The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) wants the federal government to hold public consultations on Canada Post’s potential expansion into the parcel business.

“CTA does not support the expansion of public sector entities into the freight market,” CTA president and CEO Stephen Laskowski said in a news release.

The alliance is asking for clarification and transparency on procurement minister Joel Lightbound’s announcement to introduce measures designed to stabilize Canada Post’s finances and enable its modernization.

The announcement follows a report earlier this year by the Industrial Inquiry Commission, which highlighted the state of the service and its solvency issues. In the report, both the union and management emphasized their interest for greater expansion into the parcel delivery market, including cross-border shipments.

While Lightbound’s announcement does not specifically endorse this move, it does raise the issue of parcel delivery as a source of growth and highlighted Canada Post’s declining market share versus the private sector in this area and the service’s failure to pay attention to this gap, CTA said.

Postal workers on strike

Meanwhile, unionized postal workers are on a nationwide strike Sept. 26, after Canada Post announced it was planning to end door-to-door mail delivery for almost all households within the next decade.

Lightbound said the move is among sweeping changes aimed at shoring up the Crown corporation’s finances in response to a decline in letter mail and its small share of the parcel market.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers, representing 55,000 members of the postal service, said it was caught off guard by the changes and argued that Canada Post and the government are creating the conditions that drive down demand for those two services.

Details of what the nationwide strike will entail have not been released, but one union negotiator told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics that different units are “organically” organizing picket lines.

However, Canada Post spokeswoman Lisa Liu said in a statement that no new mail will be accepted during the labor disruption.

In its own statement released to media Sept. 25 night, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the reform of Canada Post is long overdue, and it urged Ottawa to “push forward with the needed changes” despite the strike.

With files from The Canadian Press