Voyageur 108
The EU Cut a Deal With Trump. Canada Wasn't Invited, and Canada Post Lost $1.57 Billion Last Year. Now Ottawa Is Talking Privatization.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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The EU Cut a Deal With Trump. Canada Wasn't Invited.
The European Union approved a trade agreement with the United States on Wednesday that caps tariffs on most European goods at 15 per cent - up from a pre-tariff average of 4.8 per cent, but far better than what Trump's administration had threatened. The deal took more than a year of bruising negotiations, a near-derailment in the European Parliament, and an all-night trilogue session to get across the line.
Canada gets none of it. While Europeans locked in a tariff ceiling, Canada is still stuck under 25 per cent duties on steel, aluminum, and a range of exports, with no similar (to say nothing of equivalent) deal in sight. Ottawa has been talking diversification and pivoting to Europe for over a year - CETA, the defence bank in Montreal, the SAFE initiative - but those efforts don't come with a tariff ceiling.
There are caveats. The deal still has some political uncertainty in Washington - U.S. courts have recently ruled Trump overstepped his tariff authority, and the White House has been grumbling about the terms. Whether the 15 per cent holds is an open question. But the EU got something in writing. Canada… not so much.
Read more: The Globe and Mail
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Canada Post Lost $1.57 Billion Last Year. Ottawa’s Talking Privatization.
Canada Post burned through $1.57 billion in 2025 - nearly double the $841 million it lost in 2024, and the worst financial showing in its history. The Crown corporation is getting by on $2 billion of federal loans, and it's still losing money. Parcel revenue and volumes dropped about a third last year, mostly because the biggest retailers switched to competitors during a year of labour uncertainty and they still haven't come back.
The Carney government is now exploring options that would have seemed extreme a few years ago - ending all door-to-door delivery, closing rural post offices, and even potentially privatizing parts of the operation. The first 136,000 addresses to lose door-to-door service were announced in April. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers began voting on a new collective agreement this week.
For Canadians abroad, Canada Post is more than an inconvenience story. It's the institution that often ships the things you can't get in the local store - the maple syrup your parents insist on sending, the passport documents that have to go by registered mail, the small package from home that takes three weeks and somehow still arrives. If the service keeps shrinking, that pipeline might just dry up.
Read more: CBC News / The Walrus