Canada announced on Thursday that it had ordered its beleaguered postal service to end door-to-door mail delivery, shut down some rural post offices and consolidate its operations as steep financial losses threaten the mail carrier’s survival.
Canada Post, a government-owned mail service, has lost more than 5 billion Canadian dollars, or $3.6 billion, since 2018, largely because of a drastic drop in the use of mail to send and receive letter correspondence. The postal service has not been able to make up the difference by moving parcels, a highly competitive area of the shipping industry.
“Canada Post is effectively insolvent, and it is facing an existential crisis,” Joël Lightbound, Canada’s minister for public services, said at a news conference on Thursday.
The government said its cost-cutting measures would help stabilize Canada Post’s finances following multiple bailouts. They are also likely to result in significant layoffs among the postal staff’s 68,000 employees.
“Today’s announcement will allow us to make the changes needed to restore Canada’s postal service for all Canadians by evolving to better meet their needs,” Doug Ettinger, Canada Post’s chief executive, said in a statement.
At-home postal delivery had already been a fading tradition across much of Canada with only about 25 percent of Canadians getting mail at their homes. For most Canadians, mail is placed in individual boxes that are part of community mailboxes near their homes or apartments.
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