Minister defends changes allowing Canada Post to shutter rural offices

Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement Joel Lightbound rises in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

OTTAWA — The federal minister in charge of Canada Post told a parliamentary committee Thursday the recent changes to the Crown corporation’s mandate are not aimed at reducing any service to rural and remote communities where the post office is a considered a lifeline.

Procurement Minister Joel Lightbound announced significant changes to the company’s mandate on Sept. 25 as the government looks to help Canada Post cut costs and salvage its flagging business.

That included ending a decades-long moratorium on closing rural post offices -- a move that sparked some concern about the future of mail delivery in remote communities that often aren’t well served by private couriers.

Lightbound told the standing committee on government operations and estimates that some post offices covered by the moratorium when it was applied are no longer considered rural and there are now other points of service in the communities.

He said he’s made it “crystal clear” to Canada Post that it must maintain delivery standards to rural, remote and Indigenous communities in whatever steps management takes to overhaul the Crown corporation’s business model.

Ending the moratorium -- alongside other changes that would see Canada Post expand community mailbox service to roughly four million more addresses and adjust delivery standards for delivery -- are ways Lightbound said Ottawa is “lifting the constraints” on Canada Post as it attempts to restructure its flagging business model.

At the time of his announcement, Lightbound gave Canada Post management 45 days to come back to the government with a plan to right the ship.

The Crown corporation welcomed the government’s transformation plan but the Canadian Union of Postal Workers criticized the move. The union’s members returned to the picket lines immediately after the announcement and are now on a rotating strike with collective bargaining still at an impasse.

Canada Post continues to post substantial operational losses and claims it is bleeding upwards of $10 million per day amid ongoing labour uncertainty with the union representing postal workers.

The Crown corporation has accumulated $5 billion in losses since 2018 and required $1 billion in support from the federal government earlier this year to stay afloat.

Lightbound estimated that implementing the measures allowed by the federal government’s mandate changes would save Canada Post $500 million annually.

Citing a rapid decline in letter mail over recent decades, Lightbound said Canada Post “has become too big for the volume that it needs to deliver.”

“Without any changes, we’d be in repeated bailouts,” he said.

Conservative MP Kelly Block asked what that could mean in terms of job losses at the post office, but Lightbound said “that’s a question best asked to Canada Post.”

With the federal government undergoing its own program review with aims of cutting spending by 15 per cent over three years in most departments, he said it’s fair to ask Canada Post to undertake its own review to find the same or even further cost reductions.

The postal workers’ union has accused Ottawa of trampling on the collective bargaining process by implementing the mandate changes without proper consultation.

But Lightbound, who was pressed by MPs Thursday about why the federal government waited so long to intervene to help stabilize Canada Post, said the future of the postal service has been studied ad nauseam in recent years.

Lightbound said the Industrial Inquiry Commission carried out earlier this year by William Kaplan examined previous studies about the best path forward for Canada Post. Ottawa adopted the recommendations from Kaplan’s final report to move quickly on the postal service’s turnaround, he said.

“The transformation has to begin,” he told the committee in French.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press