Oakville losing home mail delivery

As Canada Post gets ready to phase out home delivery, it is revealing more details of its five year action plan. And it says Oakville will be one of the first communities to lose door-to-door mail service.

60 per cent of the town reportedly already uses community mailboxes. That means 24,965 homes will be affected.

Canada Post senior vice-president Mary Traversy says they’re working with a number of agencies to make sure people with mobility issues will be able to access their mail. “We’ve been using community mailboxes for 30 years so we certainly face a lot of issues with seniors and other Canadians with mobility challenges.”

“We’ve got some some approaches that we’ll use today to accommodate some of those folks and we’re going to work with groups, we’ve already reached out to a number of groups representing seniors and others to talk about, brainstorm about ideas and new approaches to make these mailboxes as accessible as they can be.”

The phasing out of home delivery to be replaced by community boxes was announced by Canada Post back in December. The move will eliminate about 8,000 jobs.

These communities will lose door to door delivery and convert to community mailboxes in 2014:

• Oakville
• Ottawa
• Calgary
• Halifax
• Winnipeg