Canada Post CEO sees early signs of recovery

OTTAWA – Canada Post is showing “early signs” of financial recovery, chief executive Doug Ettinger said Thursday, even as the Crown corporation continues to lose money and plans to move its last four million doorstep-delivery addresses to community mailboxes.

Speaking at the postal service’s annual public meeting, Ettinger said Canada Post is winning back some of the parcel business it has lost since 2019. It is offering shipping discounts to small businesses and testing a new online marketplace called Canada Shops, which is meant to connect Canadian retailers with domestic shoppers.

“I am extremely confident that the organization is not only trending in the right direction, it is poised to re-establish itself as a crucial infrastructure built to serve Canada,” Ettinger said. He also said the network of post offices is “overbuilt” in cities and must shrink, but that Canada Post will not abandon the small communities that rely on it.

Canada Post launched an online tool Thursday that lets customers with door-to-door delivery enter their postal code to see when their area will switch to a community mailbox. Executives said the first conversions in more than 10 years were completed a few days ago in Winnipeg and Sept-Îles, Que. By the end of 2027, about 700,000 more households, from Halifax to Victoria, will collect their mail from the boxes, the company said.

In August, Canada Post reported a pre-tax loss of $277 million for the second quarter, down from $407 million a year earlier. Chief financial officer Rindala El-Hage said revenue rose, especially from parcels, while operating costs fell sharply. “These results do not resolve our structural challenges, but they show that … the trajectory can improve,” she said.

Ettinger twice referred to the “fiscal cliff” the service still faces and blamed successive governments for a slow response. He is due to step down in March at the end of his second term. He said the Carney government has opened the door to overdue changes, including lifting the community mailbox moratorium imposed in 2015.

Small businesses will keep Canada Post’s deepest shipping discounts, regardless of volume, through the end of the year, and domestic parcels get a 15 per cent discount on fuel surcharges. Weekend parcel delivery began rolling out across the country this month.

Between 2019 and 2023, Canada Post’s share of the parcel market fell to 29 per cent from 62 per cent as Amazon and other competitors gained ground. Chief marketing officer Rod Hart said the new marketplace “isn’t about competing with other marketplace giants.”

The update comes less than five months after postal workers ratified a five-year agreement that raises wages nearly 10 per cent over the first 24 months, ending more than two years of labour strife. A federal inquiry led by William Kaplan produced recommendations that led to a September 2025 overhaul, which lifted the community mailbox moratorium and ended a freeze on rural post office closures in place since 1994 that covered close to 4,000 outlets.

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Source: The Canadian Press.

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