Canada Post Announces the End of Urban Home Delivery 226
Lev13than writes "Canada Post is phasing out urban home delivery, raising the price of a letter to $1 and cutting 8,000 jobs to cope with dwindling volume and a projected loss of $1B/year by 2020. About 1/3 of Canadian homes currently get mail delivered to their door. Deliveries will remain weekdays-only and business will be unaffected (at least for now). Much like the USPS, Canada Post is mandated to be self-funded, but 5% annual volume declines and rising costs are taking their toll."
Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Informative)
Buying stamps half a dozen at a time reduce first class rates to $0.85; businesses using postage meters will get $0.75. Not cheap, and still a big increase, but the $1 rate will be paid by a very small number of people too cheap to buy stamps six at a time.
As for home delivery, it'll be sad to lose it but the alternative, the community mailbox a few doors down from most houses, will have one advantage: parcels will be loaded into it for you to pick up. Currently if you're not home you have to drive to the nearest sub-post office to get your parcels. This will be way more convenient.
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I see a whole lot of mail returned to sender for being abandoned, or being discarded for being abandoned, in those communal mailboxes. I also see a lot of people only visiting th
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
9/10 of everything I get local delivered is a sales pitch to "Current Resident".
Exactly. Those guys, by sheer volume, are the ones paying enough money to keep the lights on at the post office. If they raise that rate too much, then advertisers will just find another, more cost-effective medium and the price of your Christmas card to grandma will go up to about $3, or maybe even more.
As unfortunate as it is, that crapmail is what is subsidizing the rest of the traditional government-chartered snail mail industry. And sorting through all the crapmail is the price (no pun intended) we pay for sending letters for less than the $8-$12 FedEx will charge you for a letter-size envelope at their slowest delivery pace.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they raise that rate too much, then advertisers will just find another, more cost-effective medium and the price of your Christmas card to grandma will go up to about $3, or maybe even more.
Sounds good! I sent, maybe, two paper letters last year. I would be delighted to eliminate all junk mail from my mailbox for only $6.
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when I lived at an apartment complex that had a shared mailbox area, I ran into the mailman and asked him if there's a way I can refuse the junkmail or just have him toss all of mine into the nearest trash bin (there's one nearby, building mgmt knew we needed one). he said that he really can't because that stuff is what is keeping him employed.
he would not even throw my junkmail into the trash on my request. I have to frequent the mailbox more often than I would, just to pull out and dispose of the junk.
I
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The USPS has some mandates from Congress about how they can raise rates and what they can charge.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Informative)
What I don't get is why they just don't just raise the price of first-class mail. In the US, as a lower-volume mailer I'd be okay with spending a dollar to mail something, I end up mailing something about four times a year. It'd still be cheaper than using UPS or FedEx or the like...
Because unlike in Canada where Canada Post control their own rates, postal rates in the USA are controlled by Congress, several members of which have interest in sabotaging the USPS.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sabotage? No sabotage isn't postal rates, it's requiring that the USPS prefund 75 years of retirement pension in 10 years. That means in 10 years they have to fund the retirement for employees that haven't been born yet. That's sabotage. Refusing to raise stamp prices to pay for the prefunding requirement is just following through on the real sabotage.
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What's really interesting, however, is that the postal carrier's union was a strong proporent of that 75-year prefunding law.
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How is that interesting? Most union shops hold their employer to ransom to the point where it's almost uneconomical to run the business. You can see examples of this all the time like how the already best paid airline maintenance teams in Australia decided to go on strike because the Airline didn't agree to their exorbitant pay rise demands.
It would be more interesting if a union agreed to some reasonable terms for a chance.
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It seems this is not correct. The Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service and the Postal Regulatory Commission set and oversee postal rates respectively [1]. Ultimately Congress can pass a law changing the structure, but that is no different than Parliament overruling Canada Post, so it appears that the distinctio
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:4, Insightful)
The anti-Harperites are generally not anti-government. They just want the NDP in charge.
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He closed the Vancouver Marine Traffic Control Center while planning on increasing oil tanker traffic by at least an order of magnitude. He also closed Vancouver's Kitsilano coast guard station as it only did almost 300 (271 in 2011) rescues a year serving perhaps the busiest recreational harbour in Canada as the one at Sea Island was only 45 minutes away under ideal conditions. Should be easy to hold on for an hour when your boat flounders.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Federal+government+closes+Vancouve [vancouversun.com]
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I see a whole lot of mail returned to sender for being abandoned, or being discarded for being abandoned, in those communal mailboxes. I also see a lot of people only visiting their mailboxes weekly, like how they take out their trash cans for the truck to pick up, so mailboxes will be even bigger targets for thieves as there'll be more payoff for the effort than before.
I think the reason people only visit their mailbox weekly (or less) is because they get so little valuable mail so there's not much for theives to steal. The only bill I get in the mail these days is my property tax bill from the county (I wish they'd move to electronic delivery, it would save them money (which ultimately saves *me* money), but it can be looked up online by anyone that knows my address, so I'm not sure why someone would want to steal it. The rest of my bills get paid electornically or maile
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I see a whole lot of mail returned to sender for being abandoned, or being discarded for being abandoned, in those communal mailboxes. I also see a lot of people only visiting their mailboxes weekly, like how they take out their trash cans for the truck to pick up, so mailboxes will be even bigger targets for thieves as there'll be more payoff for the effort than before.
I really have no idea where you get the abandoned mail thing from. My first house I had I only checked the mail once a month so I can pay my monthly bills. Unfortunately the previous owner gave to many charities and received lots of mail from them soliciting more funds. PETA, UNICEF, Child sponsorship, SPCA, Cancer society, March of Dimes, if you can think of it, he probably gave to them at some point. When my box was full, the mail man just crammed more junk mail in there. I swear he was probably punching
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That happens anyway. I check my mail 3 or 4 times a year when the mailman mentions its overflowing. Its still rare that I get more than 2 pieces of actual mail on those occasions. Everything important is electronic these days.
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I see a whole lot of mail returned to sender for being abandoned, or being discarded for being abandoned, in those communal mailboxes. I also see a lot of people only visiting their mailboxes weekly, like how they take out their trash cans for the truck to pick up, so mailboxes will be even bigger targets for thieves as there'll be more payoff for the effort than before.
The once-weekly visits will be a very small minority. I lived with communal boxes for years (since the community was built in the late 80s). Almost every household visits daily, it's never more than half a block away. Oftentimes people coming from work stop their cars nearby, get the mail, then drive the rest of the short distance home. It really isn't that big a deal.
I don't know how long it takes to be considered abandoned, but I've left stuff in mine for a week while I was away, it was all there when I
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Well, the title, Canada Post moves to end-of-street mailboxes to increase efficiency doesn't exactly meet with the media's goal of fear and panic.
Tune in at 10pm to see what household object you own could be killing your children.
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On the other hand... they're still raising their prices and offering less service for it.
It's already cheaper to send most packages either UPS or Purolator ground ship. Canada Post wins out on actual letters or post cards, but for how much longer? Hardly surprising though... I can't remember the last time I got anything in the mail except for the insurance renewal and my investment statements... everything else is electronic or delivered by courier these days.
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Interesting. In the US the post office is more economical than UPS. In fact a lot of the time UPS drops off packages at the post office for last mile handling. I'm starting to get Sunday delivery of packages from Amazon now, routed through the post office.
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I'm sure Canada Post is just fine with you using Purolator rather than parcel post, given that they own Purolator.
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It's already cheaper to send most packages either UPS or Purolator ground ship.
Hidden irony: Canada Post owns Purolator.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Interesting)
wrong. I've had one of these community mailboxes for years. I don't mind going across the street to get my mail. What I mind is my parcels don't get deposited in the box because there are only 2 parcel boxes per community mailbox. The 'sub post office' you mention is a drug store 8km from my house. The post office depot is in the back corner of the drug store, kitty corner to the doors. The aisles are all set up so you have to zig-zag through the store past all sorts of impulse-buy type merchandise and finally past the perfume counter staffed by sales people who are eager to spray a fragrance into the air as you walk through it. Then you have to stand in line with a dozen or so other disgruntled citizens who are there to pickup their parcel as well. The parcels are stored in the back room and the haggard worker (singular, one only) has to do a linear search for each parcel. Picking up my parcels is like lining up for meat in cold-war era east-germany.
The other minor issue that I have is the CP worker doesn't come to the door with parcels that need to be signed for; even though they are supposed to. They just fill out a card and leave it in my mailbox. On occasions where I know my wife was home and home all day, I would check my ZoneMinder setup and see the postal truck pull up at the box across the street, and then pull away, with no attempt to even come to the door. When I get home, there's a notice in the box that says "Attempted delivery failure - No answer" and it means I have to line-up for bread again.
I wonder why CP is losing money?
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My canada post delivery guy in Toronto was stealing the games being sent to me for review. But since he marked them as "delivered" (eg. dropped on the doorstep) they told me it wasn't their fault.
Except I worked right by the front door, and kept it open in the summer for fresh air. If the guy had even set foot in the driveway I would have heard his footsteps on the gravel, and if he came to the doorstep I'd have been looking right at him.
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kitty corner
Actually, the word is "catercorner". Amusing that both Canadians and US Southerners have picked up on the "cat" aspect of the word - down here it's usually referred to as "catty-corner".
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What I mind is my parcels don't get deposited in the box because there are only 2 parcel boxes per community mailbox.
Yeah, bummer.
But even with home delivery, they aren't supposed to leave them on your front step, and they didn't fit in the mailbox (which didn't even lock) stapled to your front porch either. So how is this 'worse'?
Now, things will vary dependng where you are, but my post office worker may leave me a key to one of the community boxes, or they may just bring parcels over to the door, knock an
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the community mailbox a few doors down from most houses, will have one advantage: parcels will be loaded into it for you to pick up.
If the item fits in the box, sure. If it is larger than a loaf of bread, well, you're driving.
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Not cheap
Au contraire.
Boggles my mind that I can put a few pieces of paper in an envelope, put that envelope in a box half-a-block from my house, and then a few days later it will be pushed through a slot in someone else's house 4000 km away - All this for under a buck.
Seems ridiculously cheap to me.
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I would PAY to get the US post office to stop delivering mail. I tried taping up the mail slot and they just dumped all the junk mail in my driveway. The postal service has been sucking the junk mailers balls for so long and now their upset they have jizz in their hair?
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Some people won't bother to pick up mail (Score:3)
Especially people who are disabled or elderly and are very well accustomed to having mail delivered right to their door...
So any mail they get through normal post will just sit and accumulate in their box... essentially turning these community boxes into a litter farm.
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Oh please. There are already tons of places in Canada doing it this way. The walk to the end of the street to the mailbox isn't going to have that kind of impact.
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That's a good thing in my opinion. Leaving the piles of junk mail at the mailbox as a form of protest will pick up with this system. People will dump it in the outgoing mail or on the ground. Either way it will start costing Canada Post money and then maybe they'll reconsider their position on running that kind of ridiculous business.
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It could still be an issue. I don't know how close those community boxes will be. If they're a few houses down, you might be right. If they're farther, someone who can live independently but is old, might have trouble. I drive my mom to the grocery store weekly, but she's used to getting her mail daily.
Re:Some people won't bother to pick up mail (Score:4, Interesting)
I have arthritis. I can walk 4 blocks to the supermarket and back, but by the time I get home it's painful. But what am I going to do? I want my independence.
My post office stopped delivering packages, and I have to pick them up at the local post office. Every time I see a slip in my mailbox for a package, it means another painful trip to the post office.
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Delivering urban homes is hard work. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, delivering homes sounds awfully resource intensive and is probably a departure from their charter to deliver mail.
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Not many rural routes with mail vehicles left. This is in town where the mail people walk rather then drive.
How many licks does it take... (Score:2)
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This is the new Canada. When the postal workers negotiated a cost of living raise (using rotating strikes, eg taking one day off a week) the government legislated a pay drop and took the profits and spent it on pro tar, I mean oil ads. Every time you see an ad for the keystone pipeline, it's us Canadian tax payers paying as the oil industry is so poor from all the bonuses they have to give to management that they can't afford much else.
The official position of our government is that all resources have to be
Amazon (Score:2)
They heard about Amazon's autonomous drone delivery and thought they'd quit while they were ahead.
Depressing (Score:2)
It's really easy to imagine just going to a community box if you are an able bodied person with a vehicle but if you're elderly or otherwise have mobility issues ... well let's just say with the lengthy winters and poor snow clearing I foresee two outcomes:
-People not picking up mail for months at a time
-Old people breakin' hips
Ugh...
ePost (Score:4, Interesting)
Canada Post already has something called ePost [epost.ca], which makes most regular postal mail obsolete now. It sounds to me like they're helping to put traditional postal mail out of business anyway.
I'd like to have no mailbox altogether. The notion that I have a "postal" address (which everybody wants for some reason) that a human being drives a car to so they can fill it with unwanted matter printed on processed dead trees is completely ridiculous. Give me ePost for bills and a local post office for packages and I'm good.
What's your address? 127.0.0.1. Same as yours.
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Give me ePost for bills and a local post office for packages and I'm good.
So how do you get your Christmas cards?
Bah humbug (Score:2)
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Waste of a stamp (Score:2)
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The problem with ePost is that my credit card can also be used to simplify and automate bill payments.
This kills on-line businesses (Score:2)
On-line ordering depends on cheap physical-world delivery, and this will drive them out of business.
If they cut off mail, we'll either be reduced to post-boxes or parcel delivery. Boxes don't work for parcels, even in apartment buildings, where they used heavily. Parcel delivery has the same problem with boxes: everyone ends up getting a postcard and schlepping off to the local pickup point because the darned boxes aren't big enough to hold the parcel. And big boxes are unaffordable!
Parcel delivery, on
Re:This kills on-line businesses (Score:4, Informative)
Boxes don't work for parcels, even in apartment buildings, where they used heavily. Parcel delivery has the same problem with boxes: everyone ends up getting a postcard and schlepping off to the local pickup point because the darned boxes aren't big enough to hold the parcel. And big boxes are unaffordable!
Canada Post thought of that years ago. The community mailboxes have sizable parcel compartments (usually two, one "C" size (13.5x30.5x35cm) and one "D" size (30.5x30.5x35cm) for every 18 normal "B" size (13.5x12.5x35cm) mailboxes) built into them. If you have a parcel, they stick it in the parcel compartment and put the key for it in your own mailbox.
Re:This kills on-line businesses (Score:5, Funny)
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Luckily I have box #1 so it's my package that is in a secure and dry place. Actually I guess yours is also dry and safe at the drug store 15 miles down the road.
UPS computer routing (Score:2)
Parcel guys have to solve the "travelling salesman problem" in their head
I don't know about Canada Post or USPS, but UPS has computers to do that routing [ups.com].
Hey! Listen! (Score:2)
It's quite a pleasant sound up here in Canada, unlike the noise Americans made a short while back.
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Do you guys hear that? That is the sound of Canadians not flipping out and loosing their shit and calling for the end of times due to reduced service.
It's quite a pleasant sound up here in Canada, unlike the noise Americans made a short while back.
Yeah, not to mention other earth-shattering changes like getting rid of the penny, changing from paper to plastic bills, going mostly chip-and-pin for credit cards... all in the last 5 years.
Sure there've been hiccups along the way, but it's unbelievable how resistant Americans are to changes in "the way things are" when it's suggested by government, as if it's some socialist/communist plot or something. There was even bitching about adding colour (barely) to paper currency.
A country without a fucntioning post office (Score:3)
...is not a country.
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Less paper spam? (Score:2)
A marketing dud (Score:2)
In marketing, there are well-known positioning areas:
Non-starters are "the same for the same" and "the same for more", because these give customers no added value to their existing service. However, Canada Post has gone even farther by proposing "less for more", which can only work when there are no other options available. By offering less service, and charging
BRENNAN v. U. S. POSTAL SERVICE (Score:2)
Why is the government delivering our mail anyway. That kind of work is much more efficient in the private sector.
Here's an interesting clip [youtu.be] on the subject.
BRENNAN v. U. S. POSTAL SERVICE , 439 U.S. 1345 (1978) [findlaw.com]
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Why is the government delivering our mail anyway. That kind of work is much more efficient in the private sector.
Because you want to pay $3 to deliver a letter, just wait until they figure out they can charge you a $0.50 receiving fee at the same time.
Wait. What? (Score:3)
"About 1/3 of Canadian homes currently get mail delivered to their door" WHAT?
I'm an American, and I have always lived in a city or the suburbs. I guess I take to-my-door mail delivery as a basic human right. I thought all first world countries had this.
Wow. my mind is blown.
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Canada Post has been under attack for a couple of (post Thatcher era) decades - part of the overall belief that government shouldn't actually supply essential services. It's now reached the point where postal mail is the last thing you think of when something has to be delivered.
Call me an o
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The difference is newer subdivisions (actually probably 15 years old) have "superboxes" where Canada post deliver the mail to. The other difference is we only get mail Monday-Friday.
If you haven't seen one they look like this: http://www.straight.com/files/styles/blog_main/public/shutterstock_153195602.jpg [straight.com]
You get a key to one of the slots. If they have parcels they put a key in your box to open one of the lar
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A lot of US suburbs have community mailboxes, and many areas have mailboxes on the street (as opposed to through-the-door delivery). When I lived in a community mailbox area, the mail carrier would bring packages or mail that didn't fit into the box to the door; if I had to go to the post office (their slogan: "when you have the time, we're closed") every time that happened, it would suck.
Able-bodied unemployed...yet cuts in delivery? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure why people blindly accept government "trade-offs" like this like well-trained sheep.
On the one hand, we have a large number of able-bodied, sometimes well-educated people unable to find work, and often receiving government checks (for unemployment, etc.) On the other hand, we are announcing that we don't have the manpower to walk packages to doors.
Why can't we say something like, "OK, so you're unemployed, but you're also a high school graduate who can walk at least three miles a day. If you want a check, food stamps, health care, whatever, could you please get off your ass for two hours a day and deliver mail to everyone on these six blocks?"
Canada Post is a joke (Score:2)
Having lived in Germany, the US and now Canada I can say with conviction that the postal service here is rock bottom. May as well close it for good.
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More like 20 years - maybe more. But that only helps your point.
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Yes, I have. It's not a big deal. And besides, most people just drop by the mailboxes on their way home from work, so you don't even need to walk from home.
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1000 letters at 50 cents each fits into the same space on the delivery truck as one package that's 20 bucks to send... so.... yeah.
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several differences, without email, or other electronic delivery options, everything had to be mailed, economies of scale helped tremendously.
also unions, they used to pay a living wage, now a postman makes far more with no education than many highly educated professionals. unions have priced themselves out of the market.
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Rural areas already run on this system, so nothing is going to change for them. If you're on a farm or such, you head to the town/village to get your mail. If you're in the village/town, you walk a block or three to the boxes (or you drop by the boxes on your way home from work) to get your mail
This is just moving everyone else onto this system.
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No,
it is delivered to the end of your driveway, sometimes that is several miles away.
If it was switched to the end of the block that would not be too bad for me at least, that is not too much further than just the end of the driveway anyway.
And if it actually accepted parcels, like one posted commented, that would be way way better.
No one runs on the system you describe, it would be impossible. It wound be literally impossible to expect thousands of people, 10-20 minutes away, to drive into a one lane town,
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Rural areas already run on this system.
Some do, some don't. Beyond a certain date, ALL new construction - even in cities - got community boxes; but older homes got to keep to-the-door delivery.
This basically just removes the grandfather clause, and converts everyone to the same system. I'm not sure how they will save money by buying and installing tens of thousands of corner mail distribution boxes, though.
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I guess this is what they meant by ending 'Urban Home Delivery'. Rural may stay the same (not sure what the distinction will be). But I didn't read this as changing rural delivery. Your mailbox will still be 1 km away at the end of your driveway. (Come on! Miles? In Canada?)
at least canada has health care for all the ACA (Score:2)
at least canada has health care for all the ACA in the usa is a bridge to it and they need to remove jobs from health care
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You at least read the line which states "Canada Post Announces the End of Urban Home Delivery" right?
Did it click in that "Canada post" isn't american?
By the way, I'm pretty sure that Canada is larger then any of the Euro countries and that might be factored into the price of stamps.
Canada is 9,306 km wide, not sure how you would manage "next day" on that.
Canada is on the same continent as USA (Score:2)
Did it click in that "Canada post" isn't american?
Canada Post is both American and not American because though Canada != USA, they're both on the continent of North America. Though Canada shares some mentality with Europe, it shares other mentality with its southern neighbor.
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The point is not Canada surface, it is only twice the surface of EU. What makes door delivery expensive is that Canada population is much more sparse the in Europe.
Anyway, this is a sad regression. There was a time where western nations were able to do things for the public good, without whining everyday about the costs.
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Our health care system is great. If I had to choose between a well-run publicly-funded healthcare system or a junkmail delivery service... well, I know which one I'd pick.
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Our health care system is great.
That's what she said... before she left for the big city.