Canada Post Cancels Home Mail Delivery

Just before breaking for the holidays last December, the grand vision for transforming Canada Post was announced, while changes included massive workforce reduction, costly technological upgrades, increased postage fees and the controversial cancellation of home mail delivery services. While these measures are reportedly being implemented to heal and improve the financial sustainability of the nation’s oldest crown corporation, many unanswered questions remain regarding how home mail delivery will be phased out over the next 5 years for the estimated 5 million Canadian households who currently rely on this service.

Those who live in rural communities, new sub-divisions and apartment complexes are already living in a great white north where mail is not delivered directly to their doorstep, so at the very least these changes put us all on equal ground.  That said, I can get around a lot easier than my 80-year old neighbor, and I can’t help but wonder who is going to collect her mail from the community box during next year’s epic ice storm.  As if the controversial news wasn’t enough, Deepak Chopra, Canada Post’s CEO, attempted to quash such accessibility concerns by claiming that “Seniors are telling me that ‘I want to be healthy, I want to be active in my life”.  Benefits of low impact physical activity aside, it is clear that Canada Post has failed to take into account seniors and others with mobility issues who may soon be forced to travel great distances away from their homes in order to retrieve tomorrow’s grey bin contents.  Accordingly, this week’s poll asks:

Growing up in a small, rural setting, community mail boxes were the norm, so for me this move is somewhat back to the future.  Over the years, people back home created their own efficient systems for retrieving the mail.  For instance, my family shared keys to one another’s mail boxes, thereby ensuring that Grandma didn’t have to make a special trip, or vice versa when my parent’s where busy running me around.  I can vividly remember the first time my mom handed me the key to our mail box, and I proudly retrieved whatever junk mail bills that had been left in our slot.  In spite of these fond memories, I can’t help but wonder how many Kingstonian’s have someone they can honestly rely on to pick up their mail.  Perhaps such questions will generate new businesses who specialize in collecting mail from community boxes, and delivering it to your house for a fee.  While such a service may be financially out of reach for many, the notion makes me wonder why Canada Post didn’t at least try to introduce a pay for delivery service, or even revert to once a week delivery.

In the modern age of online billing and Email, just how much valuable letter mail is there?  Are you concerned about how many blocks you will have to travel to pick up your mail in the years to come?  And what about the placement of these so-called community super boxes!?  Wouldn’t it be a convenient mess if the city decided to plop one on the edge of your property.  Deliver your comments, good, bad or otherwise to the appropriate boxes below.

Thanks to William Mewes for the photo accompanying today’s post.