Canada Dumping Home Mail Delivery

Community mailboxes will be used to cut costs
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 11, 2013 11:35 PM CST
Updated Dec 12, 2013 1:30 AM CST
Canada Ditching Home Mail Delivery
A postal worker rides his bike past a Canada Post van in Toronto.   (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn)

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will make any difference to the chances of mail making it to Canadians' homes a few years from now—the country's postal service plans to completely phase out home delivery within five years and replace it with community mailboxes. Only around a third of the country's households still get door-to-door delivery and Canada Post, a federal corporation, says ending delivery in cities and older suburbs is essential for financial self-sufficiency, the Globe and Mail reports.

The plan, which will make Canada the first G7 country without home mail delivery, also hikes the price of stamps and cuts around 8,000 jobs. The way Canadians use the postal service is changing and they "want to pay for the system as a user, not as a taxpayer," a Canada Post spokesman says. But the decision was slammed by critics who worried about the impact on elderly or disabled people and accused the service of making the decision without consulting customers, the New York Times notes. "Canada Post to stop delivering mail to save costs?" asked a communications consultant in Vancouver. "Isn’t that a bit like Starbucks no longer serving coffee because it’s expensive?" (More Canada stories.)

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