Stop the liberals aim to privatize Canada Post, break the union, layoff thousands of workers, and end door-to-door mail delivery

The federal government’s directive to Canada Post to end door-to-door postal delivery in Canada is a direct attack on free collective bargaining, on tens of thousands of jobs, and on a vital public service that is important to Canadians. Public opposition to ending door-to-door delivery was strong enough to force previous governments to back off, which is the likely reason for imposing it in the middle of the current negotiations, laying the blame on the union.

But the union has been campaigning for years to expand the services provided by Canada Post, every one of which has been rejected by Canada Post. This included expanding parcel delivery services, which left in the hands of private corporations, has generated massive profits for Amazon and a slew of US courier services. Purolator, which is 91% owned by Canada Post (de facto its subsidiary) filed pre-tax profits of $294 million in 2024, exposing the real financial situation for postal delivery services in Canada. It’s not the fabricated deficit that Canada Post and the Carney government are feeding to the media and the public.

In 2019, 62% of parcels were shipped by Canada Post, as opposed to just 24% in 2024. The record shows it’s not the union that’s opposed to expanding and modernizing services – it’s the employer backed by both Liberal and Tory federal governments This is an employer that aims to break-up and bankrupt this public service in order to privatize it. The deficit is fabricated with the aim of turning the public against the union and weakening the fight to save this essential public service that the public has demonstrated multiple times that it wants and supports.

Further, the Carney government has promised deep cuts to public services and social programs in the fall budget in order to vastly increase military spending in Canada to $150 billion a year. This is the road to war, environmental disaster, massive job losses, deep financial cuts to every universal social program, to all public services, austerity across the country, and it’s just the beginning of the wreckage still to come.

The Communist Party of Canada condemns these actions and calls on the federal government to immediately reverse its order to eliminate door-to-door mail delivery across Canada, and to immediately direct Canada Post to negotiate a fair collective agreement with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Canada Post must end its union busting now, and instead act to expand its services including parcel delivery, universal door-to-door mail delivery across Canada, and other services that Canadians want and the post office can deliver.

The Communist Party recognizes the courage and determination of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to stop this anti-union, anti-people agenda that will eliminate thousands of public sector jobs and a vital public service that Canadians fought hard to get and don’t want to lose. CUPW is fighting for its members and for the public today, as it did when it struck for maternity leave for its members, and won maternity leave for all women in the 1970s. They defied the government’s back to work order then in their struggle for the rights of women workers in the post office, and across Canada, and the public’s support only grew bigger when their President was sent to jail for refusing to order workers back to work. This is the strong stuff that postal workers in Canada are made of, and that the government should take note of while there’s still time to reverse course.

It turns out the federal Liberals’ ‘elbows up’ is directed at workers, unions, jobs and public services in Canada, not Trump and US tariffs which also threaten workers, unions, jobs and public services.

The Carney government is doing what the Mulroney Tories tried to do in 1986 – privatization by stealth – that led to the loss of 10,000 jobs at the post office and the loss of service to the public. The Harper Tories followed up with a campaign to end door-to-door delivery, and it cost them the 2015 election after Justin Trudeau promised to maintain it. This is the neo-liberal agenda initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, and pursued by Tory and Liberal governments in Canada ever since. Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts, free trade, and attacks on labour and democratic rights are the main features of this agenda – and of this new Liberal government which is supported 100% by the Poilievre Conservatives on these issues.

The use of union busting legislation to break strikes and bring workers to heel includes legislation like Section 107 of the Labour Code, but it also includes use of the Constitution’s Notwithstanding Clause, US tariffs which have already cost thousands of Canadian workers their jobs, and the CUSMA agreement which threatens even more jobs in Canada.

Strong public services and social programs provide essential services and jobs that have wide public support, and these are buttressed by labour rights that protect workers and support delivery of quality goods and services to the public.

These public services and union rights were fought for and won by the trade union movement and by the working people across the country over 80 years. It will take the same mobilized forces to protect these rights and services from government and corporate attack today.

We are entering a period of sharp struggle against corporations and right-wing governments that want to strip workers of their social, economic, and political rights, and are moving to militarize Canada and the world in order to impose their agenda on a resistant public.

Broad unity, solidarity and mass resistance is the key to defeat this attack. An injury to one is an injury to all!

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada