Mail will begin moving again on Tuesday, after Canada Post employees were ordered back to work, ending a more than month-long strike.
But, for many small businesses, it’s too late for a holiday boost. They are now hoping you will plan to shop locally, and in person, before Christmas.
It’s been a whirlwind for the owner of JACEK Chocolate Couture.
“Right now there is a trifecta when it comes to challenges, so we have the GST relief which is a bit of an administration challenge that has been put on us at a very busy time, we have the postal strike, and then in the chocolate business, we have a global chocolate shortage,” explained Jacqueline Jacek, the founder & a cocoanista at JACEK Chocolate Couture.
They’ve been working overtime to adapt to this holiday season, unlike any other.
“It’s really hard to know as a producer and a retailer, to know how much to make, we’ve really struggled to forecast.”
They are hoping to see more people in person the week before Christmas, as they deal with a 30 per cent impact to their holiday shipments, on their way with more expensive private couriers.
But the mail will move on Tuesday.
The federal government says they are stepping in to address an impasse between the postal union and Crown corporation.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board return-to-work order forces 55,000 employees back on Tuesday.
It also extends their contract — that ended a year ago — until May of 2025, giving all employees a retroactive 5 per cent pay increase.
The union is characterizing this as an attack on full-time work, long raising concerns about Canada Post’s plans to start delivering on weekends.
But what does this mean for your mail? Canada Post won’t be accepting new letters or parcels until Thursday, with uncertain delivery timelines. Now needing to deal with the backlog of mail, that has been sitting for over a month.
For Jacek, that means advent calendars sent before the strike, might make it for Christmas.
“so a lot of people are going to have a lot of catch up to catch up to the day it is on the calendar,” said Jacek.