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Thursday, December 12, 2013

December 12, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, December 12, 2013

Canada Post to phase out urban home mail delivery

Canada Post is phasing out door-to-door delivery of regular mail to urban residents and increasing the cost of stamps in a major move to try to reduce significant, regular losses.

The Crown corporation announced its plans Wednesday, saying urban home delivery will be phased out over the next five years.

Starting March 31, the cost of a stamp will increase to 85 cents each if bought in a pack, up from 63 cents. Individual stamps will cost a dollar.
Canada Post said that over the next five years, it will eliminate 6,000 to 8,000 positions, but it expects 15,000 workers will leave the company or retire within that period.

“With the increasing use of digital communication and the historic decline of letter mail volumes, Canada Post has begun to post significant financial losses,” the corporation said in a news release.
“If left unchecked, continued losses would soon jeopardize its financial self-sufficiency and become a significant burden on taxpayers and customers.”

The first communities that will switch to community mailboxes will be announced in the second half of 2014, according to the release.

Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said in September the idea of cutting door-to-door delivery in urban areas was worth considering in the face of $104 million in losses in the second quarter.

Her office issued a news release Wednesday saying she looks forward to seeing progress because of this plan.

“The Government of Canada supports Canada Post in its efforts to fulfil its mandate of operating on a self-sustaining financial basis in order to protect taxpayers, while modernizing its business and aligning postal services with the choices of Canadians,” she said in the release.
Raitt’s office added that mail volumes have dropped almost 25 per cent per household in the last five years.

NDP MP Peter Julian accused the Conservative government of being disrespectful by making the announcement the day after Parliament took its annual Christmas break. (Source: CBC News)

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

December 3, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Amazon PrimeAir drone deliveries coming soon, CEO Jeff Bezos says

Amazon.com Inc. is testing drones that it hopes will soon deliver packages to customers, company CEO Jeff Bezos says.

In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Bezos said the small, unmanned aircraft could deliver packages that weigh up to 2.3 kilograms to homes or about 86 per cent of the items the company currently delivers. The drones could fly within 16 kilometres of the company’s distribution centres, covering a significant portion of the population in urban areas.

The aim would be half-hour delivery. The company hopes to deploy the drones within five years.

A video from the Seattle-based company showed a drone labelled “Amazon PrimeAir” taking a package from a distribution centre to a customer’s front yard.

“In urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the population,” Bezos said. “It won’t work for everything — we’re not going to deliver kayaks or table saws this way. These are electric motors, so this is all electric. It’s very green. It’s better than driving trucks around.”

The drones would be autonomous, flying to programmed GPS co-ordinates.

“The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say — look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighbourhood.”
Bezos said the drones couldn’t be put in place until 2015 because it would take that long to work out regulations with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. He said he optimistically hopes the drones could be delivering packages in four or five years.

“It will work and it will happen and it’s going to be a lot of fun,” he said.
The FAA currently forbids the use of commercial drones. That is expected to change in 2015 when its Drones Act, which was passed last year, will require commercial jets and drones to share the same air space. (Source: CBC News)