Politics·UpdatedWith Canada Post on track to lose $1.5 billion in 2025 and contract discussions between the union and the corporation stalled, the federal government is embarking on a modernization plan it says will allow Canada Post to stabilize its finances and ensure its survival.Union announces nationwide strike will resume ‘immediately’ in response to reformsPeter Zimonjic · CBC News · Posted: Sep 25, 2025 12:58 PM EDT | Last Updated: 24 minutes agoCommunity mailboxes like these will become the norm for all Canadians once Canada Post converts the remaining four million addresses that currently receive door-to-door mail. (Sarah Leavitt/CBC)FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES: Postal workers back on strike over Canada Post changes, union saysWith Canada Post on track to lose $1.5 billion in 2025 and contract discussions between the union and the corporation stalled, the federal government is embarking on a modernization plan it says will allow Canada Post to stabilize its finances and ensure its survival.”The bottom line is this: Canada Post is effectively insolvent,” Government Transformation Minister Joël Lightbound said in a statement on Thursday. “It provides an essential service to Canadians, and in particular to rural, remote and Indigenous communities, and Canadians are rightfully attached to it and want it saved. However, repeated bailouts from the federal government are not the solution.”WATCH | Minister wants ‘immediate’ action from Canada Post: Ottawa wants to see ‘immediate steps’ from Canada Post to address financesOttawa is recommending major changes for Canada Post in a bid to ‘stabilize’ the organization’s financial situation, including changes around letter mail frequency, residential delivery and rural post offices, says Transformation, Public Works and Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound.In response, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said Thursday evening that “effective immediately, all CUPW members at Canada Post are on a nationwide strike.”Chief among the changes is authorizing Canada Post to end home delivery and convert the remaining four million addresses that still receive it to community mailboxes. Lightbound said the process would take about nine years, with most of it expected to be completed in the first four.Three-quarters of Canadians already get their mail from community mailboxes, a government official said in a background briefing Thursday, and moving the remaining Canadians to the communal system will save the corporation $400 million annually, a government statement said.The corporation’s delivery accommodation program, which allows people with mobility issues to arrange for weekly home delivery or other accessibility options, will remain in effect, the government official said.Asked by CBC’s Power & Politics host David Cochrane if the government had erred in pausing the conversion to home delivery in 2015, Lightbound responded “probably yes.”Lightbound said Canada Post will also now be able to adjust how it delivers mail, so that non-urgent post can move by ground instead of air at a cost savings of $20 million annually. The modernization plan also includes lifting the 1994 moratorium on closing rural post offices that covers nearly 4,000 locations — many of which the government says were once rural and have since become suburban or urban. The government official explained that lifting that moratorium is intended to reduce the number of locations in areas that are over-served, while maintaining rural, remote and Indigenous post offices in areas where they are needed. The federal government is also reviewing the process for how it increases the price of stamps to make it more flexible and quicker.WATCH | ‘There are limits to our capacity to bail out Canada Post’: ‘There are limits to our capacity to bail out Canada Post year after year,’ minister saysWhen asked if this is officially the end of the federal government ‘bailing out’ Canada Post, Joël Lightbound, minister of government transformation, public works and procurement, said there will be instances the organization will need government cash injections — but he added that Canada Post needs to show a path of financial viability.Lightbound says he has also asked Canada Post to look for other cost-saving measures and slim down its management structure. “As our government reviews its balance sheets so we can spend less and invest more, we are asking Canada Post to do the same,” the minister said in a statement. The Crown corporation has 45 days to submit a cost-savings plan to the government. Cross Country Checkup is asking: How would the end of door-to-door Canada Post mail delivery affect you? Leave your comment here. Canada Post welcomed the move.”We take this responsibility seriously and will work closely with the government and our employees to move with urgency and implement the necessary changes in a thoughtful manner,” CEO Doug Ettinger said in a statement.”Our goal is to ensure that a strong, affordable, Canadian-made, Canadian-run delivery provider supports the needs of today’s economy and delivers to every community across the country.”The Kaplan report The changes announced Thursday are in line with recommendations made in the May 15, 2025, Industrial Inquiry Commission led by William Kaplan. Kaplan’s report noted that in 2006, Canada Post delivered 5.5 billion letters a year, but by 2023 that volume had dropped to 2.2 billion, despite the number of addresses in Canada increasing by three million over the same period. The report said Canada Post’s infrastructure and staff were designed to deliver 5.5 billion letters a year and the corporation “cannot be sustained with a volume of less than half that.”‘Canada Post is effectively insolvent,’ Government Transformation Minister Joël Lightbound said Thursday. (Alex Lupul/CBC)”There is every reason to believe — and no reason not to — that the letter mail decline will continue and that this trend is irreversible: not a levelling off, but almost certain and eventual extinction,” the report said. Canada, Kaplan said, is not unique. He noted that the Universal Postal Union — the United Nations agency for the postal sector — has said the annual volume of domestic letters has fallen globally from 432 billion in 2000 to 196 billion in 2024.Ongoing labour disputeNegotiations for a new collective agreement have been ongoing for more than a year and a half. Earlier this month, the union said the government’s offer of a 13 per cent pay increase fell short of its demand for 19 per cent. While the union said it was willing to work with Canada Post to allow weekend delivery and the addition of part-time workers, it said the corporation walked away from the negotiating table. WATCH | Lightbound says goal is to save Canada Post: ‘The goal, ultimately, is to save Canada Post,’ minister says of postal service transformationJoël Lightbound, minister of public works, was asked Thursday what makes the government think people will accept major changes to how Canada Post operates, particularly around door-to-door delivery.In an effort to get the corporation back to the table, CUPW had said it would switch its job action from refusing to work overtime to refusing to deliver flyers. Last week, Canada Post said it was sending a new offer to the union in an effort to get negotiations moving again.Pressure is mounting to reach a deal as the crucial holiday season approaches.A strike and lockout lasted more than a month in November and December last year, ending only after then labour minister Steven MacKinnon declared an impasse in the talks and asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to employees back to work.Following Thursday’s announcement, Canada Post’s CUPW employees are now once again on strike.ABOUT THE AUTHORPeter Zimonjic is a senior writer for CBC News who reports for digital, radio and television. He has worked as a reporter and columnist in London, England, for the Telegraph, Times and Daily Mail, and in Canada for the Ottawa Citizen, Torstar and Sun Media. He is the author of Into The Darkness: An Account of 7/7, published by Vintage.
Liberal government instructs Canada Post to end home delivery, close some post offices
