It’s hard to find someone who is truly surprised by Canada Post’s announcement that they’re phasing out home delivery in urban centres.
“I’ve seen this probably coming for years because people aren’t mailing things any more,” said Donna Leblanc, who lives in a downtown building on Pelissier Street.
“With Internet, with email and everything going on. Half of it I don’t know about or bother with.”
Canada Post announced Wednesday a five-year plan to gradually phase out home delivery in urban centres to be replaced by super mailboxes.
But exactly where in Windsor and Essex County will be the first to make the switch has yet to be determined. The post office also doesn’t have current numbers of employment levels on a regional basis or what the impact will be for specific areas.
“We’re starting planning and what we are going to do is work on our process and then we’re going to start working on communities where we are going to do the conversion from door to door delivery to community mailboxes,” said Canada Post spokeswoman Anick Losier.
“We continue looking at our operations.”
Losier said the announcement had to be made now to allow for legislation to make its way through Parliament in time for a scheduled stamp price increase, from 63 cents to 85 cents.
Municipalities and communities will be consulted before a final plan for Windsor and Essex County is settled on, she said.
“What we do is we come in and work with the community and they identify sites that are acceptable to them, and if it is on somebody’s property, we work out agreements with them,” said Losier.
“And then we choose the model, how many postal boxes can we have in one site. We will have an extensive communications program so the people know what’s happening when it’s happening.”
Losier said the average number of mailboxes in existing community mailboxes is 36, and that is unlikely to change.
“We’ve been doing community mailboxes for 30 years,” said Losier.
“We’re working on being very creative and finding the right solution.”
Linda Hawkins said losing home mail delivery in her Riverside neighbourhood will likely force her to start paying bills online.
“I understand everybody uses email, and I’m computer literate so I could do a lot with email to minimize it,” Hawkins said.
She said she understands how the change could be inconvenient for seniors and the disabled.
Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse said his office is fielding calls from concerned seniors, the disabled and small businesses.
“I’m also hearing from people who are concerned because this mail system is the most secure in terms of privacy,” said Masse, noting many people are not comfortable with security online.
“You see with all this electronics people are not comfortable,” said Masse.
“We’ve seen the Wilileaks and how information has been taken on the Internet. Some people don’t have a level of comfort with information being exchanged that way.”
Masse said there should have been more public consultation before such a drastic step was taken.
“It’s rather extreme,” said Masse. “Where is the public consultation?”
