Thank you.
We are a non-profit, non-partisan organization, and our mission is to look after the financial security and health care of Canadians as we age. I'm here not so much to speak about Canada Post, but to talk about why door-to-door mail delivery is an essential service in Canada.
When we look at services that our governments provide, whether it's police services, or firefighters, or the provision of highways, we don't ask that those break even. We recognize that those are essential costs to society, and I put it to you that mail delivery, for our constituents, falls in the same category.
A 2009 report from Statistics Canada showed that only 21% of individuals 75 and over were on the Internet, so this idea of phasing out physical mail delivery and instead having everyone go online is not workable for our constituents. That was seven years ago. People are going online more all the time, but even at that time, only 45% of 65-year-olds to 75-year-olds were using the Internet.
Though our members are perhaps more Internet-savvy than others and 70% of our members use the Internet, half of those only use it for Skype. There is a widespread fear among our members about things like identity theft, so they're concerned about using the Internet for their banking. I have to say that some of those fears are valid. We have seen identity and data breaches.
As well, many of our members are unable to handle the physical hardship of going to a community mailbox. We surveyed our members, and almost one in five, or 18%, said that the elimination of door-to-door delivery poses a hardship for them. When we think about what we're doing to seniors, to our elders, we are asking them to make these treks not on a nice fall day like today but in the middle of snow and ice, where they are at risk of a fall and, potentially, a very severe health incident.
If they are unable to make that trek to the mailboxes, they may be relying on others—for example, to pick up a pension cheque or some other government funds—which then puts them at risk of elder abuse. We know that one in 10 seniors over the age of 65 experiences some form of elder abuse, so we're really putting them at risk and, also, I believe, at risk of vandalism when they use community mailboxes. They are simply a target for somebody to go after.
We certainly believe there should be some form of mail delivery. CARP recognizes that there are financial realities and that we're not operating in a fiscal utopia here, so we're prepared to accept some type of cuts in services, but I think that as a minimum, one-day-a-week mail delivery needs to be sustained.
I'd also like to make the point that the community mailboxes we're seeing are not only a risk to our seniors, both as opportunities for potential physical or mental abuse as a result of using them, but they're also a tremendous eyesore in the community. I'll pass around an image for you. It's one of a whole selection of images that I could have pulled off the Internet showing the litter around these community mailboxes. That is not what we want to see in our communities and areas where we live.
We strongly call on the committee to immediately eliminate community mailboxes and restore at least once-a-week mail delivery services.