Canada Post deliveries will cost more for citizens and businesses during the holiday season this year, a situation denounced by both the Ottawa opposition and SMEs.
Since September, the Crown Group has been levying a surcharge on all deliveries to absorb increased transport costs.
The surcharge is currently 39.5% for domestic mail and fluctuates weekly based on the average price of diesel in Canada. This has been “one of their standard practices for nearly 20 years,” Canada Post explained in an email.
“It will hit families hard again, especially this winter season and holiday season, and it will hit small businesses hard too,” NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said on Tuesday.
The latter is calling on the government to scrap the increases “to make broadcasts more affordable in this particularly unaffordable year”.
“It’s hard enough being apart from loved ones over the holidays and making it harder to send a small gift or comfort pack only makes it worse,” Singh added in a written statement.
As the Crown Corporation, Canada Post is largely responsible for managing its finances.
However, the NDP wants to know whether the federal government’s cabinet has approved this pay-as-you-go policy and whether it has “analyzed” the effects of this policy on small and medium-sized enterprises in the country.
Canada Post and the Department of Supply, which oversees the company, had not responded to questions from the QMI agency as of this writing.
“Liberals are responsible for this decision, which will force Canadians to pay more during the holiday season. If Jagmeet Singh really wanted to address the cost-of-living crisis, he would stop supporting Trudeau’s Liberal government,” said Pierre Paul-Hus, lieutenant in Quebec’s Conservative Party.