Small business owners brace for possible Canada Post strike

Many small Maritime businesses are bracing for a potential Canada Post strike.

It was business as usual at The Comic Hunter in downtown Moncton Tuesday and business is pretty good these days.

But the possibility of another strike from Canada Post could slow down a portion of their sales.

Store manager Rémi Vienneau LeClair said they ship a lot of online orders every day.

“The parcels will ship between Canada Post and UPS and FedEx and whatever is going to get their fastest for cheapest, but Canada Post wins a lot,” said Vienneau LeClair.

Last week, unionized workers from Canada Post rejected the latest round of offers from their employers.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said on Friday that their roughly 55,000 members shot down the Canada Post’s latest proposal in a vote.

That deal would have seen wage hikes of about 13 per cent over four years.

Canada Post workers went on a month-long strike over peak shipping time during the holiday season in 2024.

Vienneau LeClair said if they do go on strike again, The Comic Hunter’s saving grace is the fact that every store doing what they do is in the same boat.

“Letter mail stops,” said Vienneau LeClair. “No one is buying a $5 card and paying $20 to send it parcel. So it does affect us, it does slow us down a little bit, but the customers realize it’s happening and they know there’s very little we can and they can do about it.”

A potential strike could also impact an artisanal chocolate shop just down the street from the comic book store, but in a mostly different way.

LaRouère Chocolat co-owner Robin Streb said she uses Canada Post for shipping, all of their Canada Revenue Agency documents and they receive their credit card bills through the mail as well.

Streb said they’ve paused their shipping for the summer, so that aspect of their business won’t be harmed, at least not right now.

“If it were to continue on into the fall we would have to start looking at what our options are other than Canada Post for shipping our products,” said Streb.

During the last strike, Streb found a lot of paper work was getting mixed up and coming very late.

“For us, as a small business, we’re our own accounting department. So the bookkeeping became quite a disaster,” said Streb. “Next time I’ll have to keep more on top of things or find a different way.”

That could mean going paperless, staying on top of payments and making more phone calls.

“We’re going into a move to a new location right now, so there’s other expenses coming up. Of course we’re very preoccupied with that. So, the simpler, the better for us,” said Streb.

Corinne Pohlmann, executive vice-president, Advocacy for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said Canada Post is a very important service for small business owners who use it for many different reasons.

“However, given all the uncertainty seen over the last year, strike again, maybe strike, maybe not striking, whatever, this has become much more difficult as a service to be relied on. So many small businesses have been starting to turn away from Canada Post,” said Pohlmann.

Web sales at The Comic Hunter went down around 25 per cent over the holidays last year, so another work stoppage, no matter the season, is a concern for Vienneau LeClair.

“We warn customers that it will ship when it ships. Offer them the parcel option if they want one, but obviously it’s a lot more,” he said.

With files from the Canadian Press

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