Canada's postal service will phase out door-to-door delivery over the next five years. Citing the rise of digital communications and a projected loss of CAD$1 billion by 2020, Canada Post today outlined a series of actions that it would take to streamline its organization and reduce losses. In particular, cutting out direct to-door delivery — which is currently only used to service one-third of Canadian households — will "provide significant savings," Canada Post says. Mail will still be delivered to community, grouped, lobby, and rural mailboxes, which make up how the remaining two-thirds of Canadian households receive their mail.

Canada Post also intends to reduce its workforce by between 6,000 and 8,000 workers. It says that most of this reduction will occur through attrition, as it projects that 15,000 employees will be retiring over the next five years. Canada Post will also begin to open more franchised retail outlets and will increase the price of stamps next year. Altogether, it projects that the changes will account for an annual gain of between CAD$700 million to CAD$900 million.

"As more people began to communicate and manage their household bills online, lettermail volumes declined sharply," Canada Post writes in a press release, explaining how mail delivery is changing. "Yet as more people shopped online, parcel volumes shot up ... With this plan, Canada Post will be in a better position to be the essential enabler of remote trade and commerce."

Households will begin to lose to-door delivery under the new plan beginning in the second half of 2014. Those households will be converted to community mailboxes, which Canada Post says include small, locked compartments for letters as well as larger, locked compartments for packages. The conversion will occur nationwide over five years, but the order of locations hasn't been decided yet. Canada Post says that the plan will allow it to become financially stable by 2019, allowing it to adhere to its mandate of not becoming a burden on taxpayers.