Canada Post announced on Wednesday that children will not receive letters from Santa Claus this year as a result of a month-long union strike that disrupted the postal office’s operations and its decades-long Santa letter program.
For more than 40 years, Canada Post, the nation’s main postal operator, has run an initiative that allows children from Canada and all over the world to write and send letters to Santa Claus with their wishes for presents for themselves and others using a special postal code in the “North Pole.” Thousands of volunteers at Canada Post help respond to the children’s letters every year in English or in whichever language a child’s letter was written, including braille.
Canada Post announced on Wednesday that the decades-long tradition will be halted as a result of a month-long strike by 55,000 postal workers affiliated with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) after failed negotiations between the union and Canada Post.
The strike came to an end on Tuesday after the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) ordered a return to work of the 55,000 striking postal workers. The strike caused a significant backlog of a “couple million” parcels for the Canadian postal operator, causing delays in the holiday shipping season.
Canada Post explained that it would “take some time” to clear the letters and parcels, many of which have been backlogged since the start of the strike on November 15, stressing that customers should expect delays through the remainder of 2024 and into January 2025.
“Though Santa won’t have time to respond to letters received through the mail this year, we want to let kids know that their letters will make it to him by Christmas Eve,” Canada Post said in a statement. “Santa is looking forward to reading all the letters he receives.”
Canada Post remarked that, like always, “letters to Santa are handled with special care,” pointing out that letters sent to Santa would be delivered “straight to the North Pole” if mailed by December 23.
At the time of the start of the strike, CUPW released a lengthy list containing over 20 demands to Canada Post, including — but not limited to — wage increases, more paid medical days, coverage for fertility treatments and “gender-affirming care,” and improved protections against “technological change.”
CUPW criticized the Industrial Relations Board’s order to return to work on Tuesday by describing it as “a clear violation of our Charter rights” and said they would fight the order at the CIRB and in the courts.
“We have waited far too long for our issues to be resolved, in collective bargaining but, once again, the government has stepped in, tipping the scales in the Employer’s favour,” the statement read. “Their interference will make us wait longer and add other issues to the table.”
“Even as we take part in the next steps of the process ordered by the Minister of Labour, we will not stand down,” the statement continued.
The postal workers’ union claimed that its workers would still “stand strong and continue to fight to get the good negotiated collective agreements they deserve” in the face of what they described as “yet another abuse of government power.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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