With Canada Post facing deep losses, the Crown corporation's CEO said Tuesday the company expects to lose up to 30,000 employees to retirement or voluntary departure over the next decade as it tries to get costs under control.
"Going forward, we will need to be a leaner organization and align our operations to the modern needs of the country and our financial reality," Doug Ettinger told Canada Post's annual meeting.
"It will need some change, but we can do it in a way that minimizes the impact on our people."
He said the company will use "attrition first" to downsize from the roughly 62,000 people it employed at the end of last year.
The company expects to shed 16,000 employees through retirement or voluntary departures by 2030, with another 14,000 leaving by 2035.
Ettinger did not say whether additional layoffs will be needed to meet financial targets in the coming years. Canada Post did go through a wave of management layoffs earlier this year.
"We'll need to have a strong labour force going forward and we will continue to provide good jobs with good benefits. But the reality is, with so much new competition for parcel deliveries and the decline of letter mail, we're clearly overstaffed," Ettinger said.
Talk of downsizing the postal service came on the heels of stark new figures showing the extent of Canada Post's financial decline.
Chief financial officer Rindala El-Hage said earlier in the meeting the corporation is "effectively insolvent," with losses in the first nine months of the year topping $1 billion — $239 million more than the loss posted in the same period in 2024.
She said the company recorded an "unprecedented" loss before taxes of $541 million in the third quarter alone — beating the previous record for the largest quarterly loss in Canada Post's history, which was set in the second quarter of this year.
Canada Post accumulated losses before tax of $3.8 billion between 2018 and 2024. El-Hage said the company is tracking for its steepest annual loss yet in 2025.
Ettinger said Tuesday that Canada Post's business model is deteriorating, with fewer letters being sent every year. Stiff competition for parcel delivery and disruptions from an ongoing labour dispute with the Crown corporation's largest union are also driving the company deeper into the red.
In January, the federal government opened up a $1.034-billion repayable loan to Canada Post, to be tapped as needed through the year to maintain solvency and support its operations.
El-Hage said Tuesday the company used $755 million of that loan in third quarter of the year alone, plus an extra $200 million drawn from outside that quarter.
"Unfortunately, the reality today is that when Canada Post loses money, taxpayers are footing the bill," Ettinger said.
"That is not only unsustainable, it is unnecessary, and quite frankly, it's unacceptable."
Ettinger said leaning on the federal government for ongoing lifelines is not a workable strategy and changes made to the postal service's mandate in September will help the company adjust its operations to the modern realities of mail delivery.
Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound unveiled in September a suite of changes aimed at helping Canada Post transform its business model. They include allowing the Crown corporation to adjust mail delivery standards, shutter some rural post offices and expand community mailbox service to more addresses.
Canada Post submitted a plan to the federal government earlier this month to capitalize on those changes, but details of the proposal won't be made public while Ottawa reviews it.
Ettinger on Tuesday sought to reassure Canadians who are worried about what changes to their mail service might look like.
Changing delivery standards for letter mail from two to four days to three to seven days might mean slower delivery, he acknowledged. But that doesn't mean the postal service will be taking days off from delivery, he added, and the restructuring could help the company save money by delivering via ground services rather than air.
Ettinger said Canada Post won't take a "one-size-fits-all" approach to deciding which communities could see their local post office affected. He said the company will be scaling up its accommodations program for those who have difficulty accessing community mailboxes.
A measure in the recently passed federal budget allowing Canada Post to set its own postage rates — rather than asking Ottawa to approve them — will also help the post office respond more quickly to changing market dynamics, Ettinger said.
"These changes will not happen right away, but it's important we move with urgency while taking the time to get it right," he said.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which represents some 55,000 mail carriers at Canada Post, remains on a rotating strike as the bargaining saga stretches past the two-year mark and heads into the busy holiday season.
The two parties have been back at the table negotiating with the help of a federal mediator since late October.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
