Canada Post to stop door-to-door mail

Photo: CTV

Canada Post will stop delivering regular mail door-to-door to homes in urban centres.

Canada Post has announced it will stop delivering regular mail door-to-door to homes in urban centres, as part of sweeping cost-cutting measures.

The Crown corporation announced Wednesday that door-to-door delivery will be phased out over the next five years.

Those areas – which account for about one-third of Canadian households -- will transition to community mail boxes. Implementation of the changes will begin in the second half of 2014.

The first neighbourhoods that will stop receiving door-to-door mail delivery have yet to be announced.

The postal service also announced Wednesday that the cost of stamps will be increasing from $0.63 each to $0.85 beginning March 31, 2014.

The changes are part of a five-point action plan aimed at returning Canada Post to “financial sustainability” by 2019.

A think-tank commissioned by Canada Post warned earlier this year that the postal service will be losing $1 billion a year by the end of this decade.

Conference Board of Canada said, in this age of digital communication, the postal service is being hit by a dramatic reduction in the volume of it mail it handles.

It estimated $576 million a year could be saved by eliminating of door-to-door delivery for urban homes.