A Montreal manufacturer bid to build Canada’s community mailboxes and lost. It won’t name the Canadian company that holds the contract now.
Neither will Canada Post . The Crown corporation is installing community mailboxes for about 136,000 addresses late this year and early next, the first phase of moving four million addresses off door-to-door delivery over about five years.
Canada Post said in a statement the mailboxes are “being provided by a Canadian supplier” and that it buys them “through established agreements that support our operational requirements across the country.”
The corporation “does not disclose commercially confidential information related to supplier agreements,” it said. The statement does not say where the boxes are made, and Canada Post did not answer a follow-up asking whether the Canadian supplier is also the manufacturer.
P. Riopel Inc. has built mailboxes in Montreal since 1957, by its own account. “RIOPEL had many years ago unsuccessfully bid for the contract to supply Canada Post,” operations manager Pascal Brandt told National Post in an email. “A company in Denmark received the contract back then.”
That company was Treco A/S, a metal fabricator in Aalestrup, in northern Jutland. The Vancouver Sun reported in 2017 that Treco would build 7,500 community mailboxes a year for four years, 30,000 in all, with the first shipment due that August.
The Danish company register lists a Treco production unit called Treco CMB, registered that April and still active. Treco’s founders sold control of the company to a Danish investment fund in March.
The federal Buy Canadian Policy took effect Dec. 16, 2025. The government says it applies to federal departments and agencies and “will be applied, where possible, to crown corporations and their subsidiaries.” Treasury Board’s policy notice says Crown corporations “are encouraged to align” with it.
Canada Post said it is “subject to a Government of Canada directive requiring alignment with the Buy Canadian Procurement Policy” and has been updating its procurement practices accordingly. It did not say which directive.
Vincent Geloso , an economist at George Mason University in Virginia and senior economist at the Montreal Economic Institute, said rules of that kind work one of two ways. Foreign firms are barred outright, or a domestic bidder wins at a higher price. “But this is costly,” he said. “This is really costly.”
Geloso said he is critical of Canada Post on other grounds, but not for buying Canadian mailboxes instead of cheaper Danish ones, because the rule is not Canada Post’s to make. “I can blame them for poor management. I can blame them for a lot of things,” he said.
Public Services and Procurement Canada was asked whether the policy covers Canada Post. It said it needed more time to answer. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers did not respond to two requests. Treco referred questions to Canada Post. Two other Montreal manufacturers, Cendrex Inc. and Canadian Mailbox Company, did not say whether they supply Canada Post.
Brandt was the only person outside Canada Post to say the contract is now Canadian. He would not go further.
“Today, it is a Canadian Company that has that contract,” he wrote. “If Canada Post does not wish to name them, then it is NOT up to me to do so.”
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