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Canada Post Lost a Record $1.57 Billion in 2025. So What?

We don’t call the military a money loser. Public mail delivery shouldn’t need to turn a profit either

How should we talk about Canada Post? For many Canadians, the conversation might start with complaints about its clunky online system or waiting forever in line at a service point, likely tucked away inside a Shoppers Drug Mart. For some, there will be no debate at all as they question why we even need a postal service in the era of email, Amazon, and four-wheeled—and sometimes two—gig workers dashing about delivering meals and sundries while our community postal box fills up with junk mail. Like so much of life, however, the matter is more complicated than it seems.

The most recent push to reconsider Canada Post was sparked by news that it had “lost” $1.57 billion in 2025, the deepest deficit in its history. Canada Post attributed much of the loss to declining parcel deliveries as customers, concerned about the prospect of strikes and service interruptions, turned elsewhere for shipping. The deficit has since become a political opening for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government, which is considering ending all door-to-door delivery, closing rural post offices, and potentially privatizing parts of the operation.

And you might think: about time. I mean, the loss sounds bad, right? And when you consider that the postal service is into the feds for billions more in repayable loans, as it’s gone at least $6 billion into the hole since 2018, well, then it sounds very bad. The loans are meant to keep the company solvent while it reforms; a long-term plan to get Canada Post back to profit or, at least, neutral. That plan implies both structural reforms to the business model itself and sorting out long-standing labour struggles between the company and its workers. In the meantime, you know what they say: a billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking real money.

As alarming as those losses may be, how we talk about them matters. Beginning with the frame of a “loss.” Yes, Canada Post is losing money. Yes, the current model may be unsustainable, designed as it was for another era. And yes, we’re living in a very different world from even a few decades ago. But none of those observations means the country no longer needs a mail service or that some version of it will not require subsidies to preserve capacity in pursuit of broader public goals.

Any serious discussion of Canada Post has to begin with those goals. The institution exists in much the same way roadworks, the civil service, or the armed forces do. That is, to perform a function we have collectively decided should not be left entirely to the market, even if the private sector might overlap with some of its........

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