· Letter Mail Delivery Standards: Canada Post will introduce flexibilities to reflect today’s lower volumes. The average household receives just two letters per week, yet operations remain designed for far higher volumes. By adjusting standards so that non-urgent mail can move by ground instead of air, the corporation will save more than $20 million per year.
· Community Mailbox Conversions: The government is lifting the moratorium on community mailbox conversions. Currently, three-quarters of Canadians already receive mail through community, apartment, or rural mailboxes, while one-quarter still receive door-to-door delivery. Canada Post will be authorized to convert the remaining 4 million addresses to community mailboxes, generating close to $400 million in annual savings.
· Postal Network Modernization: The moratorium on rural post offices, in place since 1994, will also be lifted. The rural moratorium was imposed in 1994 and covers close to 4000 locations. It has not evolved in 30 years, but Canada has changed. This means that areas that used to be rural may now be suburban or even urban, but are still required to operate as rural post offices. Canada Post must return to the government with a plan to modernize and right-size its network.
It’s kind of ridiculous it took this long to enforce community mailboxes. I acknowledge some people are physically unable to reach a community mailbox but it’s such a small percentage it doesn’t make sense to base the entire system around them. There’s already ways to get door delivery for those people who live in areas with community mailboxes.
Can we be totally honest and admit the only reason we still have door delivery is to protect the jobs of mail carriers?
Surely we’ll make the country better when we make those people get minimum wage jobs at Tim Horton’s in the name of making government services into profit centres.
I just don’t like the unequal application. Lots of people struggling, lots of people unable to even get shitty jobs, but for some reason Canada Post mail carriers get special treatment? Nah, let’s just bite the bullet and implement UBI and stop giving some workers special protection.
What if instead of racing to the bottom we invest more in the public sector and create more good jobs that create citizens who can contribute rather than forcing more people into minimum wage or gig work?
That’s totally false that the community mailbox moratorium is just to protect the jobs of mail carriers.
Community mailboxes were a hot topic issue in the lead up to the 2015 Federal election with residents of the proposed conversions complaining about how difficult it will be to take more than one step out the door to get their mail.
With the Liberals promising a stop to the conversions, Canada Post paused the plans after they won the election
https://globalnews.ca/news/2300376/a-timeline-of-canada-posts-contentious-community-mailboxes/
It’s hard for the rural areas. I see it both ways. I’ve got a community mailbox about a block away, takes all of a minute to reach and get back. I’m for it generally, but they do get busted into a lot closer to Christmas though. Grand scheme of things though, functional system.
Where I grew up, you’d go to the end of the lane to get your mail, and a community box is probably going to mean a 10 minute drive down the concession and back. It’s not a big deal when the weather’s good, but when it’s bad and the lanes not blown out, or for the elderly, it’s a bigger deal.
But facing all the facts, it’s probably the compromise we all need to make. I dont even get much actual mail anymore, I only go to empty it every week and a half, and only because it’s so full of flyers and junk that you can’t fit anything more in it, just in case something I’m interested in was to come, that would be a problem. This isn’t going to be a popular thought maybe, but it’s been a bit of a godsend this past little while without the flyer and junk deliveries, it’s been nice seeing an empty box. We don’t need junk mail, but that’s been a pretty big revenue line for Canada Post, so it’s kind of a reckoning moment there too.
I live rurally. We’ve had community boxes for decades. It’s not more difficult at all. Just means less of making bomb proof mailboxes because snowplows and teenagers.
That’s what confused me I mean I just assumed everywhere outside of a major city already had these. Hell when I was a kid in the 80s/90s in Cambridge, Ontario we never got mail delivered to the house, it was all via the community mailboxes.
Would it be the same people delivering but just to a big box instead?
It would cut down on the people needed. When you got people out in the country hitting individual mailboxes, you need more cars and people, whereas if it’s heading to one or a few spots, you just need one person and maybe a slightly bigger vehicle.