Monday May 19, 2025 | NATIONAL NEWS [Reporting from VICTORIA, BC] | Posted at 1 pm PT [Updated 2 pm PT]
Economic and political insights by Mary P Brooke, Editor | Island Social Trends
On Thursday May 15 the Industrial Inquiry Commission (IIC) released its recommendations for Canada Post’s path forward.
The recommendations were received by Canada Post Corporation and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).
The next day, Canada Post further issued the recommendations and full IIC report to its business customers by email and on its website.
That was just days ahead of what could be the next strike by the unionized Canada Postal Workers, which could start as soon as this coming Wednesday, May 22. [Update 2 pm – CUPW workers do plan to strike as of midnight May 22, with walkouts to start at 12:01 am on Friday May 23]
Canada Post has received strike notices from the union representing some 55,000 postal workers, with operations poised to shut down by the end of the week.
Commissioner looked at four key points:
The IIC was established by the Minister of Labour in December 2024.
The Commision was led by William Kaplan who Canada Post calls “an expert in arbitration and mediation who is familiar with Canada Post”.
Kaplan was directed to review the issues in Canada Post’s collective bargaining dispute with CUPW, as well as the company’s broader challenges. More specifically, he was to examine these four key issues with respect to the collective bargaining dispute:
- Canada Post’s financial situation;
- the company’s need to diversify or alter its delivery models in response to current business demands;
- Canada Post’s viability as it is currently configured; and
- the union’s negotiated commitments to job security and full-time employment; and the need to protect the health and safety of employees.
Those directives were already clear about where the problem lies, i.e. that the corporation needs to modernize and provide a needed service with new technologies in order to complete and be a viable operation, and that the postal workers who expect full-time jobs delivering mail door to door could be looking at the opportunity for retraining as part of a whole new Canada Post (by whatever name)
Both Canada Post and CUPW participated in the hearings that were held in January and February, to offer their views. The first two days of public hearings were held on January 27 and 28, 2025. A second series of public hearings were held on February 19 and 20, 2025.
Assessment of the challenges:
Canada Post says the report “provides a frank and objective assessment of the challenges that our organization faces, while also offering recommendations for a sustainable path forward”.
Canada Post says it still seeks to reach new negotiated collective agreements with CUPW and to transform their operations so they can provide the service that businesses and their customers “rely on and expect”. These expectations are still primarily within the package-delivery realm.
Among other things, the commissioner wrote that “CUPW and its proposals, whether intentional or not, were tone deaf to the immediate challenge: doing what needed to be done to recapture and then retain a meaningful share of the parcel delivery market by making immediate, necessary and appropriate adjustments to the collective agreements that were mindful of and response to the current crisis by allowing Canada Post to offer competitive 7-day-a-week parcel delivery with part-time employees scheduled based on volume (and not hire completely unnecessary full-time weekend workers, as suggested by CUPW).”
As well, in Section 6, the commissioner says that CUPW’s “undetailed generalized proposals about how to grow the business were aspirational and unrealistic”.
This editor’s view:
The commissioner’s IIC report seems stuck on just delivery of parcels as the mainstay of Canada Post and is not looking outside the box. Their criticism of CUPW need not have been so blunt with terms like “tone deaf” and “unrealistic”. Union workers are not business strategies or economists.
The entire process of this commissioner’s report still doesn’t get to the root of the problem…. a crown corporation with an outdated mandate and workers who haven’t shifted to the new reality beyond 9-to-5 jobs for life.
Te commissioner says the root problem is financial losses. While that is of course something that must be reversed, it won’t be done entirely by sticking to a parcel-delivery model. The recommendation for part-time jobs that are not “gigified” is respectful of the union but is still a short-term view.
The commissioner says the federal government should no longer have a moratorium on rural post office closures and community mailbox conversions. Morphing rural offices to providing a broader range of services would be better than closing them (respecting the community centrality of those offices). As for community mailbox conversions, Canadians themselves need to get with that program (door to door delivery by workers who take the same route regardless of whether there is mail to be delivered to every household or not, is simply not affordable anymore).
New Carney cabinet leadership:
As the new Liberal government sees more progress with AI and digital reform (new ministry announced on May 13) the CUPW workers who are promised full-time jobs could be retrained to support new types of necessary services in government-run AI and digital technology services.
That would be a win-win … move Canada into the future of AI and digital citizens’ services under the umbrella of a reliable crown corporation while assuring jobs (after re-training) for a committed work force that has been promised reliable employment.
Can these two highly structured organizations, i.e. Canada Post and CUPW, make the leap to a new shared future?
It might take the combined efforts of the Minister of Jobs and Families (Patty Hajdu), the Minister of Industry (Mélanie Joly), the Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement (Joël Lightbound), the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation (Evan Solomon) with the added support the from Secretary of State for Rural Development (Buckley Belanger), and the Secretary of State for Labour (John Zerucelli). | See New Liberal Cabinet Ministers (May 13, 2025)
Together those experienced ministers and new MPs with insightful minds could reshape Canada Post while not threatening the employment of the CUPW workers and meanwhile still servicing rural areas that depend on Canada Post for deliveries and other customer-facing government services.
Read the report and recommendations:
The report was compiled by William Kaplan as the Commissioner. | Read the full report: Report of the Industrial Inquiry Commission – Appointed Under Section 108 of the Canada Labour Code (PDF)
Canada Post has provided the above link to both the full report and to their summary of its Key Findings and Recommendations (as summarized by Canada Post).
The most recent strike:
A month-long strike from mid-November to mid-December 2024 nearly decimated the usual or anticipated holiday shopping season success for many businesses, particularly small and home-based businesses.
After the strike, delivering of parcels and letter mail had a sporadic restart and in some ways the system did not seem to have been restored to previous levels of reliability.
The next strike:
Canada Post had paused negotiations last week, awaiting the IIC recommendations.
If there is another strike starting this week, it’s likely even more businesses will shift to alternative methods of product delivery. That would leave Canada Post further behind.
===== RELATED:
- Canada Post pauses negotiations before possible postal worker strike (May 14, 2025)
- Carney combines experience and new ideas in first full cabinet (May 13, 2025)
- Breakdown of Canada Post mediated talks with postal workers (March 2, 2025)
- Canada Post parcel invoice system upgrade (February 13, 2025)
- Quietly stabilizing Canada Post with a $1.034 billion loan (January 24, 2025)
- Jan 13: Canada Post letter mail & parcel prices up (January 14, 2025)
- Canada Post domestic parcel service now fully restored (January 7, 2025)
- Canada Post service resumes Dec 17 with workers back on the job (December 17, 2024)
NEWS SECTIONS: BUSINESS & ECONOMY | JOBS & EMPLOYMENT | CANADA POST