Email, cell phones, online shopping, the pandemic — the past two decades have wholly transformed the way people communicate and shop, and Canada’s postal service has had to roll with the punches.
Mail volume has steadily declined since 2006, and while package deliveries have climbed, the profits for Canada Post have not.
Amid a potential postal worker strike, here’s a look at how many letters and parcels the corporation delivers and how those numbers have changed in the internet age.
‘The Great Mail Decline’
Canada Post divides its mail into three categories: transaction mail (letters), parcels and direct marketing. The total volume of mail has been eroding over the past 20 years.
Letter mail has been especially affected. In 2006, at its peak, Canada Post delivered nearly 5.5 billion letters. As of 2023, that number has dwindled by more than half, with only 2.2 billion letters getting stamped and sent last year.
In its 2023 annual report, Canada Post called it ‘The Great Mail Decline.’
Part of the parcel market
In 2023, Canada Post delivered close to 300 million parcels. The report describes the corporation’s shift to delivering parcels to “serve the growing, competitive ecommerce market.”
At first the move was successful, and at one point, Canada Post accounted for two-thirds of Canadians’ online orders. But its market share has dropped significantly over the past few years.
Parcel volume has fallen nearly 100 million per year compared to the pandemic high in 2020.
Parcel revenue has grown to approximately half of Canada Post’s total revenue, but both have been declining in the last few years.
And that’s revenue before operating costs — which have put Canada Post in the red for the past six years.
Years of losses
Canada Post recorded losses of $748 million last year and $548 million the year before that. In fact, 2023 marked the sixth consecutive year of losses topping $150 million.
“Without changes to address the structural challenges with our operating model, we forecast larger, unsustainable losses in future years,” reads the report.