WELLINGTON COUNTY – Small business owners across Wellington County say the damage is done despite the Canadian Union of Postal Workers announcing a partial return to work on Oct. 11, following a walkout lasting over two weeks.
Scented Market owner Kristy Miller said the Guelph-based business, with a Fergus location, “used to use Canada Post 100 per cent, all the time.”
Last year’s four-week strike “definitely affected our sales,” Miller said.
The company now uses six private carriers to move roughly 500 orders each week of candles and body care and home décor products to customers.
During peak holiday season, the number of outgoing parcels ranges between 1,500 and 2,000.
“Canada Post used to show up here every day and pick up hundreds of parcels,” Miller said.
Now, Miller assures customers “over and over again that we don’t use Canada Post.”
Roughly 53,000 unionized Canada Post workers walked off the job on Sept. 25 – their second strike in less than a year – in response to the federal government’s changes to the crown corporation, the most significant being an end to daily home delivery.
CUPW has said changes would result in job losses and potential post office closures.
The union and employer have been embattled in an almost two-year-long impasse to negotiate a contract.
Following an Oct. 8 meeting between the union and federal procurement minister Joël Lightbound, CUPW announced its nation-wide strike would be replaced with rotating strikes starting Oct. 11.
Delivery will slowly resume, but several small business owners have moved on from the national postal service after twice being left in the lurch.
Mary Lloyd, owner of Sensational You, a women’s undergarment store in Fergus, said the latest strike has created “another burden” for small businesses.
“I have lost patience and I don’t have a lot of empathy for the workers right now because it’s affecting business,” she said.
Lloyd, also a Wellington County councillor, said she returned to Canada Post after the first strike – but not this time around.
She’s now mailing two to four orders per week with Freightcom service ClickShip, which brings multiple carrier shipping options into one platform.
“Canada Post has had so many opportunities to modernize … and they never modernized,” Lloyd said.
With shipping costs already built into business plans, owners are forced to rethink pricing, Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce CEO Brock Aldersley said.
“It adds to the already high costs of doing business in Ontario and Canada,” Aldersley noted.
“Shop and spend your money where you live; it’s what builds your community.”
Chris and Stephanie Bailey, owners of Brighten Up Toys and Games, with locations in Erin and Fergus, switched from Canada Post after the first strike.
“We just felt it wasn’t going to be reliable, so we just never went back,” Bailey said, adding, “there are so many other options.”
The Baileys are also using a Freightcom service, often choosing private companies like Purolator (majority owned by Canada Post) and Canpar.
“It’s going to hit that point where the entire thing is going to be privatized,” Bailey said.
‘As much as I want to support Canada Post, I can’t’
Freightcom marketing VP Michael Rochon said the company, and its e-commerce platform ClickShip, are the “Expedia of shipping,” connecting businesses with more than 50 carriers.
“We’ve had a pretty massive influx of new customers as result of the Canada Post strike,” Rochon said.
Canada Post loses more of its customer base with every strike, Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) legislative affairs VP Ryan Mallough said.
“It’s a big ask to have a small business owner do a ton of research into every available option,” Mallough said.
That’s where companies like Freightcom, a CFIB partner, fill the void.
“There are a lot of options in the ecosystem, but Canada Post should still be one,” Mallough said.
He suggested the mail service should cover “areas that just don’t make economic sense for those other companies to service.”
Hides in Hand owner Teresa Paul, who designs and creates leather goods in Erin, now relies on private carriers to deliver 20 to 30 orders per week.
“As much as I want to support Canada Post, I can’t do this when I run a business,” she said.
“They don’t give you any notice and boom, they’re shut down again.”
Erin resident Brent Kilner, a co-owner of Mississauga-based The Playing Card Factory, with his spouse, manufactures custom-made card decks.
The Kilners have relied on Canada Post to ship roughly 12 weekly orders of smaller deck quantities via letter mail.
The cost is usually better than private carriers, Brent said, which have rural delivery restrictions and don’t do post office boxes.
“People do complain they’re being forced to use a more expensive service now,” he said.
The price on some smaller product quantities has been adjusted to just above cost, with the company absorbing the hit.
‘We’ve taken quite a big hit’
Tia Biro, who co-owns TNT Fishing Lures with Ty Henry, said her trust in the postal service is broken.
The couple manufactures and distributes lures across the globe from Harriston.
“It affects us greatly because Canada Post was our most inexpensive method,” Biro said.
A retailer in Chile orders around 800 to 2,000 lures this time of year, but shipping costs with private carriers are double or triple that of Canada Post’s.
Biro and Henry dealt with the same problem during last year’s strike.
Ultimately the Chilean retailer ate the cost, but Biro and Henry have covered some of the difference out-of-pocket to make it economical to ship North American and local orders.
Biro has made a trip across the border once already to get packages out of Canada and into the U.S. postal system, but she said that’s unsustainable.
With postal disruptions and prohibitively expensive shipping costs with carriers like DHL or Purolator, customers aren’t placing orders.
Carriers also won’t deliver to the more remote places that Canada Post is mandated to serve
Orders have fallen to, at most, 20 in a week, from an average of 30 to 60 per week.
“We’ve taken quite a big hit,” Biro said.
She noted when postal workers strike, it puts small businesses out. And yet she understands employees needing full-time work that pays a living wage.
“I hope that our government understand this,” she said. “We have to have a more reliable postal service.”
Canada Post did not respond to the Advertiser’s request for comment.
