Canada Post to start charging developers for installation of community mailboxes
Posted November 6, 2012 3:24 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Canada Post is hoping to bring in a little extra cash, after deciding to charge developers for installing community mailboxes in new housing subdivisions or commercial developments.
Developers will be charged $200 for each address, starting in January 2013. However, the charges will not apply to new condos or apartments, as developers usually build their own mailboxes and mailrooms according to Canada Post specifications.
Meanwhile, experts say this is coming at a bad time for the housing industry.
“Our new home sales are down significantly because of the deficit reduction budget and uncertainty among the civil service over jobs,” said John Herbert of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders Association, who believes the charge is simply a cash grab.
“I think it’s going to leave a bad taste in [a new homeowner’s] mouth. A lot of them won’t realize that that is going to happen when they are buying a new home, so it will be another nasty surprise,” he added.
However, Canada Post’s Jon Hamilton said the superboxes have been installed since the 1980s at no costs to developers, and going forward, the post office needs to recover some of its costs. It is currently facing a consolidated loss of $327-million per year.
“With mail on the decline [and parcel delivery on the rise] because of e-commerce, we need to do what we have to do to not become a taxpayers of Canada because we don’t get a dime from the Canadian taxpayers today and we want to continue that way,” he said.
Approximately 3.8-million households currently use the community mailbox system, while 5-million households receive door-to-door delivery. At least 150-thousand new addresses are added to Canada Post’s delivery route every year.
Hamilton said municipalities and developers were notified of the change in October, but they maintain they were blindsided.
“In terms of maintenance, snow-clearing, obviously delivery, we’ll still bear all those costs, plus some of the installation costs,” he said.
