{"id":89040,"date":"2024-05-17T03:00:40","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T07:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=89040"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:49:56","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T18:49:56","slug":"canada-post-is-in-deep-deep-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/05\/17\/canada-post-is-in-deep-deep-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Post is in deep, deep trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was vaguely aware that Canada Post has been in financial difficulties for a while, but I had no idea things were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theaudit.ca\/p\/preparing-for-canada-posts-imminent-collapse\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">quite this dire<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Canada-Post-Postes-Canada.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Canada-Post-Postes-Canada-480x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"187\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-62688\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Canada-Post-Postes-Canada-480x187.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Canada-Post-Postes-Canada-150x58.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Canada-Post-Postes-Canada-768x299.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Canada-Post-Postes-Canada.jpg 804w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You&#8217;d better believe that the Canada Post Corporation is in very deep trouble. Here&#8217;s how they phrased it in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.canadapost-postescanada.ca\/cpc\/en\/our-company\/financial-and-sustainability-reports\/2023-annual-report.page\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">their 2023 annual report<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Canada Post&#8217;s financial situation is unsustainable.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;Unsustainable&#8221;. Well that doesn&#8217;t sound good. Think they&#8217;re just putting on a show to carve out a better negotiating position? Well, besides for the fact that they&#8217;re not currently negotiating with anyone, the numbers do bear out the concern:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>For 2023, the Corporation recorded a loss before tax of $748 million, compared to a loss before tax of $548 million in 2022. From 2018 to 2023, Canada Post lost $3 billion before taxes. Without changes and new operating parameters to address our challenges, we forecast larger and increasingly unsustainable losses in future years.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023-853x588.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"588\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-89041\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023-853x588.png 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023-480x331.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023-150x103.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023-768x529.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Canada-Post-net-losses-to-2023.png 1358w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In other words, it&#8217;s madly-off-in-all-directions panic time.<\/p>\n<p>Hey! You know I can hear your condescending sniff: &#8220;I&#8217;m sure this is just a temporary disruption. They&#8217;ll figure out how to fix the leak and get themselves back on the road like always. They&#8217;re too big to fail.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah &#8230; not this time. The competition from digital communications (i.e., the internet), FedEx, and UPS isn&#8217;t going anywhere. Letter delivery nosedived from nearly 5.5 billion pieces in 2006 to just 2.2 billion in 2022. And vague references to &#8220;major strategic changes to transform our information technology model&#8221; don&#8217;t sound much like magic bullets for reversing the decline.<\/p>\n<p>But Canada Post&#8217;s labour and pension costs sure are marching bravely forward. In fact, if it wasn&#8217;t for Parliamentary relief in the form of <em>Canada Post Corporation Pension Plan Funding Regulations<\/em>, the Corporation would have had to pay $354 million into the pension plan in 2023 alone. But that $354 million &mdash; plus whatever additional amounts show up in 2024 and besides the $998 million in existing general debt &mdash; are still liabilities that&#8217;ll eventually need paying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was vaguely aware that Canada Post has been in financial difficulties for a while, but I had no idea things were quite this dire: You&#8217;d better believe that the Canada Post Corporation is in very deep trouble. Here&#8217;s how they phrased it in their 2023 annual report: Canada Post&#8217;s financial situation is unsustainable. &#8220;Unsustainable&#8221;. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6,84],"tags":[71,544,661],"class_list":["post-89040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-government","tag-debt","tag-pensions","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-na8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89043,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89040\/revisions\/89043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}