Canada Post wants the federal government to consider changing the legislation that requires it to deliver letter mail daily— a mandate the Crown corporation says no longer reflects modern realities and is causing it to lose money.
“If you have a community mailbox, a lot of people check it once or twice a week,” said Jon Hamilton, vice-president of communications at Canada Post.
“We need to work with government to ensure the regulatory framework aligns with today’s needs.”
The postal charter, which dictates how frequently Canada Post delivers mail, hasn’t undergone any significant changes since it was created in 2009, Hamilton said.
You’re not paying a fuck ton of money. Canada Post is a separate entity from the government and is a self-sustaining business that receives no money from the government.
Unsolicited commercial mail is paid for by the company sending it. All mail is paid for by the people sending it. It doesn’t cost you anything to receive it. And when it really matters, like those “rare” correspondence that contain your drivers license, or insurance slips, or your health card, or your doctor’s appointments, or even your small parcels from eBay, I’m sure you want those as soon as they come in. You should care about regular mail delivery. Because once you lose it, it’s never coming back.
I pay for commercial mail by needing to constantly empty my overflowing mailbox and trying to make sure I don’t lose any important mail in the process. And we, collectively, pay for spam mail because of the externalities on our society including having all that waste paper collected and recycled (and recycling isn’t free or 100% effective).
Externalities are a cost we can’t ignore - I’d rather pay tax dollars to support a good service than subsidize a shitty service with advertisements.
If you don’t want unsolicited commercial mail, you can always contact your local post office and request to be added to the no flyers list. Just because you don’t like flyers doesn’t mean that mail delivery isn’t important when it matters.
I’m not arguing for or against daily delivery, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have our mail service tied to a profit motive. If we, as a society, decided on once weekly mail I don’t think it’d impact most Canadians… but we should make that decision independent of considerations around profitability.
Edit: on re-reading my comment I definitely agree I could have been more clear.
Dude, just put a “no junk mail” sticker on your mailbox and it will stop. https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consumers-choice.page
I have one, doesn’t stop Bell from sending me flyers even though I don’t have any services with them.
