To the Editor,
For most people, livery stables and blacksmiths became less important to the function of daily life after automobiles replaced horses as the predominant choice for personal travel.
Currently, door-to-door mail delivery by letter carriers is becoming less relevant to a population that is increasing its acceptance and use of electronic transmission of documents.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), while making demands for guarantees by the employer of job security for its members, fails to recognize they cannot stop the increasing public adoption of electronic document transmission, and the resulting decrease in volume of paper documents.
Until this latest skirmish between Canada Post and CUPW, I had opted to accept delivery of paper copies of all utility bills, government cheques and bank documents by letter carrier. I rather enjoyed receiving my mail this way.
However, faced with potential disruption and having a choice available, I spent about an hour during the weekend to change everything over to electronic delivery, and to set up facilities through my bank permitting online payment of bills.
My choice to go electronic was not made because of poor service from letter carriers.
But letter carriers are bound to have an increasingly difficult task competing with electronic delivery in terms of reliability, convenience, speed and expense.
Door-to-door delivery by letter carriers won’t disappear overnight, but the trend toward redundancy is visible to anyone bothering to notice. And CUPW needs to notice, as I’m likely not the only Canadian who recently switched from receiving documents and sending payments by letter carrier to sending and receiving them electronically.
Roland Smith,
Port Alberni