Canada Post to phase out all delivery services

Florenceville-Bristol– In a surprising move, Canada Post announced today that the Crown corporation intends to end all delivery services within the next 10 years. The plan, which is scheduled to be implemented nationwide by the end of 2024, will see Canadians picking up their mail at large regional distribution centres. Many Canadians were already unhappy with the corporation’s recent moves to stop door-to-door delivery in urban areas and transition to a system of community “super boxes.” This latest announcement came as a shock to most.

“Ultimately it’s about efficiency and cost,” said Canada Post spokesperson Carol Moon. “Eliminating home delivery in Canada’s cities will certainly help us reduce expenditures, but we still have to keep our trucks on the road to bring mail to community boxes, and those costs add up quickly. People just aren’t sending mail like they used to, so we need to change, too. Unfortunately, limited edition RUSH and Guess Who stamps aren’t enough.”

“Our members were really blindsided by this,” Canadian Union of Postal Workers representative Mark Harris told reporters. “We just launched a Federal Court challenge to save the jobs of the door-to-door mail carriers who were starting to be laid off, and now it looks like the drivers’ jobs are in jeopardy. It’s unconscionable what [Canada Post is] trying to do.”

The Canada Post on Florenceville-Bristol’s Main Street will be among the first communities in Canada to see the policy rolled out. Riverview and Chatham will also be part of the first wave. But it’s not just urban-dwellers who will have to change how they get their mail.

“Servicing rural areas represents some of our biggest financial challenges, because it means we have to send drivers to remote areas to bring mail to a relatively small number of customers,” Moon told us. “We know many rural Canadians are already travelling to larger communities to access other government services, so this won’t be a big change for most people. They’ll be able to stop by their mail centre when they apply for a marriage licence or get an MRI.”

Customers will be assigned a regional distribution centre based on their postal code where they will pick up their mail. Canada Post says it plans to make every effort to make the process as convenient as possible and will endeavour to choose locations that will be central for the majority of its customers. “Our intention is that collecting residential mail won’t be any more difficult than renewing your passport,” Moon said.

At least one local resident is supportive of the idea. “This is actually fine with me,” Adam Torrens of Cedar Street told The Manatee. “My mail is always just pizza coupons and Canadian Tire flyers anyway, so it means my recycling box won’t fill up as quick, which I’m all for.”

When asked about Canadians who rely on Canada Post’s parcel service to operate home-based businesses or deliver their online shopping purchases, Moon became flustered, saying, “Nobody orders that much stuff online, do they?”