Small businesses gear up -- again -- for a possible Canada Post strike

A Canada Post worker fills his truck with mail in Montreal on Dec.17, 2024. (Christinne Muschi / The Canadian Press)

MONTREAL -- Small businesses and shipping firms are preparing for a possible Canada Post strike as early as next week, a disruption they warn could strain supply chains and freeze millions of parcels as well as billions of dollars in sales.

Mom-and-pop shops and e-commerce companies have started making alternative arrangements to get their packages to consumers and clients -- but many are already frustrated.

In Cape Breton, N.S., retailer Tracy’s Rolling Yarn Shop has begun tallying the hit to its bottom line if it’s forced to ship through a large courier, which typically charges more for parcels than Canada Post.

“People that just wanted one skein of yarn, I would ask them to wait to see what happened with Canada Post,” said Tracy Stubbard, who owns the store-on-wheels operation.

She explained that the cost of small shipments outweighed sales during last year’s Canada Post strike that shut down postal operations for more than a month during peak shipping season ahead of the winter holidays.

For those in rural areas -- where Canada Post is usually the most accessible option -- there’s also the inconvenience of finding an alternative courier.

“I shipped through Purolator because it was the closest and easiest spot for me to get to, which was still a 20-minute drive. But their office can only hold maybe two or three people. So we were lined up outside in the cold for 45 minutes to get in to ship stuff,” Stubbard said.

While a burgeoning crop of last-mile carriers and shipping platforms saw their volumes surge during the 2024 strike, many were caught off guard and found they could handle only a fraction of the demand.

Jarrett Stewart, in charge of commercial operations at delivery startup GoBolt, said a Canada Post work stoppage would mean more customers but also more headaches if the big couriers it relies on cap freight volumes.

The Toronto-based company, which counts 500 employees and 12 warehouses across Canada and the U.S., carries out fulfilment services for the big players: storing, packing and shipping items for Canada Post, UPS, FedEx, the United States Postal Service and others.

“That helps relieve the reliance on a single carrier like Canada Post,” Stewart said, noting that a diverse range of clients eases the blow of a disruption at one of them.

“However, when it’s your national carrier, it’s quite impactful, because there are some areas that only they can access.”

Stewart is trying to head off basic logistics problems faced by customers during the last work stoppage. For example, he’s had to remind them to write an address rather than a PO box -- a lockable box at a Canada Post site that other couriers can’t access -- in the event of a strike.

He said a second problem is carving out capacity in the shipping ecosystem as part of it shuts down: “We moved your volume from Canada Post to FedEx, but then FedEx says, ‘Hey, no, no, we can’t take all this, we’re now capping your volume,”’ Stewart said.

A strike would stall billions of dollars in e-commerce revenue and leave rural shoppers waiting for essential goods, according to alternative shipping company Stallion Express.

The last work stoppage resulted in an estimated $1.6 billion in losses for small businesses, according to Merchant Growth, a small business financing company. Since then, FedEx and Purolator have raised their freight rates.

Canada Post employees could be headed to the picket line as early as Thursday, with an extension on existing deals between the Crown corporation and the union expiring on May 22.

A strike or lockout would mark the second time in under six months that the postal service ground to a halt after 55,000 employees walked off the job for 32 days in November and December.

Organizations from financial institutions to non-profits are warning of potential disruption. Bank of Montreal tells customers online it has mailed credit cards early and encourages online statements; many banks have sent warning emails. ALS Canada is reminding donors that e-transfers and gifts via phone or website are an option, noting that donations dipped during the last strike.

Some shipping customers looking to make last-minute arrangements may be out of luck, with courier vans already filled to the brim.

“We cannot start shipping for someone overnight,” said Jean-Daniel Gervais, who heads business development at Montreal-based courier Intelcom, known outside Quebec as Dragonfly.

“It takes time because we need to understand their needs, how much volume we’re talking about. And then we need to connect the systems so we can flawlessly work with them accepting their orders, picking up their parcels where they are or managing an injection in our network.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 16, 2025.

Article written by Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press