A Canada Post vehicle sits outside a facility in Ottawa, on Sept. 12, 2025. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld
Canada Post distributed nearly $31 million in bonuses to its management last year, according to documents provided to the House of Commons.
A disclosure to the government operations and estimates committee showed the mail provider made $30.8 million in “at-risk payments for the management employee group” in 2025.
The Crown corporation said it has 2,377 management employees across the country, including 417 at the executive level. It added that the $30.8 million represented “less than 1 percent of its total annual labour expenses.”
“These payments are part of an existing compensation program and are funded from Canada Post’s own revenues, not the repayable government bridge funding we’ve received,” Canada Post said in the disclosure. “Management has already seen the elimination of guaranteed pensions, more than a decade of frozen salary bands and waves of layoffs as the corporation reduced the cost of management in recent years.”
These changes have lowered management costs, but have also resulted in the departure of “key” personnel pursuing better compensation in the public and private sectors, the agency said.
The announcement follows Canada Post’s report in April indicating a historic loss of $1.57 billion before tax in 2025.
CEO Doug Ettinger told a parliamentary committee on June 18 that the loss was due to the uncertainty caused by “labour disruptions.” He said the “real deficit” was “closer to a billion.”
Canada Post continues to struggle financially despite substantial federal funding in recent years. Ottawa gave the struggling agency a $1.03 billion cash injection last year, but it failed to sustain the postal service past early February 2026. The federal government topped up the agency with an additional $1.01 billion repayable loan that month to bridge its operational deficit.
Ottawa then allocated up to $673 million to the agency in May, allowing Canada Post to address its operational and income needs through the following March. The news came just weeks before the mail provider reported a loss of $205 million before tax in the first quarter of 2026.
Ettinger defended the $30.8 million in management bonuses during an appearance before the government operations committee last month, pointing to a 10 percent reduction in executive ranks. He told the committee that “the corporate team incentive hasn’t paid a dime since 2011” and that the “at-risk” compensation is a standard component of pay for 7,000 employees.
The average bonus for its executives and managers was roughly $13,000, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), which filed an access-to-information request for Canada Post’s 2025 bonus records on Feb. 23.
The organization said in a July 14 statement that Canada Post declined to disclose the specific amounts allocated to its executives and instead categorized executive bonuses within the overall management total.
Ettinger did not provide these figures to the committee but promised to provide them at the request of Tory MP Andrew Lawton.
Cutting Costs
Ettinger noted during his committee appearance that Canada Post’s financial situation is in flux as it looks to cut costs to get the agency out of debt. He said the goal is to break even in five years.
Ottawa unveiled a series of reforms to Canada Post late last year in a bid to curb the financial losses of the Crown corporation as mail volumes decline.
The national mail service announced in April it was starting preliminary work to transition addresses currently receiving door-to-door mail to community mailboxes.
The agency has said converting approximately four million addresses from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes over five years is expected to save Canada Post $400 million annually once fully implemented.
Canada Post has also said it is reviewing its retail network in preparation for closures of urban and suburban post offices in areas it describes as over-served.
It has not publicly disclosed a standalone dollar figure for the exact savings generated by the closures, but it is part of the plan designed by the federal government and Canada Post to curb $10 million in daily losses.
