It’s déjà vu all over again.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), who staff Canada Post, are once again on strike across the country. It comes nearly a year after a similar stoppage during the busy Q4 season, and a week after the union stopped delivering marketing mail.

The move was swift on Thursday, Sept. 25, after the Canadian government called for a complete overhaul of Canada Post operations to ensure its long-term viability. The postal service, says the office of Joël Lightbound, minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement, is on track to lose $1.5 billion CAD by the end of 2025. It’s currently losing about $10 million a day, and delivering just 2 billion letters each year, down from 5.5 billion in 2005, even as the number of homes has grown. Parcel volumes have also plunged, as Canada Post deals with high fixed costs.

“This situation is unsustainable,” said Lightbound in a statement. “Canada Post is effectively insolvent, and repeated bailouts are not a long-term solution. Transformation is required to ensure the survival of Canada Post and protect the services Canadians rely on.”

Among the stability measures that Lightbound announced are flexible routes due to lower letter volumes, delivering non-priority mail by ground instead of air, conversions of individual mailboxes to community mailboxes, changing “rural” post offices into suburban or even urban locations to account for changes in the surrounding area and shortening the stamp price increase process.

The union isn’t having it.

“In response to the government’s attack on our postal service and workers, effective immediately, all CUPW members at Canada Post are on a nationwide strike,” the union announced Thursday.

CUPW says details on exactly how these “drastic” changes would be implemented are scant and warned they would lead to layoffs. It also argued that current financial losses have less to do with operations and more to do with Canadians opting for other delivery services due to uncertainty.

Last year, companies in promo did just that in the face of a prolonged Q4 mail stoppage, which meant in some cases slower service and higher costs as other companies like FedEx, UPS, DHL and Purolator scrambled to absorb more letter and parcel volume.

Canada Post says it needs a week to present a new offer to the union and will have 45 days to present a restructuring plan to the government.

Last year’s holiday-season strike lasted a little more than a month before the Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered all workers back on the job. The union’s contract was extended to May 2025, when the negotiation process picked up again.