Canada Post has been much in the news of late, and as usual, the news is utterly grim. It’s so grim it made the New York Times last week, under the pithy headline, “After billions of dollars in losses, Canada Post warns it may run out of cash.” Once it runs out of cash, taxpayers are on the hook for its monumental losses.

That’s $3 billion in losses, specifically, give or take, over the past five years. And $748 million, before taxes, last year. If you subtracted direct marketing — i.e., junk mail — from Canada Post’s revenues, it would have been down another $794 million last year. And even that market is weakening, the company’s newly released 2023 annual report warns: “The advertising industry is undergoing a structural shift, with new players and new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) being used by marketers.”