Sending Ottawa a message
Canada Post’s decision to end home mail delivery faces a revolt in the cities. When the plan was first announced two years ago, many Canadians were indifferent.
Those who communicate solely online saw letter mail as quaintly irrelevant. Residents of post-1980 suburbs didn’t much care either. Most already have no door-to-door mail delivery, relying instead on community mailboxes.
Postal workers objected. But that was to be expected. Letter carriers’ jobs are on the line.
Groups representing seniors and the disabled also took to task Canada Post — and the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
They argued that in Canada’s densely populated cities, the elderly and inform would find a daily trek to the community mailbox particularly difficult.
Canada Post said it would try to accommodate them.
Now the Crown corporation is running into an entirely different kind of buzz saw. Residents of older cities like Toronto and Montreal are beginning to realize that once home delivery is eliminated, large, unsightly community mailboxes will have be erected in their areas — possibly right in their front yards. And they don’t like the idea. So the cities are complaining. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre has called for a moratorium on community mailboxes. His city and three neighbouring ones say they plan to join a legal action against Canada Post mounted last fall by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and groups representing the elderly and disabled. Coderre says the planned community mailboxes would simply take up too much space. A report done for the city calculates that if all the community mailboxes required to service Montreal were laid end to end, they would stretch for 25 kilometres.
Hamilton, meanwhile, is taking another form of legal action against Canada Post. It wants the Crown corporation to abide by a new city bylaw that specifies where and how community mailboxes can be placed. The bylaw would also charge Canada Post a licensing fee of $200 per superbox.
Canada Post has refused all of Hamilton’s demands. In a countersuit, it argues that the city has no legal right to interfere with its actions. The case is set to be heard in Ontario Superior Court next week.
Local councils and councillors have taken on Canada Post in other municipalities, including Stratford, Aurora, Medicine Hat and Charlottetown.
Toronto has been quieter, perhaps because Canada Post does not plan to introduce community mailboxes in its older sections for at least two years. But that promises to change next month when two separate staff reports on the superboxes are due.
The reports are supposed to look into just what scores of community mailboxes would mean for a city that is already short on public space.
“The reports will open the door,” said Ward 31 Councillor Janet Davis, who requested one of them.
Davis said residents in her Beaches—East York ward are already seized with the issue.
That municipal politicians are involving themselves in the affairs of a federal Crown corporation might seem strange. It is not. Mail delivery is at heart a local matter.
Even those urban residents who don’t send or receive much letter mail will be affected by Canada Post’s elimination of home delivery — for the simple reason that the new community mailboxes will have to go somewhere.
Opposition in Hamilton took off once residents realized that Canada Post planned to place superboxes on their front and side lawns.
In one case, police were called after residents confronted contractors attempting to install the boxes.
In Quebec, a Dorval resident dumped a pile of dirt in his front yard to keep Canada Post from erecting a superbox there.
Up to now, the federal opposition parties have been circumspect. The New Democrats castigate Harper for killing home delivery. But party leader Tom Mulcair has not explicitly promised to reverse the decision if he becomes prime minister.
The Liberals have followed an even more careful route.
Now, the revolt in the cities is upping the ante. In March, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau lauded Coderre for his decision to fight Canada Post’s superbox plan, saying the Montreal mayor’s stance was one “with which we fully agree.”
This story is far from over. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.