Canada Post has begun talks with 13 communities to convert about 136,000 addresses from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes, marking the first phase of a five-year plan to complete home mail delivery for roughly four million households.
The initiative, announced Thursday, aims to address Canada Post’s worsening financial position, which has seen losses exceed $3.8 billion before taxes since 2018, including nearly $1 billion in the first nine months of 2025 alone. The Crown corporation has relied on $2 billion in federal loans over the past two years to remain operational, a situation officials say is unsustainable.
Canada Post spokesperson Jon Hamilton said eliminating door-to-door service would save the corporation about $400 million Canadian annually—roughly $292 million US—by reducing costs associated with serving individual homes. He noted that delivering mail to a doorstep costs about twice as much as using centralized community mailboxes.
Currently, 75% of the 17.6 million addresses Canada Post serves already receive mail through some form of centralized delivery, including community mailboxes, post office boxes, or apartment building systems. The remaining four million addresses still receiving door-to-door service are the focus of the conversion effort.
The first wave of changes will target specific neighborhoods in British Columbia and Ontario, including Ottawa, Etobicoke, Abbotsford, Mission, and several Vancouver-area communities such as North Vancouver, where resident Liane Beadon said the shift would not inconvenience her. “It won’t actually bother me at all,” she said, adding she works remotely and views the change as a prudent step to maintain affordable mail service.
Canada Post emphasized that the transition will not result in layoffs. Instead, letter carriers will be reassigned to other duties within the organization. Hamilton said the process of converting each address typically takes six to nine months, involving consultations with municipal planners and residents to determine optimal mailbox locations.
The announcement coincides with a vote by members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, set to begin Monday, on a new collective agreement. The union has been without a contract since November 2023 and has previously staged nationwide strikes during negotiations. Whereas the union has not yet commented publicly on the delivery changes, it has opposed similar moves in the past, calling them “drastic” and warning of negative impacts on both workers and the public.
Federal officials have framed the shift as necessary for long-term viability. Government Transformation and Public Works Minister Joël Lightbound said the plan aligns with reforms announced last fall to make Canada Post self-sustaining, noting the corporation has accumulated $5 billion in deficits over recent years. He added that ending door-to-door delivery would save “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Critics, including NDP MP Don Davies, argue the move breaks past promises by Liberal governments to protect home delivery. Davies said the government has “really mishandled the Canada Post file for a long time” and that the shift represents a “complete breaking” of earlier commitments.
Will Canada Post workers lose their jobs due to the shift to community mailboxes?
No, Canada Post says it will not lay off workers as a result of the delivery changes. Letter carriers affected by the conversion will be reassigned to other roles within the corporation, according to spokesperson Jon Hamilton.
When will the first communities see the change in mail delivery?
The initial 136,000 addresses in the 13 selected communities are expected to be converted to community mailbox delivery starting late this year and continuing into early 2027, with each conversion taking six to nine months to complete.
