Government Operations Committee on June 18th, 2026

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

You've spoken a little bit about how you believe you can reduce some of your costs. We haven't focused as much on how you think increasing revenue could factor into your operations. Where do you see the path to balance coming from predominantly? Is it going to be by increasing revenue or reducing costs? Which is going to occupy the lion's share of the deficit?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you. That's a good question, by the way,

There are a couple things, and it has to be a balance of both. As I said, you can't cut your way to success, and we have no intention of doing that. We have the best employees in the world, and they are great ambassadors out there, so that's one thing.

We lost $1.57 billion last year, which is a difficult number to even say. However, I would say it was a worst-case scenario. We were in labour disruption for 220 days, or something like that. Our customers were scared off. They have lots of options now in the Canadian marketplace.

There was a day many years ago when we were exclusive with a lot of retailers, and that was it. That doesn't exist now. There are online platforms, and even a small business can go online and get multiple options.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Yes, I don't want to get—

[Doug Ettinger]

I just wanted to mention that I think the deficit, the real deficit, is closer to $1 billion, but that was an unusually bad year because of all the activity.

We've cut a lot of costs on the management side. We've taken more than 10% out of our management and executive. We got out of the guaranteed pension many years ago. I'm on a DC pension. Most of our employees now are on a DC pension, so we've taken that cost out. We're looking for other ways. We took $200 million over the last two years out of our discretionary spending, travel, those kinds of things.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Thank you—

[Doug Ettinger]

I was going to move to revenue, sorry.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

We'll get back to that later on.

Of the costs that you believe you've cut adequately, are you still paying executive bonuses?

[Doug Ettinger]

Look, we have a bonus program, and as you—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

You have two bonus programs, don't you?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, and I'll describe those to you.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I don't need the descriptions, just the numbers that you expect for each of them this year, please.

[Doug Ettinger]

I understand the question, and I understand the sensitivities of it.

We have a corporate team incentive. That's the bonus program. It's called CTI. It hasn't paid a dime since 2011, so 15 years ago.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

What about the at-risk program?

[Doug Ettinger]

Regarding the at-risk program, in the broader context, we have a major transformation under way right now. After years of no change, we're moving forward. We are now in the biggest transformation probably in our history. We've really only had a couple of years in the last 20 years to get to root causes, so we want to do that.

One of the things I lose sleep over is keeping the good people who are with us.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

How much did you pay to keep those good people last year?

[Doug Ettinger]

In the broader compensation program, to keep that talent, we paid a bonus last year—sorry, an at-risk pay. It was part of their compensation. But at the same time—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

How much was it? I'm trying to get to the number here, sir.

[Doug Ettinger]

I don't have the number at hand, but—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Will you provide it to the committee?

[Doug Ettinger]

—but I want to emphasize, and I have to say this—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Will you provide it to the committee?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, we'll provide that information to the committee.

That at-risk program has 7,000 people in it. That's the only program. Management is in it, and frontline supervisors are in it. Two unions are in it, and they have it in their collective agreements. Almost two-thirds of the 7,000 people in it are union members, and it's in their contracts. This is something that we've had in there.

Again, my biggest problem is that people who are great people are being stolen away from us to go to government or other Crown corporations.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I think that speaks volumes about the way the government views things. This is a very important question because, of those 7,000, not all of them are executives. You would have people in there who are getting bonuses of a couple of thousand dollars.

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

When you provide these numbers, will you provide the amount going to executives so you're not effectively deflating your average?

What we're really after here is whether executives at Canada Post are making out like executives at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which paid out $30.6 million in bonuses in 2024, or Via Rail, which paid out $11 million in bonuses. We're not after what you're doing for unionized workers. We want to know how much you and your colleagues are getting while posting a $1-billion deficit.