‘It's a major, multi-year job that requires us to retain the talented and experienced people needed to lead and deliver these changes for Canadians’
Canada Post distributed $30.8 million in performance-based pay to its executives and managers in 2025, according to a report by CTV News.
The Crown corporation posted $1.57 billion in pre-tax losses in 2025, its worst year on record and a 46 per cent jump from the prior year, the publication noted. Losses have deepened further in 2026, with $205 million lost before tax in the first quarter, compared with $41 million during the same period a year earlier.
To stay operational, Ottawa approved a bailout worth up to $673 million, layered on top of a separate $1.03-billion cash injection Canada Post received in 2025 that it says it plans to repay.
Canada Post maintains the $30.8 million paid to managers came from its own revenue, not that government funding.
A Canada Post spokesperson told CTV News the payments fall under an existing compensation program, saying, "This amount represents less than one per cent of our total annual labour expenses." The spokesperson also conceded the timing looks bad, adding, "With our financial situation, we understand the optics and the concerns this decision will raise."
Canada’s top corporate executives earned record-breaking pay in 2024, widening the gap between CEO and worker compensation to its highest level on record, according to a previous report.
Retention pay, not bonuses
Canada Post insists these are "at-risk payments" linked to retention and performance, distinct from a separate bonus program covering its more than 55,000 employees, which has sat dormant since 2011, per CTV News.
The corporation declined to say how many of its 2,377 managers, including 417 executives, received money, though the total works out to roughly $13,000 per manager on average. It defended the spending as essential to its multi-year overhaul, with the spokesperson saying, "It's a major, multi-year job that requires us to retain the talented and experienced people needed to lead and deliver these changes for Canadians," according to the report.
The spokesperson said compensation practices remain under review, adding, "We will continue to assess all aspects of compensation as part of this work."
HRD has asked for specific details around the computation of the bonuses, but has not received a response as of the writing of this article.
Bonus payouts are slowing down and fewer employees are receiving them, according to a new report from ADP.
Disclosure and political reaction
The figures surfaced in a filing Canada Post submitted to a House of Commons committee on July 9, first flagged publicly by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation before The Canadian Press reported additional detail.
The federation's federal director, Franco Terrazzano, called it "infuriating" that Crown corporation executives would take bonuses while leaning on taxpayer support, and urged Prime Minister Mark Carney to step in and end what he termed taxpayer-funded rewards for failure, according to the CTV News article.
Canada Post is meanwhile pressing ahead with what it calls its biggest transformation ever, closing some post offices and ending home delivery for roughly four million households. That overhaul followed more than two years of labour tension with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, including strikes in 2024 and 2025, before members ratified a new contract in June, noted the publication.
In a separate statement, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers questioned the bonuses.
“If Canada Post says it’s ‘on the brink’, why are executives rewarding themselves with $30.8 million in bonuses?” the group said.
Jan Simpson, national president of the union said: “It is unacceptable to demand concessions from workers during bargaining, to deny Canadians a door-to-door delivery service, to close local post offices, or to blame postal workers for financial losses while executives continue paying themselves millions in bonuses.
He noted that postal workers deliver to every community in the country “through floods, fires, snowstorms, and pandemics. We provide a universal public service that Canadians rely on every day.
“Yet Canada Post and the Government are forcing the public to accept postal service cuts, while management continues to reward themselves with performance pay. If Canada Post says that it has not recorded a profit since 2017 and continues to lose market share, what exactly is being rewarded? How much exactly have Canada Post managers rewarded themselves in bonus pay since 2017?”
