The CCD is a national organization of persons with disabilities working for an accessible and inclusive Canada. Canadians with disabilities are everyone: moms, dads, students, workers, members of Parliament, job seekers, retirees. There are probably people with disabilities in your family and it is likely that, at some point in your life, you too will experience a disability.
In 2012 about 3.8 million people, or 13.7% of Canadians aged 15 and older, reported being limited in their daily activities because of a disability. The results come from the 2012 Canadian Survey on Disability.
The presence of disability increases steadily with age. One in ten working-aged Canadians aged 15 to 64 reported having a disability in 2012 compared with just over one-third of Canadian seniors aged 65 and older. Women, at 14.9%, have a higher prevalence of disability than men, at 12.5%.
I will give you a little bit about statistics and why seniors don't travel. For seniors with disabilities who do not travel locally, 56% consider themselves house-bound. Seniors who are house-bound list health problems as the number one reason, 48%. Beside health problems, the main reason why seniors with disabilities are house-bound differs for each age group. Older seniors are more likely to not want to go out, 44%, and need assistance, 37%, than younger seniors who are more likely to feel that transportation is not available, 19%. Older Canadians, however, are more likely not to go out because they have no companion, 28%. This information is shown in figure 4.9—we have some graphs—making an accessibility service less accessible.
CCD is concerned that the proposal to end door-to-door service will make a service that is currently accessible less accessible to persons with disabilities.
When Canada ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it made a commitment not to do anything that would reduce existing accessibility services. This is in article 4 of the CRPD.
From learning from the living experience of persons with disabilities, we believe that Canada Post's proposal to end door-to-door services will adversely impact Canadians with disabilities. Communal mailbox delivery is inaccessible to those with mobility or vision impairments and will make people with disabilities more dependent on family and friends to pick up their mail for them.
The experience of those in our network who have experience with existing communal mailbox service highlights the problems with this model of service delivery. CCD's chairman, Tony Dolan, a wheelchair user, lives in an area of Canada where Canada Post has implemented the communal service model. He reports that the service is inaccessible to him and he must rely on his spouse to get his mail. Not everyone with a disability lives with another person who is able to retrieve their mail.
I would like to identify a few of the barriers. The communal mailbox will be a barrier for many Canadians with disabilities. Due to weather and snow conditions, sidewalks can become impassable for persons who use wheelchairs and other mobility aids. For persons whose disability causes fatigue, a trip to the community mailbox can be an additional task that they have to juggle in their daily routine.
Due to poverty, some people with disabilities live in unsafe neighbourhoods as housing costs are lower. They may feel vulnerable when retrieving their mail from the mailbox. Due to other constraints, some people will have to rely on friends, neighbours, and volunteers from charitable agencies for help with their mail retrieval. This lessens the independence of persons with disabilities.
Having other people pick up their mail reduces an individual's privacy. This could be particularly worrisome for women with disabilities living in abusive situations. They may not want their abuser having access to personal documents that come in the mail, such as bank statements.