Canada Post on Thursday said it is beginning discussions with 13 communities that will see their mail delivery service converted to community mailboxes later this year, kicking off what it says will be a five-year national conversion plan.
The mail carrier is fully shifting away from door-to-door delivery as part of a multi-year business overhaul that it hopes will stop years of financial losses.
While the company says a majority of Canadians are already part of centralized delivery systems like community mailboxes, about four million addresses still receive their mail and parcels at their doorsteps.
Canada Post said in a news release that, after meetings with union officials, it is now in talks to begin converting roughly 136,000 of those addresses to community mailboxes in late 2026 and early 2027.
Those addresses are in areas of the following cities:
- Moncton and Riverview, N.B.
- Sept-Îles, Que.
- La Prairie and Candiac, Que.
- Ottawa, Ont.
- Etobicoke area of Toronto, Ont.
- Winnipeg, Man.
- Abbotsford, B.C.
- Mission, B.C.
- City of North Vancouver, District of North Vancouver and West Vancouver, B.C.
Canada Post said most of the addresses are adjacent to areas already served by community mailboxes, but noted the conversion process will be lengthy.
“Converting an address from door-to-door delivery to a community mailbox typically takes months,” the company said in a statement.
“Canada Post will engage with communities as it identifies suitable locations for community mailbox sites. It is also notifying residents of the upcoming change to their mail delivery, and will keep them, businesses, bargaining agents and employees informed every step of the way.”
Government Transformation and Public Works Minister Joël Lightbound told reporters the announcement aligns with the reforms he announced last fall that are intended to make Canada Post sustainable.
He added the shift to community mailboxes will save the corporation “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“What we have to understand is that Canada Post has accumulated, over the last couple of years, $5 billion in deficits,” Lightbound said, pointing to the $2 billion in loans the government has had to give Canada Post in recent years “just to keep it afloat.”
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“This is unsustainable, and repeated bailouts by the federal government is not a long-term solution for Canada Post. It needs to transform.”
Yet NDP MP Don Davies said the announcement represents “a complete breaking” of past promises by previous Liberal governments to protect home delivery.
“I think this government has really mishandled the Canada Post file for a long time,” he said.
“I would just urge the government to work the union to resolve this issue and make Canada Post the profitable, effective, efficient service I think Canadians want.”
The company says customers who cannot access community mailboxes and require home delivery, or need other accommodations to make accessing their mailbox easier, can sign up for Canada Post’s delivery accommodation program.
Conservative MP Randy Hoback, who serves a mostly-rural Saskatchewan riding, dismissed concerns about community mailboxes.
“That’s already been happening in rural Saskatchewan,” he said. “Community mailboxes are quite common, they work very well.”
Canada Post said it’s also reviewing its retail network in preparation for closures of urban and suburban post offices in areas it says are currently over-served.
“While Canadians still value post offices, they are visiting them less frequently and making fewer in-store purchases,” said the news release. “This pattern has driven a 30-per-cent drop in retail revenue since 2021. Usage is also uneven across the network.”
The federal government last year ended a decades-long moratorium on rural post office closures, a move that sparked concern about the future of mail delivery in remote communities that aren’t well served by private couriers.
Both the company and the government have promised that rural, remote and Indigenous community mail service will not be impacted by the changes.
Canada Post said it’s conducting market reviews to gather data on local post offices.
“Regions will also be evaluated as a whole so each post office can be viewed through a community lens,” said the news release. “The analysis will support the corporation’s careful evaluation of where changes to the network are most warranted, while prioritizing service to Canadians and protecting it where it’s needed most.”
Ottawa announced a series of reforms to Canada Post late last year in an effort to save the Crown corporation millions of dollars annually.
Letter mail delivery standards are also being relaxed as part of the changes.
Members of the Canadian Postal Workers Union are set to begin voting Monday on whether to ratify a long-fought-for collective agreement for new contracts. The vote is expected to last until May 30 to allow all employees to cast a ballot.
—With files from the Canadian Press
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