Canada Post is rolling out the latest phase of its transition from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes, selecting more than three dozen communities that will undergo the conversion starting next year.
Spanning seven provinces and 37 communities from Halifax to Victoria, the change will see an additional 485,000 addresses move to a more centralized mode of mail delivery.
Those homes come on top of the 136,000 addresses in 13 communities already selected for conversion late this year or in early 2027.
Switching the four million addresses that still enjoy doorstep delivery to community mailboxes within about five years marks a key pillar in Canada Post's plan to overhaul its business model in the face of declining letter mail and mounting financial losses.
Other reforms in the works include weekend parcel delivery and possible post office closures.
Nearly three-quarters of Canadian addresses already get their mail and parcels via some form of centralized delivery such as community mailboxes, apartment lobby boxes or post office boxes, the Crown corporation said.
The provinces included in the latest round of conversions are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.
In Ontario, 158,000 addresses will be impacted in Ajax, Brampton, Hawkesbury, Kitchener, London, Mississauga, Ottawa, and Pickering.
Canada Post cited safety and efficiency as the reason behind the aluminum rectangles now poised to pepper a growing number of regions.
"The move to community mailboxes will increase security by putting nearly all mail and parcels delivered by Canada Post under lock and key. It will also reduce costs, as delivering to the door costs significantly more than to a community mailbox," the Crown corporation said in a release Thursday.
The announcement comes less than two weeks after postal workers approved a tentative agreement that will boost their wages nearly 10 per cent in the first 24 months of the five-year deal.
The green light given by most of the union's 55,000 employees came after more than two years of labour strife. Increased use of community mailboxes, which reduce the need for letter carriers, was among the sticking points.
In December 2024, the federal government asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to step in to quash a month-long strike, and struck an Industrial Inquiry Commission to find a path forward. That probe, led by William Kaplan, made a series of recommendations that were later adopted and rolled out in a suite of sweeping changes to Canada Post's mandate.
Announced in September, the overhaul lifted a moratorium on new community mailboxes, authorizing the mail service to convert the remaining four million addresses that still receive door-to-door delivery. The government also announced an end to the freeze on rural post office closures — some locations are now surrounded by suburban subdivisions — that had been in place since 1994, covering close to 4,000 outlets.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2026.
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