Canada Post warned that it is anticipating another substantial loss this year. The postal service said income from parcels, letter mail, and flyers all declined during the first half of 2023.
“For the first half of 2023 Canada Post revenue fell by $110 million or 3.3 percent compared to the same period of the prior year,” managers wrote in a quarterly financial statement. “The segment’s loss before tax was $361 million compared to a loss before tax of $289 million in the first half of 2022.”
As first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, Canada Post incurred a pre-tax loss of $548 million last year.
Parcel revenue was down $45 million in the first six months of 2023, income from general mail was down $40 million, and direct marketing revenue fell by $16 million. The post office said an increasingly competitive parcel delivery sector had impacted profits in the first two quarters of the year.
The $500,000 losses in 2022 came after a losses of $490 million in 2021, $779 million in 2020, $153 million in 2019, and $276 million in 2018.
In the period from 2014 to 2017, Canada Post’s total pre-tax profits were $388 million.
“The Government of Canada expects the corporation to operate in a manner that is financially self-sustaining,” the postal service wrote in its last annual report to Parliament. “The corporation submitted to the Government of Canada a strategic plan that acknowledges the magnitude and significance of recurring financial losses over the past five years and reinforces the importance of transformation to serve Canadians.”
In 2022, the Department of Public Works commissioned a series of public opinion surveys to determine whether Canadians would support service cuts. No revised corporate plan to address the losses has yet been published.
One report, titled “Canadians’ Views on Canada Post Services,” said the goal of the survey is to “capture the views of Canadians about the mail and their current expectations of Canada Post,” especially since the pandemic and the corporation’s business losses.
Most Canadians said they would accept a change in the frequency of mail delivery to every other day instead of the current five days per week. They also said they would pay up to $1.25, or more, to mail a domestic letter, currently set at 92 cents.
Business owners, who make up the greatest proportion of Canada Post customers, were asked if they would support an end to doorstep mail delivery. Two-thirds of respondents agreed to the idea.
“When it comes to reducing Canada Post’s financial losses, more businesses than not believe that Canada Post should be supported by the federal government to maintain their current service offering in addition to directly subsidizing the more costly and less profitable postal services in rural and remote communities,” researchers said.
