Leveraging our superior network

Canada Post's network, the largest in Canada, is unrivalled – for two reasons. First, you need an enormous network to serve a country this vast. Second, we have a unique role, which is to deliver to every one of the country's 16.5 million addresses. Only Canada Post connects all of Canada and every Canadian through physical delivery, leaving no one out. As Canada grows and changes, so does our network.

As big and capable as our network is, we need more space, more automation, more modern technology and more efficient processes to better serve customers.

Investing to meet growing demand

Our network has 21 mail processing plants with sophisticated automated sorting machines and conveyors crossing acres of space. It has 477 delivery depots from which delivery agents fan out in waves to serve their communities. It has drivers and delivery agents behind the wheels of more than 13,000 corporate vehicles.

Our size means we deliver on a scale nobody else can: our plants processed more than 7.7 billion pieces of mail and parcels in 2019, or an average of 31 million pieces sorted and delivered a day. For example, every business day, we send 18,000 kg by air to and from remote northern communities. Only Canada Post reaches those communities and residents, bringing them the online world.

Canadians’ changing needs are driving incredible growth in e-commerce. We must expand, adapt and innovate in response. That’s why we are making significant investments in our operations and network.

In delivery, we are:

• building new depots and expanding others to address or avoid congestion;
• deploying larger and more environmentally friendly vehicles;
• modernizing systems and making processes more efficient.

In plants, we are:

• expanding, which includes moving depots out of plants to make space for parcel processing;
• installing more automated equipment to improve service, such as sorters in Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver to process millions of small packages (we call them packets) more efficiently;
• designing a new, standardized package sorter to increase automation in our smaller plants;
• planning to build a new plant in the Greater Toronto Area, having bought the land in 2019.