(This article first appeared in the January-February 2016 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

Thanks to the efforts of postal workers and their allies, Canada Post has suspended the installation of community mailboxes, preserving door-to-door mail delivery for nearly half a million households that were scheduled to be switched to cluster-box delivery.

Canada Post began to phase out door-to-door delivery for millions of customers in September 2014, forcing them to walk or drive to community mailboxes located far from their homes.

The customers didn’t take it lying down.

Several spirited protests took place in Ontario, Newfoundland, and Labrador, with some activists standing or lying on dirt piles to prevent workers from placing cement foundations for the clustered mailboxes. Some customers camped out on their front lawns.

‘An Inconvenience’

Customers in Aurora, Ontario, were among the last residents to be phased out of door-to-door delivery – and desperately want it back.

“I was disappointed we just missed the cutoff,” John Cooper told Toronto Star. “My wife and I come home late and go to work early, so this is inconvenient. It’s inconvenient coming home late when it’s dark and having to fish in this thing for mail.”

Tino Petrossi added, “This box is an inconvenience. Plus, living on a small little court others might be driving and coming on our street to get their mail – there’s a concern about the number of cars this is going to bring on the street.”

Looking Forward

Mike Palecek, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), was pleased with the decision to suspend installation of new cluster boxes, but said there is still work to be done.

“We need to look at restoring the home mail delivery to those who have already lost it,” he told CTV News Winnipeg.

Much like the APWU, the CUPW has been pushing Canada Post to expand, not slash, postal services, and has been urging Canada Post to consider implementing postal banking.

“We need to look at having a public mandate review for Canada Post, about exactly what direction we want this corporation to go,” Palecek said.

More Secure? Really?

One of Canada Post’s arguments for community mailboxes was that they offered more security – but those claims haven’t proven true. 

A community mailbox in a Kanata, Ontario, neighborhood was left wide open one November afternoon, for more than an hour.

Sibly Hill told The National Post that she was returning home when she saw the mailbox open, exposing resident’s letters and parcels. “Everybody who passed by was quite appalled,” Hill said.

Hill called the phone number on the mailbox and was told by Canada Post that it could take up to four hours for someone to come by and lock it. Another resident went to a nearby post office to report the incident, and was also told there could be a long wait. However, after about half an hour, a Canada Post employee came to secure the mailbox.

Nevertheless, Hill called the incident “egregious,” and said she was frustrated by the breach of security.

“Their whole selling point was: This is much more secure than just having a mailbox hanging off your front door,” she explained. “It’s locked and you’re the only person with access to it.”

But the Kanata incident wasn’t an isolated one.

At least eight other community mailboxes have been left unsecured since the program was implemented.