Canada Post rumoured to seek $500M more in funding for January

Canada Post is seeking another half a billion in emergency funding next month to stay afloat, according to the Department of Public Works.

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Canada Post is seeking another half a billion in emergency funding next month to stay afloat, according to the Department of Public Works, despite an abysmal year of financial losses and a worker strike.

The Crown corporation began 2025 with a $1.03 billion federal loan and reported massive third-quarter losses, which marked a 72 per cent increase over the $315 million shortfall posted in the same period last year.

First covered by Blacklocks Reporter, Assistant Deputy Minister Lorenzo Ieraci told the Commons government operations committee that Canada Post was having ongoing conversations about “how the corporation can continue to operate in the current environment.”

When asked by Conservative MP Kelly Block whether there was currently a request from Canada Post for more funding, Ieraci replied that, given its current projections, “they will likely need to have some additional support on an ongoing basis.”

“Does this mean the government plans to approve another loan or more funding to Canada Post?” asked Block.

“Those conversations are ongoing, and obviously, those items are being discussed and considered. It would be probably premature for me to respond to that question directly,” responded Ieraci.

Block noted that there was no mention of additional funding in the Liberals’ recently passed federal budget.

“By what vehicle would you be providing additional funding to Canada Post?” she asked.

Ieraci said that currently there is “no funding in supplementary estimates.”

However, Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer addressed a rumoured figure of $500 million during a committee meeting last month.

When Treasury Board Secretary Bill Matthews previously testified, he said his office had yet to see a new request from Canada Post, but that if there was one, it would come through the Minister of Public Works.

“We’re never getting that money back, are we?” asked Patzer.

“The loan is repayable until a decision is taken that says it’s not,” answered Matthews.

“How they will rebound in terms of picking back up business that may have been lost during the rotating strikes, that will have a heavy influence on cash flows going forward. I am sure they are keeping a close eye on that.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has called for the sale of Canada Post after the federal government unveiled sweeping reforms in September aimed at ending what Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement Joël Lightbound called an “existential crisis” at the Crown corporation.

“Canada Post is effectively insolvent,” said Lightbound at the time. “It provides an essential service to Canadians … but repeated bailouts from the federal government are not the solution.”

Lightbound laid out the scale of the problem: more than $5 billion in losses since 2018, including a $1.3-billion deficit in 2024 and $407 million lost in the second quarter of 2025 alone — the corporation’s worst quarter ever.

“At present, the corporation is losing $10 million every day,” he said.

Letter mail has plunged from 5.5 billion pieces two decades ago to about two billion today, even as the number of Canadian addresses has grown. Parcels once offered the corporation fiscal hope, but Canada Post’s share of that market has fallen from 62 per cent in 2019 to less than 24 per cent today, Lightbound noted.

Acting on the recommendations of an Industrial Inquiry Commission led by William Kaplan in May, the minister said the government will lift the 1994 moratorium that has protected nearly 4,000 rural post offices from closure.

He directed Canada Post to return within 45 days with a plan to “ensure protection of service in rural, remote and Indigenous communities,” even as the corporation gains flexibility to close or consolidate sites in areas that have become suburban or urban.

About four million addresses that still receive door-to-door delivery will be converted to community mailboxes over the next nine years, most within four. Delivering to a single address costs the corporation $279 a year compared with $157 for a community box, a change Lightbound said will save nearly $400 million annually.