Jacob Kastrenakes at The Verge says:

Canada’s postal service will phase out door-to-door delivery over the next five years. Citing the rise of digital communications and a projected loss of CAD$1 billion by 2020, Canada Post today outlined a series of actions that it would take to streamline its organization and reduce losses. In particular, cutting out direct to-door delivery — which is currently only used to service one-third of Canadian households — will “provide significant savings,” Canada Post says. Mail will still be delivered to community, grouped, lobby, and rural mailboxes, which make up how the remaining two-thirds of Canadian households receive their mail.

The cuts will put somewhere between six and eight thousand Canadian postal employees out of work. Man, this is depressing. You’re supposed to be our sensible, stable older sister, Canada! Don’t you foresee a time in which a national delivery network might be a valuable thing to have? Can’t you do a better job at this being-a-country thing than us? If we don’t have you to look up to, Canada, who will provide an example for us?

5 replies on “Canada to Phase Out Door-to-Door Mail Delivery”

  2. USPS is required to provide a specific level of service to every address in the country. FedEx and UPS aren’t. For example, the USPS operates an extensive retail network with limited value-adds. FedEx has copy shops with computers &c they can charge for, the USPS sells padded envelopes.

    If the USPS could close unprofitable post offices and wan’t required to pre-fund the next several decades of pension costs, they would be in good shape.

    Moving away from door-to-door delivery also has more opportunities for cost savings in Canada, I’d guess. Half the population lives along the border from Quebec to Windsor, and something like 85% lives in a 100-mile-wide strip along the border. The US is nowhere near that squished together. If the US abandoned our commitment to universal, door-to-door service, a lot of rural people would flip their lids.

  3. Big fat fucking deal.

    Canada post already only delivers 3-5 days a week anyway depending on what type of mail it is and where you live. As government employees who got shit-canned those people will be able to collect EI for forever.

  4. It is a big deal. 3-5 days per week is fine — but a lot of Canada is VERY rural and VERY difficult to traverse. If you’re a farmer in Saskatchewan, you’re probably stretched pretty thin, and you probably have touchy internet service — this change will make day-to-day activities even more challenging.

  5. The pretext is that the Internet is much more convenient for everybody. Personally, I don’t accept physical mail from anyone. It’s mostly just junk and bills, anyway. When I want something physical, I’ll order it and have it sent to a house of mailboxes somewhere so that nothing is left at my door step, and the police won’t know where to find me.

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