Wood file: Canada can lose occasionally and still be No. 1
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OTTAWA — Canada Post is laying off an unspecified number of managers as part of a corporate restructuring that began earlier this year.
In a message to workers, Canada Post chief executive Doug Ettinger said employees were informed earlier this week of the changes as the mail carrier begins work on a major transformation to strengthen the service.
“Canadians have changed the way they use the postal service, and we must change with them,” he said in the letter.
The latest cuts are part of an effort to better align the company’s management teams with the future needs of the organization, he said.
“We need to ensure our costs better align to our financial realities, which means our organization will be leaner at all levels going forward.”
The postal service says it’s using attrition where possible and a hiring freeze as part of its efforts to reduce staffing numbers.
The changes come as Canada Post works to reach a new contract with its roughly 55,000 unionized employees, who are taking part in rotating strikes.
Canada Post and the union have said they plan to meet this week with a mediator to try and move forward talks that have dragged on for nearly two years.
Members took to the picket line last month after the federal government introduced sweeping changes to Canada Post’s mandate that allow for an expansion of community mailboxes, adjustments in delivery standards and the closure of some post offices.
Canadian Union of Postal Workers president Jan Simpson told a parliamentary committee Tuesday that the announcement directly interfered with collective bargaining and called on the government to walk back the changes.
Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound has said the federal government could not afford to wait before making changes to the struggling Crown corporation’s mandate. Canada Post, which welcomed the intervention, has racked up substantial annual losses in recent years and needed an injection of $1 billion from the feds to stay afloat earlier in 2025.
The company has been given 45 days to come up with a plan to implement the proposed changes, which the union has criticized as harmful to the future of the post office.
Canada Post’s plan should include proposals to “right-size” the business, Lightbound said last week. He did not say how many jobs he expects to see lost at the Crown corporation and said that was a decision left up to management.
Canada Post’s latest offer to the union included provisions for job losses and waived a signing bonus that was included in the previous proposal in May. It otherwise included the same offer to hike wages by 13.59 per cent over four years — figures that fall short of a union ask for a 19 per cent pay raise in August.
CUPW members have been on the picket lines for more than a month now but switched to a rotating strike model roughly two weeks into the action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2025.
The Canadian Press
