Postal codes in Canada

Canada Post provides a postal code look-up tool on its website[3] and via its mobile application,[4] and sells hard-copy directories and CD-ROMs.

[8] By the early 1960s, other cities in Canada had been divided into postal zones, including Quebec, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver as well as Toronto and Montreal.

Consequently, it became progressively more difficult for employees who handsorted mail to memorize and keep track of all the individual letter-carrier routes within each city.

A report tabled in the House of Commons in 1969 dealt with the expected impact of "environmental change" on the Post Office operations over the following 25 years.

A key recommendation was the "establishment of a task force to determine the nature of the automation and mechanization the Post Office should adopt, which might include design of a postal code".

[14][15] In December 1969, Communications Minister Eric Kierans announced that a six-character postal code would be introduced, superseding the three-digit zone system.

[20] The introduction of such a code system allowed Canada Post to easily speed up and simplify the flow of mail in the country, with sorting machines being able to handle 26,640 objects an hour.

[22] The unions ended up staging job action and public information campaigns, with the message that they did not want people or businesses to use postal codes on their mail.

[23] The union declared 20 March 1975 to be National "Boycott the Postal Code" Day, also demanding a reduction in the work week from 40 to 30 hours.

"[28]The advertisement was denounced as "sexist garbage" in the House of Commons by NDP MP John Rodriguez, prompting an apology from Postmaster General Bryce Mackasey.

[29] The first letter of an FSA code denotes a particular "postal district", which, outside Quebec and Ontario, corresponds to an entire province or territory.

The second letter represents a specific rural region, an entire medium-sized city, or a section of a major metropolitan area.

By 2011, Santa's mail was being handled with the assistance of 11,000 volunteers, mostly current or former postal workers,[36] at multiple locations across Canada,[37][38] devoting an average of 21 hours each to this seasonal task.

Approximately 1,000,000 letters are addressed to Santa Claus each Christmas, including some originating outside Canada, and all of them are answered in the same language in which they are written.

In 2013, Santa was dragged into the ongoing Arctic sovereignty debate to support Canadian territorial claims extending to the North Pole.

During a parliamentary debate, Conservative MP Paul Calandra accused the opposition Liberal Party of "not think[ing] that the North Pole or Santa Claus [is] in Canada".

[45] Postal codes can be correlated with databased information from censuses or health registries to create a geographic profile of an area's population.

Provincial and federal government websites offer an online "look-up" feature based on postal codes.