After Billions of Dollars in Losses, Canada Post Warns It May Run Out of Cash

Canada Post ended the week with more grim financial news, announcing an operating loss of 221 million Canadian dollars for the first three months of the year. That came on top of an announcement at the beginning of the month that it had lost 748 million dollars last year.

In its 2023 annual report, Canada Post warned that its financial situation was “unsustainable.”Credit…Ian Austen/The New York Times

The government-owned postal service has now accumulated more than 3 billion dollars in losses since 2018, and it offered a bleak look ahead in the 2023 annual report it released this month.

“We forecast larger and increasingly unsustainable losses in future years,” it wrote, adding that without borrowing another 1 billion dollars and refinancing 500 million dollars in current debt, it would run out of cash early next year.

“Canada Post is at a critical juncture in its history,” the company wrote, with a bluntness not usually seen in annual reports. “With financial pressures mounting, its longstanding role as a vital, publicly owned national infrastructure for Canadians and Canadian businesses is under significant threat.”

For decades, the post office’s biggest problem has been that increasingly, people and businesses don’t send any letters, once its major source of income. In 2006, Canadian homes received seven letters a week on average. Last year, that figure was two.