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In addition to the pension quagmire are the immediate, nuts-and-bolts problems the Liberals were most hoping would go away. Door-to-door mail delivery, the report makes clear, would be ridiculously expensive. Continuing the move to community mailboxes started by the Tories — and halted by the Liberals amid much posturing and bromides — would save $400 million a year. Restoring door-to-door service would cost $1.2 billion.

If Canadians who wanted door-to-door service were to be charged a fee to cover the cost — which is one of several task force proposals — it would be about $124 a year.

Additional savings of $177 million could come from converting 800 rural post offices into franchise outlets. Revenue could be boosted by ending the practice of charging the same price for a stamp, no matter whether the letter is moving across the street or across the country. Daily delivery could also be reduced to every other day.

In an interview with May, task force chairwoman Françoise Bertrand suggested Canadians would be open to changes when they realized the extent of the financial crisis.

“Everyone knows we don’t use mail like we used to, but I really had not realized how fast that decline was happening,” she said.

Well, good luck with that. Maybe Bertrand was out of town when Canadians threw a national hissy fit last year over a plan to replace door-to-door service with more community mailboxes.

Even though two-thirds of the country already picks up its mail at community boxes, the Harper Tories were roundly chewed out for suggesting the remaining one-third could do the same. Seniors staged sit-ins in protest. The mayor of Montreal took a jackhammer to a concrete mailbox pad. The city of Hamilton threatened a legal armageddon over its right to have a postie personally hand over its letters. The New Democrats vowed to protect front-door service or die trying; Trudeau’s Liberals pledged to halt community service in its tracks while it studied the whole future of the post office.