cre‐ ated in 2009, Hamilton said.

"That was back when Net‐ flix was delivering DVDs through the mail. The world has changed a lot," Hamilton said.

Canada Post's annual re‐ port, released last Friday, showed the struggling Crown corporation lost $748 million last year before tax - and a whopping $3 billion over the last six years. The company blames its plight on the con‐ tinued decline in mail revenue and warns of even larger and unsustainable losses if its operating model doesn't undergo major changes.

Unlike some other Crown corporations, Canada Post is‐ n't funded by taxpayers. It needs to sustain itself through profits.

But unlike its private com‐ petitors, Canada Post is also required to deliver mail to all Canadians, everywhere, five days a week - even if it loses money doing it.

"Today, if you're sending a letter from St. John's to Van‐ couver, it has to get there within three days," Hamilton said. "In order to do that, we've got to put it on an air‐ plane and fly it out … That may not be required any‐ more."

Minister not clear on what Ottawa will do

The federal minister of public services and procurement would not commit to chang‐ ing Canada Post's mandate for delivery, but also did not rule it out.

"Whatever we need to support Canada Post in sup‐ porting Canadians, it will be envisaged, as we need Cana‐ da Post in the future," JeanYves Duclos said when asked Tuesday.

"We know the habits of Canadians are changing … the role of Canada Post is not going to change, given that it's there to serve all Canadi‐ ans wherever they live."

WATCH: Canada Post looking at ending daily let‐ ter mail delivery

Duclos didn't say if Ot‐ tawa will bail the company out. Canada Post says it will run out of the cash it needs to operate by early next year.

"It's going to require work and progress in the matter of several years," Duclos said.

"We first need to see what options they're going to present, what options they're going to recommend, what

options they are going to de‐ velop with their workers."

Canada Post considering weekend delivery to compete

While letter mail has tanked, online shopping has boomed. But Canada Post has struggled to compete with new, privately owned parcel companies that hire gig workers who are cheaper and deliver on evenings and weekends.

"We were doing a number of things to be able to better compete, but we didn't ex‐ pect our market share to drop that quickly and for the competitors to take that much of the volume," Hamil‐ ton said.

He said Canada Post's management is having "honest conversations" with the company's union about beginning to offer weekend parcel delivery - a service that currently is only offered during the winter holidays and on overtime pay.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), which represents 60,000 of the company's employees, has been in contract negotia‐ tions with Canada Post since November.

Jan Simpson, national president of CUPW, told CBC News the union is still decid‐ ing whether it would support an expansion of delivery hours.

"We need to bargain lan‐ guage … [so] we're able to negotiate a safe way for workers to deliver the mail [and] get home at a reason‐ able time, because health and safety must be a prior‐ ity," Simpson said.

"Those gig companies … have a very high rate of in‐ juries, low wages. It's impor‐ tant for us to raise everybody up, not put them down."

Union says solution is more services

The union opposes any de‐ crease in the frequency of letter mail delivery, Simpson said. Instead, CUPW wants Canada Post to reinstate all door-to-door delivery service.

"For us to deliver the mail to the door of every cus‐ tomer across this country … that's the way Canada Post will get back, I feel, a lot of their profit which they're claiming to have lost through different ways," she said.

In 2014, as a cost-saving measure under the previous Conservative government, Canada Post began replacing door-to-door delivery with community mailboxes. After being elected in 2015, the current Liberal government suspended those conver‐ sions. Ottawa eventually scrapped the plan altogether.

According to Canada Post's annual report, letter mail has been declining since 2006, when the company de‐ livered 5.5 billion pieces of mail. In 2023, it delivered just 2.2 billion letters. That num‐ ber is expected to keep drop‐ ping.

On Monday, the company increased the price of a stamp to 99 cents.

Simpson said the union believes Canada Post's fi‐ nances can also be saved by expanding its services bey‐ ond mail - having mail carri‐ ers provide check-ins for se‐ niors, for example, or provid‐ ing banking services at post offices.

But Hamilton said that, to survive, Canada Post needs to focus on its key purpose and its advantage over the competition: its ability to reach every address in Cana‐ da.

"We need to really focus on our core business, and our core business is deliver‐ ing things," he said. "We're really good at that."