Heads-up to other Canadians: since the 20th of August or so, Canada Post decided to stop providing tracking information for international Registered Mail items coming into Canada. This affects anything with a 13-digit tracking number starting with "R", from any country (eg RR123456785CN).

AIUI, from here on in, once an Registered item gets sent from the originating country to Canada, you won't hear anything else until the item shows up at your doorstep. While they have to maintain tracking information internally for Registered items, apparently providing it isn't mandatory unless a claim is filed, so they've decided to stop doing it.

To top it all off, the way I found out about it was via service bulletins from SingPost and PostNL:

http://www.singpost.com/media-centre/service-announcement.html

28 August 2015

Canada – Registered Article

Canada Post has advised that it will not provide Registered Article status on its website http://www.canadapost.ca with immediate effect. Hence, tracking information is only available up to "Arrival at Destination Post" on SingPost website.

As Registered Article service is a Sign-For Service, online tracking is available for selected destinations only.

Customers in Singapore can raise enquiry with SingPost if the addressee confirms non-receipt of the Registered Article after 18 working days from posting. SingPost will check with the Destination Post on the status of the item, and under the international postal agreement, the Destination Post may take up to 60 days to reply to SingPost.

For urgent and important shipments, senders are encouraged to use SpeedPost Express or Priority service as it provides detailed online tracking information.

http://www.postnl.com/help-support/delivery-status/international-service-alerts/

Mail delivery - Canada
Date: 24 August 2015

Canada Post informed us that they no longer post tracking information for registered items on their corporate website http://www.canadapost.ca since 20 August 2015. Tracking events until “arrival in country of destination” will remain available, via postnl.com. The suspension purely concerns the tracking events provided by Canada Post on their own website and via track-chinapost.com or similar websites. This is a corporate decision of Canada Post and will affect all other postal operators. Tracking information is not a mandatory feature of the registered service and Canada Post has taken this decision as a means to define further differentiation between their registered and their tracked services. However we have started discussions with Canada Post and will investigate what alternative options with tracking are available in Canada. We’ll do our best to set up a tracked product within a short time frame. And we’ll keep you informed of any developments.

Note Last Friday 21 August 2015 we have informed you about de major update that Canada Post is executing of their website requiring a temporarily shutdown. This is beside the fact that they have permanently suspended the online tracking for all inbound international registered items.