Mail Delivery & Labour Unrest

Monday, September 22, 2025

Postal Strike Impacts Limited for Some Producers

By Matt Jones

A Canada Post strike appears to be looming once again. A strike was called in November by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) as they demanded wage increases, enhancements to group benefits, and protections against technological change. The issue was taken to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), which ordered the employees back to work in December and extended contracts to provide more time for negotiations. With that extra time expired, another strike seemed imminent at press time, as Canada Post rejected a request from the union to go to binding arbitration in early June.

In response to this issue, the Canadian Pork Council has urged producers to plan ahead and avoid potential supply shortages. Particularly, they recommended that pork farmers stock up on at least a four-month supply of PigTRACE ear tags to get them through the summer months.

“Our engagement with producers directly is around ear tags,” says CPC executive director Stephen Heckbert. “Otherwise, as with all things, perhaps shift to electronic billing options where you can do that. But, you always want to make sure you don’t get defrauded either, by clicking on a bill that you assume is from the right place. So take your own cybersecurity steps around that.”

Heckbert notes that tags will still be available if a strike occurs – the shipping costs will likely be much higher, however, if options other than Canada Post have to be utilized.

“But from our perspective, if you know you’re going to need tags for the next month it’s probably best to stock up and avoid this uncertainty to the best of your ability,” says Heckbert.

The impacts on pork producers in Canada could be limited however, Heckbert says, simply due to the history of postal strikes and disruptions of service in Canada. Canada Post employees seem to go on strike at least once or twice per decade since the 1960s, and as a result, many producers have simply decided to avoid using Canada Post if possible.

“People have learned to get away from relying on Canada Post, which is one of the reasons why it’s so challenged from a revenue perspective,” says Heckbert. “That’s where we’re at. You’ve learned to work around it to this point in time, so when something like this comes up, it reminds you that it’s an essential service, but you don’t rely on it the way you would have 20 years ago, when you wouldn’t have really had a lot of these options. It’ll be tough because a lot of farmers will again move more to electronic transfers, they’ll move away from cheques, they’ll move away from all the things that Canada Post relies on for letter mail because the service becomes more unreliable when you have these kinds of threats.”

Heckbert acknowledges, however, that those other options – retailers that deliver such as Amazon or private couriers such as FedEx – often do not provide service to more rural areas in Canada. Those couriers themselves often rely on Canada Post to make deliveries into areas that are further away from the urban areas where they have their hubs.

“That’s one of the reasons why when we have these conversations with the government of Canada, the places that need Canada Post the most can’t afford to be without Canada Post services,” says Heckbert.

“This is why there has to be a recognition inside of government and inside of Canada Post itself. If you want to survive as a corporation, if you want long-term survival, you have to figure out a way of ensuring that rural Canadians are still going to have access to these services. FedEx is not going to start a route out in northern Saskatchewan or in a place like Assiniboia. It’s simply not going to happen.”

The frequency of the labour disruptions is also an issue – the disruptions cause tension for farmers and producers who are already stressed significantly by a whole host of impacts on their markets. That said, because so many farmers have moved away from relying on Canada Post, Heckbert describes them as viewing another strike as less of an existential challenge and more of a ‘here we go again’ situation.

“It’s happened so frequently, I think farmers have learned the workarounds,” says Heckbert. “It’s too bad for Canada Post. You don’t want to see people move away from it entirely. No one wants that in Canada, particularly in rural Canada.”

Teresa Van Raay, director for Ontario’s The Whole Pig, says that she doesn’t anticipate that a strike would have any significant impact on their company.

“Most of our sales are credit card or e-transfer,” says Van Raay. “As well, as a pig farmer, most of our invoices are through email and we pay through the bank, and our income, also, is directly deposited.”

Mike Dougherty, owner of Ontario-based Wild Meadows Farm says the biggest impact on their operations will be on paying vendors and receiving invoices, particularly since they work extensively with communities such as Mennonites and Amish, who don’t do electronic banking.

“I’m not aware of (anything we could do differently to accommodate those communities),” says Doughtery. “We’ve always just dealt with cheques and stuff. Most of the people we work with are local, so if we have to drive it out, it’s inconvenient, but it’s not the end of the world.”

One could surmise that the impacts of a Canada Post strike would be more prominently felt on pork producers in smaller, more remote communities that would presumably have to rely on Canada Post to receive supplies and to ship out product.

And while that may be the case for some producers in Canada, many farmers in remote communities simply don’t bother with trying to sell products beyond what they can deliver themselves in their local area or sell through a farmer’s market. The question remains, however, whether they would attempt to establish businesses that reach further if Canada Post were seen as more reliable.

“I think for us, it’s very very difficult to make enough income to make a living,” says Lone Sorensen, a farmer based in the Northwest Territories who founded Northern Roots, an organization that provides education, consultation and mentorship to farmers in the area.

“Most of it is driven by passion and also by innovation and by just having the ability to do many different things. I do a lot of consulting, a lot of teaching, I run mentorship programs, I help set up youth gardens, that sort of thing. It’s very difficult to make it as just a straight grower or farmer here in this territory at the moment. Hopefully, that will change.”

With many smaller and medium-sized producers already having work-arounds to avoid Canada Post, the question remains what the impacts would be on larger producers.

Unfortunately, that remains speculatory as none of the large-scale pork producers or distributors in Canada that Better Pork reached out to for this article – such as Maple Leaf Foods’ new Canadian Packers Inc. pork company – responded to requests for interviews or comments.

While the conflict with the largest union of Canada Post workers, the CUPW, continues, Canada Post did announce in June that they had reached a deal with the second-largest union representing their workers, the Canadian Postmasters. That union represents 8,500 employees, largely managers of post offices in rural areas. A Canada Post statement said that the parties reached a new collective agreement that includes increasing wages by 11 per cent over three years, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2024.

As of press time, Canada Post sent their final offer to the CUPW in May, with Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu saying that she would put the offer to a vote for CUPW members and had asked the IRB to conduct the vote quickly. The timing for that vote has not been made public.

Despite many criticisms that Canadians have of Canada Post, a recent survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute suggests that support for the service remains high, although many would be open to changes. Among survey respondents, 64 per cent said it was important that the service remain publicly owned, 59 per cent said they opposed the government selling off the service, while 47 per cent said they were against privatizing some of Canada Post’s functions.

A majority of respondents said they would be in favour of reducing mail delivery to three days a week. The survey was conducted online among members of the Angus Reid Forum. BP