OTTAWA — Seventy-nine-year-old Janet Wees says she writes 400 letters a year and usually gets mail delivered at least two or three times a week.
For Wees, Canada Post’s plan to end door-to-door mail delivery, in favour of community mailboxes, is life-changing and she fears it will isolate seniors and poses risks for people with mobility issues.
Wees, who lives in Calgary, recently had a hip replacement. She said she fears walking to a community mailbox won’t be safe for many seniors, including herself.
“I can’t even go down my driveway in the winter because it’s full of ice and snow,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “I really don’t have any way of getting out onto wherever I’m going to go to pick up my mail.”
Canada Post has lost billions in recent years as letter mail volumes cratered thanks largely to digitalization. Ending door-to-door delivery is part of a multi-year overhaul of the business model to save millions of dollars annually.
Canada Post announced earlier this week it’s starting preliminary work to convert about four million addresses to community mailboxes. It said the work is expected to take about five years, with different regions moving to community mailboxes each year.
The corporation said it’s starting discussions with 13 communities across Canada — including Ottawa and Winnipeg — as it prepares to move about 136,000 addresses from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes in late 2026 and early 2027.
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.
Wees said letter-writing is a “social thing” and she has several pen pals around the world.
“I’ve got pen pals now in Czech Republic and Australia and England,” she said. “That’s the one thing that kept me going in COVID … reading and writing letters.”
Canada Post has said its accommodation program can offer home delivery for customers who can’t access their mail and parcels.
Wees said she wonders how the postal service will decide who fits into that category.
“If you’re going to deliver to vulnerable people, there are parts of the city where they’re going to be quite busy because there’s whole neighbourhoods with people who are aging in place,” she said. “It’s a problem.”
Anthony Quinn, president of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, said in an email many members are concerned about the upcoming changes.
“We heard from rural members worried about the changes and what it means to them,” he said, noting that a senior in a rural district could live several kilometres away from a community mailbox.
“We heard from those with mobility issues who want assurances they will still get mail to their door, without having to rely on others. We heard from seniors who say that they can get to the community mailbox when the weather is good, but snow and ice are just too unsafe to risk a trip to a community mailbox.”
Quinn said the organization will inform seniors about Canada Post’s accommodation program, adding it’s “not well known and underutilized.”
He said the Canadian Association of Retired Persons will also ensure Canada Post delivers on its promise of accommodating those who can’t make it safely to community mailboxes.