CUPW President Meeting with Minister Lightbound: Report Back

Members of CUPW’s National Executive Board and Negotiating Committees met with the Minister responsible for Canada Post, Joël Lightbound, and his staff on the evening of October 8, 2025, for just over an hour.

The Union spoke to Minister Lightbound about a number of issues regarding his recent announcement and its impact on negotiations with Canada Post. We raised concerns about the Government’s planned cutbacks and their impacts on the frequency of delivery and delivery standards. We discussed trends in parcel volumes and pointed to the $376 million in new revenue from the long-awaited postage increase this year.

We also informed the Minister of things Canada Post has been omitting from its public narrative, like the hundreds of supervisor positions that have been added over the last five years while cutting CUPW maintenance, sorting, and delivery positions. Although there are fewer people to supervise, Canada Post is spending more money on supervisors.

We believe that management has also been using Purolator to run Canada Post into the ground. By sending product to its subsidiary while postal workers are in a legal strike position, Canada Post is doing an end run around the new anti-scab laws.

We used Canada Post’s Annual Reports to show how management is being deceptive about parcel volumes and the share of the parcel market they claim to have lost.

The Minister and his staff appeared to be interested in what we had to say. Based on the new information we provided him, we expect him to look into the issues that we raised.

We called on the Minister to rescind his planned service cuts which he announced September 25. However, at the end of the meeting the Minister said the announcements he made would stand. We told the Minister that a full public mandate review is overdue and required to make changes to Canada Post’s mandate.

The Union also reminded the Minister that the only way for this dispute to come to an end is for Canada Post to offer postal workers ratifiable collective agreements. The Government’s interventions have only emboldened the Employer and undermined free and fair collective bargaining.

The Minister made a commitment to reach out to us again within a few days.

Postal workers are fighting for public services, good jobs within our communities and a strong, sustainable post office.

In solidarity,