When Canada Post announced in December 2013 it was ending door-to-door mail delivery to more than five million households and transitioning to community mailboxes, there was immediate anger, resistance and consternation.
The conversion made Canada the first G7 country to drop all door-to-door delivery and prompted a wide-spread and wide-ranging protests.
The mayor Montreal, Denis Coderre, drilled into a concrete base for the mailboxes with a jackhammer, the City of Hamilton launched a failed legal challenge, a Hamilton resident staged a sit-in in a lawn chair to prevent an installation near his home and a spate of online petitions sprouted on the Internet.
On Monday, Canada Post made a surprise announcement, saying it was suspending the conversion, a decision that involves about 460,000 addresses across the country that are currently being converted.
There is no plan to restore the approximately one million addresses already converted over the past 10 months, but the Canadian Union of Postal Workers says it will push Justin Trudeau’s new Liberal government to reverse the door-to-door service cuts.
Trudeau promised during the election campaign to undo cuts to the Crown Corporation made under the Conservative government. However, the incoming Liberals have given no formal indication they want Canada Post to scrap the five-year conversion plan.
In its original 2013 announcement, Canada Post said it expected the move to community mailboxes would save up to $500 million annually by 2019.
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