Dear Editor:
I see that the Canadian Postal Service has planned a big change from all street box delivery to now having this temporarily suspended and will continue door-to-door delivery. This sounds good, but money may force Canadian postal service to reconsider all-street mailboxes.
Street mailboxes will pay better in the long run; less staff and, of course, the postal service inside of postal stations is much cheaper than door-to-door. Also, the postal mailboxes in the station will cost around $15 per month, or $180 per year plus tax. Of course, we are told that street boxes are safe, but after people have lost credit card information, passports, bank statements, how safe can they be? Considering the post box is $180 per year, that option may seem quite worthwhile. I think postal greed by installing poor grade and unsafe street postal boxes may force us to rent from a postal station box at the Post Office and pay the annual service fee.
I think this door-to-door postal service could be handled much better and feel that this service should continue but with some upgrades and improvements. One example that might work is that we could cut staff by about 50 per cent if we had alternate areas side by side for the same postal carrier doing two areas per week. The first week you would get mail Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the next week mail would be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday. Reversing delivery would mean each area would get five days’ mail over a period of two weeks.
Considering the above mail delivery, it would mean that Canada Post would save about one half of the people delivering; with that, though, there should be no layoffs as there are retirees, extra staff for holidays, etc. Due to the popularity of online shopping, parcel post is growing considerably and more drivers are needed. It seems to me that this is a win-win situation. We get our door-to-door service, and no one loses their job.
For something that is as important as our mail service, please consider this option or any other that will work, thus continuing our door-to-door mail service.
W. Earl Marshall
