Commission report recommends Canada Post phase out daily door-to-door mail delivery

The Industrial Inquiry Commission report on the labour dispute at Canada Post recommends phasing out daily door-to-door letter mail delivery for individual addresses, while daily delivery to businesses should be maintained. 

It also says the moratoriums on rural post office closures and community mailbox conversions should be lifted. 

"My recommendations are based on my conclusion that there is a way to preserve Canada Post as a vital national institution," commissioner William Kaplan wrote in the report released Friday.

"I have designed them to respond to the present problem: to arrest and then reverse the growing financial losses by putting into place the necessary structural changes both within and outside the collective agreements."

The report was called for after Ottawa asked the federal labour board to send postal employees back to work last year to end a strike that was disrupting holiday mail deliveries.

The report examined the state of Canada Post and its finances, in relation to reaching a labour deal. 

Kaplan wrote that Canada Post is facing an existential crisis and is effectively insolvent.

"Without thoughtful, measured, staged, but immediate changes, its fiscal situation will continue to deteriorate," he wrote.

Kaplan said that until recently Canada Post was able to operate in a financially sustainable manner as low-cost urban and suburban mail delivery subsidized high-cost delivery to rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.

"This model no longer works because the traditional core business – mail delivery – has fundamentally changed: fewer letters must now be delivered to more addresses," he wrote. 

Among its other recommendations, it says Canada Post must have the flexibility to hire part-time employees to deliver parcels on the weekend and to assist with volume during the week.

It also says Canada Post must also be able to change routes daily to reflect volumes.

Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi