Canada Post beginning work to move from door-to-door mail delivery to community mailboxes

Mark Binay, co-owner of the Canada Post office in Chinatown in Vancouver, serves a customer at his shop on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Rich Lam

OTTAWA — Canada Post is starting preliminary work to convert addresses that receive door-to-door mail to community mailboxes and phase out some post offices.

The Crown corporation says the process is beginning after meetings with union officials.

In a news release, Canada Post says it’s converting about four million addresses to community mailboxes and the work is expected to take about five years, with different regions moving to community mailboxes each year.

The corporation says it’s starting discussions with 13 communities across Canada — including Ottawa and Winnipeg — as it prepares to move about 136,000 addresses from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes in late 2026 and early 2027.

Canada Post says it’s also reviewing its retail network in preparation for closures of urban and suburban post offices in areas it says are currently over-served.

The federal government last year ended a decades-long moratorium on rural post office closures, a move that sparked some concern about the future of mail delivery in remote communities that aren’t well served by private couriers.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 16, 2026.

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press