Cost to mail a letter increases 25 per cent starting Monday

CITYnews halifax / By John Marchesan

It is going to cost you more to mail a letter starting Monday.

Stamps purchased in a booklet, coil or pane will increase by 25 cents, to $1.24 per stamp while individual stamps will increase from $1.15 to $1.44.

The crown corporation says the one-time increase of roughly 25 per cent on all stamps is needed to keep up with the rising cost of providing letter mail service to Canadians.

Canada Post estimates the average household will pay $2.26 more per year as a result of the increases and $42.17 per year for the average Canadian small business.

The new rates are expected to generate approximately $80 million of additional revenue for Canada Post in 2025.

“Every year we deliver fewer letters, but we have to deliver them to more addresses, which puts significant pressure on the company’s costs,” the Crown corporation said.

According to internal data provided by Canada Post, letter mail volumes have declined by 60 per cent over the last two decades from 5.5 billion letters in 2006 to 2.2 billion letters in 2023.

Despite the drop in volume, the corporation says the number of addresses served has increased by more than three million and continues to grow. Canada Post says its employees serviced 17.4 million addresses in 2023.

As a result, the corporation says it lost $3 billion before taxes in the last six years, including a $748 million loss in 2023.

The increase, which was announced last September, comes in the wake of the Postal Workers strike which saw 55,000 members walk off the job from mid-November to mid-December before being ordered back to work after determining the two sides were at an impasse in contract talks.

A two-day hearing before the Canada Industrial Relations Board into the constitutionality of the government’s back-to-work order will begin on Monday. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers claims the order is an illegal violation of its charter rights.