Canadians are once again starting to receive mail after a five-week national postal strike that kept most letters out of mailboxes during the run-up to the holidays.
Still, experts say the backlog of packages created by the strike could take weeks to clear, while Canada Post confirmed that the network became “fully operational” Wednesday afternoon.
In a statement to the Star, Canada Post said that ”items in the network the longest are processed first” and that ”stabilizing operations will take time.”
While the labour fight may be ongoing — the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) said Tuesday evening that the federal labour minister’s directive that paused the strike is “an illegal breach” that it will “fight” — for most Canadians, mail delivery should be returning to normal, once the substantial postal backlog has been cleared.
For couriers that adjusted operations to accommodate an influx of packages — and on whom many Canadians depended in the absence of the national postal service — operations could also soon resume as normal.
FedEx told the Star last week that it was “temporarily limiting unscheduled pickups and drop-offs” at retail locations to five packages per day and “adopting a first-in, first-out delivery approach, prioritizing medical, pharmaceutical, perishable, and other critical shipments.”
Those measures, including the package limit, continued as of Wednesday, a FedEx spokesperson said, but it expects to roll back “some measures” as early as Thursday, “should local conditions allow.”
Purolator told the Star that it continues to temporarily pause “shipments from some select partners, such as third-party platforms” while it works through “a surge of volume, and continue prioritizing critical health-care shipments.”
A spokesperson for DHL said that the company has “seen more volume” in the wake of the strike but is “prepared to address the effects of the Canada Post strike.”
UPS did not respond to a request for comment on whether its operations have been impacted by the postal strike.
It is not clear whether the United States Postal Service (USPS), who suspended international mail acceptance to Canada due to the strike, has resumed sending letters and parcels north of the border; the agency did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication as to whether it is accepting international mail bound for Canada.
For Sarah Keller, a registered nurse living in Sherwood Park, Alta., the cost of sending Christmas cards and gifts via private courier was too much to bear. She had reserved a sum of money to spend on mailing cards, but said the process of sending them via courier was “cumbersome” and cost-prohibitive.
“I make pretty good money, but I don’t make enough to send 60 cards via courier around the globe this season,” Keller told the Star.
Meanwhile, Canada Post says its financial situation is unsustainable; the company said at the end of November that it recorded a loss before tax of $315 million in the third quarter of 2024.
According to last year’s annual report, the postal service’s share of the parcel market has plummeted to 29 per cent from 62 per cent before the COVID-19 pandemic, as Amazon and other competitors seized on skyrocketing demand for next-day doorstep deliveries.
As Canadians wait for the postal backlog to be cleared, some municipalities across Canada have said they’ll use couriers for certain, time-sensitive mailings.
With files from The Canadian Press.
