Throughout its history the Canada Post Office has faced substantially the same set of problems but the emphasis has shifted. For instance, technology, which formerly was mainly related to the use of railways and then of automobiles and airplanes, is now concentrated on the problem of sorting mail by electronic means. At one time the Post Office devoted much attention to extending postal services to all parts of Canada, however remote. Now it is increasingly concerned with providing service intensively, that is, with giving door-to-door delivery in suburban areas and in every community of 5,000 or more people. Postal authorities and the general public have always been interested in the relative rates on letters, magazines, advertising circulars, and parcels, as well as in the allied question of a surplus or deficit on the operation of the Post Office as a whole. In the last few years rising wage-rates and rapid growth in the volume of second- and third-class mail have made the matter of pricing for postal services more significant than ever before. This article deals first with the history of the Canada Post Office and then with problems of the postal service which remain unsolved.

Before 1851, all postal services in British North America were ultimately controlled by the Postmaster General in London. Even after the reforms of Rowland Hill, the Postmaster General’s policy for the colonies was to secure a profit which was remitted to Britain. After the colonies assumed control they rapidly increased the number of offices and the milage of postal routes. Internal postage rates, which had averaged 18 cents per half ounce and were graduated for distance, became uniformly 2d. sterling or 5 cents anywhere in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada. The colonists bore the resultant deficits without much complaint.