(Bloomberg) — The Canadian government asked an independent labor board to order 55,000 Canada Post Corp. workers back to the job, a move that’s expected to end a strike that disrupted mail service for nearly a month during the busy holiday season.

Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon announced Friday he has referred the matter to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. He’s asked the board — if it agrees the parties are at an impasse — to order the postal service and workers to resume operations and to extend their existing contracts until May 22.

“Canadians are rightfully fed up,” MacKinnon said at a news conference. “Canadians from coast to coast to coast, small businesses, as well as those living in remote regions and in Indigenous communities, have suffered greatly.”

The minister also announced he would establish an industrial inquiry commission led by lawyer William Kaplan. The commission will examine the structural issues at play in the labor dispute and submit a report by May 15 that will clarify parties’ bargaining rights and provide a potential “path forward” for new contracts, MacKinnon said. 

“The inquiry will have a broad scope as it will examine the entire structure of Canada Post from both a customer and business model standpoint, considering the challenging business environment now facing Canada Post,” the labor minister said. 

This is the third time the government has asked the CIRB to intervene in a labor dispute since August. MacKinnon said he hopes the independent board will reach its conclusions quickly, and if it agrees with his observations, it could order the resumption of mail delivery as early as next week.

Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers walked out on Nov. 15, halting mail delivery across the country at a crucial time of year. As of Friday, the strike has cost small businesses C$1.6 billion ($1.1 billion) per day, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said in a news release.

In a statement after MacKinnon’s announcement, CUPW said it “denounces in the strongest terms this assault on our constitutionally protected right to collectively bargain and to strike.”

“This order continues a deeply troubling pattern in which the government uses its arbitrary powers to let employers off the hook, drag their feet, and refuse to bargain in good faith with workers and their unions,” it said.

Canada Post said in a statement that it looks forward to welcoming back its employees and will “take all appropriate steps to support that process as quickly as possible given the direction provided to us by the Minister.” 

Canadians have increasingly turned to shipping and receiving parcels instead of letters. Canada Post began adapting its operations accordingly in 2019, but said in its 2023 annual report that “a system built to deliver 5.5 billion letters cannot be sustained on two billion letters.”

“Without changes to address the structural challenges with our operating model, we forecast larger, unsustainable losses in future years,” Canada Post warned. It recorded a loss before tax of C$748 million for fiscal 2023, compared to a loss before tax of C$548 million in 2022. For the first nine months of this fiscal year, Canada Post lost C$803 million, compared to C$662 million in the same period a year earlier.

Seventy-three percent of small business owners said they will use Canada Post less in the future because of the strike, according to a CFIB survey.

Canada has been hit by a series of supply-chain disruptions this year. On Nov. 12, MacKinnon asked the CIRB to end lockouts at the largest ports in Quebec and British Columbia.

And back in August, MacKinnon ordered the CIRB to stop a railway dispute that saw Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. shut down operations after talks with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference failed. 

—With assistance from Randy Thanthong-Knight.

(Updates with Canada Post’s statement in 11th paragraph and more details on the corporation’s finances.)