Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Local News

5 Points for 5 Million in 5 Years
Canada Post's
reasons for the Five Point Action Plan
Released by Canada Post
anada
Post today released guiding principles that will govern its approach to
converting the remaining five million addresses with delivery at their door
to community mailbox delivery over the next five years.
Canada Post is
committed to ensuring that the transition of delivery service in
Canadian communities will be handled responsibly and with respect
towards customers and municipalities. The principles are:
-
Canada
Post recognizes that dense urban cores in our larger cities,
with their older neighbourhoods and smaller lots, present
different challenges for locating community mailboxes than
suburban areas. Accordingly, Canada Post will leave the
majority of these areas until the final stage of this
multi-year project. The postal service will take the
necessary time to understand their unique needs and find
solutions that work for these neighbourhoods.
-
Canada
Post will be sensitive to the needs of seniors and of
disabled Canadians. Canada Post is developing alternative
approaches for people with significant mobility challenges,
who lack viable alternatives and upon whom delivery to a
community mailbox would impose an unacceptable hardship.
-
There
will be no change in delivery to people living in apartment
buildings, seniors' buildings and condominiums who already
have mail delivered in the building lobby. In addition,
customers who have mail delivered to a rural mailbox (a
customer-owned mailbox at the end of a driveway) will not be
affected by this change.
-
The
postal service will work with community leaders and
municipal planning officials to choose safe and appropriate
sites.
-
Canada
Post will seek the views of affected citizens directly,
through multiple channels including direct mail surveys and
online feedback tools.
-
The Crown
corporation will be as innovative and flexible as possible,
while fulfilling its responsibility to protect the financial
sustainability of postal service for all Canadians. It will
look at various solutions and different equipment, taking
the necessary time to address any significant challenges in
a given community.
-
Canada
Post will respect the needs of businesses to have mail
delivered to their door. The vast majority of business
addresses will continue to have mail and parcels delivered
to their door and will experience no change. The businesses
that will continue to have delivery to the door:
-
are
located in well-established business areas, such as main
streets or "business corridors"
-
or
receive a relatively large volume of mail or parcels.
Canada Post is
committed to keeping Canadians informed and to implementing the
conversion to community mailbox delivery in a thoughtful way.
The conversion of
delivery at the door to community mailbox delivery will have no
impact on the two thirds of Canadian households that already receive
their mail and parcels through community mailboxes, grouped or lobby
mailboxes or rural mailboxes. Community mailboxes offer individually
locked mail and small packet compartments as well as locked
compartments for securely receiving parcels. The initial
neighbourhoods slated for conversion in the second half of 2014 will
be announced in the coming weeks once plans are finalized.
Converting the
remaining five million Canadian households that receive mail
delivery to the door to community mailbox delivery was announced in
December 2013 as part of Canada Post's
Five-point Action Plan. Together, the initiatives announced in this
plan will protect Canada's postal
service for future generations. Ignoring
Canada's massive shift away from mail to digital alternatives
would put Canada Post on track for
substantial yearly losses that would threaten the existence of the
postal service.
The conversion
will provide significant savings to Canada Post by allowing it to
hire only those delivery employees it needs to replace departing
employees during a wave of retirements. Canada Post expects nearly
15,000 employees to retire or leave the company over the next five
years. This is more than enough to allow for the reduction of
between 6,000 and 8,000 positions, mainly through attrition.
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