A Canadian retailer is moving away from Canada Post this holiday season after more than a decade of relying on the Crown corporation for deliveries, citing concerns over labour disruptions and reliability.
Julie Brown, co-founder of Province of Canada, said the company decided to switch to alternative carriers after using Canada Post for 11 years.
“With all our merchandise made in Canada and most of our customers here, it always made sense to use Canada Post,” Brown said. “But after last year’s strike and then this September, we just didn’t feel confident going into another holiday season with them.”
Brown told CTV News Channel on Tuesday that the decision was difficult but necessary.
“We just couldn’t afford to have the kind of disruptions we had last year,” she said. “We had to go a different route this holiday season.”
To ensure deliveries continue smoothly, Province of Canada replaced Canada Post with four to five other carriers.
“It’s been more complicated, but at least we didn’t have to deal with a strike,” Brown said.
The shift comes even as Canada Post and the union representing its workers reached a tentative agreement earlier this week after two years of negotiations marked by labour disputes and job action that disrupted service for businesses across the country. A vote on the agreement is expected in the new year.
Canada Post has also faced mounting financial challenges. Earlier this year, the corporation reported a $407 million loss in the second quarter and said 2025 is expected to be its worst fiscal year on record, marking its eighth consecutive year of losses.
In a statement, Canada Post acknowledged that prolonged and unresolved negotiations with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have significantly affected its operations and business relationships.
Province of Canada is not alone. Butterpot Designs in Kitchener, Ont., and Lemon & Lavender in Toronto are among other businesses that have opted to use alternative carriers this holiday season, citing a lack of trust in Canada Post’s ability to deliver reliably.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) says many of its members share those concerns.
“Businesses have learned the hard way that Canada Post is an increasingly unreliable provider of delivery services, and so many have made decisions to permanently move away,” CFIB president Dan Kelly told CTVNews.ca last month.
For Brown, memories of last year’s holiday strike remain fresh.
“Last Christmas was really challenging on so many levels,” she said. “Our entire staff was just trying to figure out what was going to happen every day. We were spending more time on logistics than on customers and marketing.”
Under the tentative agreement announced Monday, the contract would run until Jan. 31, 2029, and includes a 6.5 per cent wage increase in the first year and a three per cent increase in the second. It would apply to both urban postal workers and rural and suburban mail carriers.
Even so, Brown said the uncertainty remains too high to return to Canada Post for now.
“We were in quite a pickle last year,” she said. “This year it was out of the question to go down that path again without real certainty that we can rely on them.”
Brown said Province of Canada would consider returning to Canada Post in the future if labour relations stabilize.
“If they’re able to sort things out, we would absolutely reconsider for next Christmas,” she said.