Canada Post: Why your mail service isn’t supposed to make a profit

Canada Post is a money pit.

This is the message from critics and the Conservative caucus – that Canada Post costs the government too much money, and it needs to be culled. It's true that Canada Post loses money hand over fist. It posted annual losses of $1.57 billion in 2025, a record-breaking loss. That $1.57 billion loss was attributed to a serious drop in parcel volumes in 2025. Canada Post transported nearly 33 per cent fewer parcels in 2025 due to service disruptions and a growing mistrust in the organization. With options like UPS, FedEx, Intelcom, and Puralator (owned by Canada Post) offering cheaper premiums for small packages and boasting convenient return services, Canada Post is no longer the go-to service for Canadians. This is the issue.

Mail carriers are a service, not a business

It seems as though there's a misconception surrounding Canada Post's purpose. Canada Post does not exist to make a profit; it exists to provide a service to Canadians. Even more than that, its purpose is to provide access to information for Canadians living in rural and remote areas. For decades, Canada Post was the only link that rural and Northern communities had with mainland Canada. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians relied on Canada Post to communicate with loved ones and receive packages. Hundreds of Northern communities even relied on Canada Post to deliver groceries to supermarkets. Canada Post does not exist to make a profit; it exists to provide Canadians with a service, specifically Canadians who need the service. Canada Post delivers to more than 150 remote communities that are only accessible by plane, sending more than 300 flights to those communities each week. More than 40 per cent of Canadians reported that they relied strongly on Canada Post in 2025, according to the CFIB.

Why does Canada Post lose so much money?

In 2025, Canada Post reported a record-breaking loss of $1.57 billion. That number is nearly double the organization's loss in 2024, which totalled $841 million. Since 2018, the service has lost money every single year, totalling losses of more than $6 billion. The consistent losses have caused Conservative politicians to argue for the privatization of Canada's postal service in order to cut expenses, but historically, privatizing social services ends up hurting Canadians more than helping them (see examples like the drive-test system in Ontario, or the privatization of CN Rail in the 1990s, both of which have ended up costing Canadians every year since).

There's a simple answer as to why Canada Post is losing money: letters. Yes, package transportation dropped nearly 33 per cent, but with competing companies, it's a larger issue. The simple answer is that we don't send as much mail as we used to. According to Canada Post, in 2006, Canadian households received seven letters a week; in 2025, they received only two. In 2006, Canada Post transported 5.5 billion letters across Canada; in 2025, they only transported 2 billion. Canada Post always competed with companies like Intelcom, UPS, and FedEx for packages, but it controlled the letters completely. Now, with Canada Post's largest revenue stream slashed by global digitization, they need to find other sources of income, not try to slash the bottom line.

With Canada Post's losses drawing the ire of Canadians and politicians, the service is completely restructuring its mail delivery systems to save money. Canada Post will be cancelling door-to-door delivery for four million addresses, instead switching to community mailboxes, something that 75 per cent of the country already uses. While this change will save money, Canada Post plans on also cutting its delivery workforce by 30 per cent. This is where the problems begin. Canada Post should exist for two reasons. To provide mail to Canadians and to provide jobs for Canadians. If Canada Post slashes it's workforce by 30 per cent, the organization will save nearly $400 million annually, but Canadians will also lose millions. The average Canada Post letter carrier makes a base salary of $50,000. With Canada Post boasting more than 15,000 letter carriers, Canadians will lose up to $250 million in salary. Canada Post needs to stop the bleeding, but cutting $250 million in salaries is not the way to do it. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has called the plan an ‘assault on workers' and claimed that Canada Post is using its losses as an excuse to cut jobs.

The (possible ) solution

There isn't one single solution to Canada Post's financial struggles. The organization faces serious systemic problems and has now lost the support of many Canadians. What needs to happen is a shift in how we perceive Canada Post and how the government supports it. There are millions of Canadians who understand how vital Canada Post is to remote communities, and there are very few Canadians who want to see jobs cut. Canada Post needs to look at other nationalized postal services and mimic their structures. While Canada Post experiences drops in packages, Die Post (Swiss Mail) reported a rise in packages in 2025, as did Deutsche Post DHL. Both of those services also reported a profit (though government funding made up a significant chunk of the profit). Those services thrive because the people of the country trust them. Canada Post needs to be an attractive option for Canadians. With strikes effectively shutting down service for parts of 2025, Canadians no longer trust Canada Post and look to other, more reliable options that are often cheaper as well. Canada needs to put some lipstick on its pig.

There is also another, more dramatic, and implausible solution: Amazon. If Amazon used Canada Post for more than 50 per cent of its deliveries, the service would benefit greatly. Before the Canada Post strikes of 2024 and 2025, Amazon was already relying on private carriers, but during those strikes, Amazon restructured to only use Canada Post when it had to. That means only remote communities receive Amazon packages from Canada Post. In a perfect world, the Canadian government would be able to force Amazon to use Canada Post, but there is a litany of laws preventing it. Canada's (extremely broken) competition act forbids the government from forcing a private corporation to use a government-run service, and there are a series of trade agreements that would also be stretched if Canada banned Amazon from using certain private services.

What the government can do is take a page out of America's book and make Canada Post the most convenient option by pressuring private firms. This choice would almost certainly draw criticism from capitalists and international markets, but it would also reinvigorate Canada Post. If the government were to impose new regulatory standards catered to Canada Post, it could pressure private carriers while benefiting Canada Post. For example, the government could say that all mail carriers in Canada must offer service to remote communities. Right now, this is Canada Post's biggest advantage. Nearly every single private carrier uses Canada Post for ‘last-mile' deliveries. Intelcom, FedEx, Amazon, and DHS all rely on Canada Post planes to deliver packages to remote communities. The Canadian government could also impose taxes on private delivery networks, but the decision could potentially violate international trade agreements if other countries believe the taxes are designed to target foreign firms.

While there is no simple path to saving Canada Post, it's clear that slashing jobs and the service will not be the solution. You cannot cut your way to growth. Growth and security cost money, and the Canadian government needs to make Canada Post a priority.