MEDIA ADVISORY
June 15, 2015
CARP to attend East York Council meeting to call for a stop to community mailboxes in Toronto’s neighbourhoods: Tuesday June 16 3:00 PM
Toronto, ON: CARP will appear before Toronto’s East York Community Council to call on councillors to stop Canada Post’s plans to end home delivery and erect community mailboxes.
CARP has been invited to present at:
Toronto`s East York Community Council meeting [chair: Mike Layton]
City Hall, Committee Room 1
100 Queen St. W, Toronto
Tuesday June 16, 2015 at 3:15 pm
in attendance for CARP:
Anthony Quinn CARP’s Director of Community Development
Adina Lebo Chair of CARP’s Toronto-Downtown Chapter
CARP will call on the Council to take responsibility to ensure that residents’ concerns are addressed as Canada Post builds community mailboxes on city-owned land.
CARP members are concerned about the effect the changes would have on the well-being and independence of older Canadians and people with disabilities and mobility challenges. Door-to-door mail delivery is essential for many Canadians and provides added value, especially to home-bound individuals, to whom the letter carrier may be the only point of human contact for some days. Canada Post’s proposal to offer exemptions to people who reveal their medical conditions and history is no solution at all.
“CARP members in Toronto, approximately 40,000 members, want Toronto’s Mayor and Councillors to make it their priority to stop community mailboxes. They hear of mayors in other cities, like Hamilton and Montreal, demanding greater local input and pushing for a moratorium on the community mailbox plan, and they expect to see the same leadership and representation from their own local elected representatives.” Susan Eng, VP of Advocacy
CARP has opposed from the start Canada Post’s cessation of home mail delivery. CARP met with Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra in January 2014, shortly after the end of door-to-door mail delivery was announced. CARP expressed concerns over how the change will be detrimental to older Canadians and people with disabilities and mobility challenges. Mr. Chopra wrote a letter to CARP members in response, offering no solutions and stating that the decision will not be reversed.
Nearly half of CARP members said that they or someone they know will suffer hardship as a result of Canada
Post’s decision to end door-to-door delivery, according to the CARP PollTM.
CARP sent an open letter to all GTA Mayors and City Councillors recently, calling on them to prevent community mailboxes from replacing door-to-door home delivery.
CARP is a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization committed to advocating for a New Vision of Aging for Canada, social change that will bring financial security, equitable access to health care and freedom from discrimination. CARP seeks to ensure that the marketplace serves the needs and expectations of our generation and provides value-added benefits, products and services to our members. Through our network of chapters across Canada, CARP is dedicated to building a sense of community and shared values among our members in support of CARP’s mission.
For further information, please contact:
Sarah Park 416.607.2471
Director, Communications
[email protected]
Michael Nicin 416.607.2479
Director of Policy
[email protected]
Anna Sotnykova 416.607.2475
Media & Communications Coordinator
[email protected]
CARP, A New Vision of Aging for Canada
or visit our website: www.carp.ca
Follow @CARPAdvocacy on Twitter: Click here and add us!
