Your opinions please. Elderly 70 and over. Paper Bills and Paper Financial Statements | Your stories | Discussion forum

No, I do not believe it should be mandatory that all bills and financial statements be made available in paper form by snail mail. Most of the world has already moved on from such ancient forms of communication. Plus we all know Canada Post is on its way out as we know it, never mind being on strike every 3 years or so.

It is my opinion (and some experience) that most elderly, who are least tech/online savvy, also have the fewest accounts to keep track of. There is no reason why someone such as an adult son or daughter cannot set up that elderly senior with email notification of bills, and have bill payments automatically debited from their bank account. It then only takes monthly monitoring, and downloading if desired, of such PDFs.

I do not know of anyone in my circle of friends and extended family under 80 who is not tech savvy enough to get email notifications of bills and financial statements, nor how to download them or at least look at them online.

The cohort that is not yet online capable, mostly over 80 or 85, is dropping off by 10% per year and/or will cease living on their own within the next 10 years... at which time, they will have even less 'accounts' to deal with.

I still like paper but.......................I also still like interacting with real human beings.

I fear our Post Office will go the way of the dinosaur. I think this will be the last generation of postal workers. I don't like e-Christmas/eBirthday cards. Welcome to the 21st century.

76 years old here and I will second everything AltaRed said because I could not have said it better. I was doing online trading on my GLIS account using MicroMax with my 2400 BPS dialup modem via DataPac before the internet was even a thing, so you could say I am "tech savvy". I manage four PCs in our house; two running Windows 10, one Windows 11 and my old Lenovo T420 on which I installed Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop. I have no use for any paper documents whatsoever. I want to have everything online and in pdf files which I can archive on my PC, in the cloud and on offline HDD storage. I must admit that I may not be the most representative example of a senior because I worked in IT with corporate computers for many years before PCs were even invented. As a result, I was an early adopter of home computers, getting my first XT machine with a 20 MB HDD running DOS around 1990. To characterize anyone over 70 as a doddering incompetent, fearful of any new technology is an insult to us.
Canada Post should be privatized like Germany has done

Let me address some of your points, for the purpose of discussion/devil's advocate rather than argument....

Why let a statement (assuming you mean a bill) sit on your desk? Either have bills set up on pre-authorized credi or debit, or schedule a Bill Payment as soon as received?

How can downloading and filing an electronic PDF in My Documents folder be more difficult than managing paper files, never mind storing, shredding and getting rid of paper on an ongoing basis? No need for elaborate backups. Cloud backup from the likes of Dropbox and/or One Drive can be automatic. Both are 'protected' from malware and encrypted.

Electronic PDFs can be kept forever. They take minuscule data storage space. I have some electronic PDF records going back 20 years (or more) if it is important to keep them for select legal/financial purposes, e.g. Trade Confirmations of transactions for CRA Cost Basis purposes. Most items can be purged on an ongoing basis with one press of the Delete button.

Paper is the least secure form of record keeping on this planet. Subject to theft, fire, rot and rodents.

Any paper ones that I still get, and cannot force them into electronic PDF form, get scanned on my scanner into PDF form and the paper ones shredded on an ongoing, or at least annual, basis.

Canada Post letter mail

2006 (peak) 5.5 billion pieces
2023 2.2 billion pieces
2024 2.0 billion pieces
2025 - Perhaps 1.6-1.8 billion given the Nov/Dec 2024 strike and the latest strike. The conversion rate has no doubt accelerated.

2035 - Likely well under 1 billion given demographic changes alone. Less than half of those aged 80+ today will still be alive.

The time for current holdouts, especially aged 85 or less, to get on board electronically while they still have sufficient mental capacity to do so, is now.

"Canada Post should be privatized" Agree ..... sick of the continual strikes.

I wish liquor stores were privatized as well. So silly. The employees working at private liquor stores here in B.C. get paid less and do more. Basically two jobs at the liquor stores....stock shelves and be on the cash register. Oh well, as Dean says,
"That's my two pennies"

Canada Post is already privatized, as a Crown Corporation.

I agree with much of what ertyu says. I want things to come to me and not require remembering and chasing down. I don't want to have to be on line every day. Electronic documents, unless using advance cryptography nobody is really using yet, can be changed - and one's own copies aren't canon anyway. Corporations won't keep records long enough (ever try to track anything from Teleus? Not after three months!) and will refuse to allow access when it suits them. (Courts in Canada are jammed with people trying to get access to bank records.)

I want my records to come from the source and be retained my myself.

AltaRed said
I am not sure what the angst about digital is really all about. An objection to change? I always get an email telling me when a bill or a statement is available and I can pick a day and time of my choosing to 'go get it/them'. If I forget to do so or am away for weeks at a time, nothing goes off the rails. The bill gets automatically paid anyway (pre-authorized debit or credit). Why not use what seems to be the most convenient and simplest of methodologies?  

That's one other thing I forgot to mention. I don't consistently get all notifications for all electronics documents, some are never delivered, some get missed once in a while. I need to set reminders to download documents and to make payments for those that aren't automated.

If I remember correctly, banks can terminate relation with any customer for any reason without disclosing that reason. Please correct me, if I'm wrong.

If government make it mandatory to mail, at no cost, all financial statements for those that are 70 or older, banks can terminate relations with them.

RetirEd said
Canada Post is already privatized, as a Crown Corporation.

I agree with much of what ertyu says. I want things to come to me and not require remembering and chasing down. I don't want to have to be on line every day. Electronic documents, unless using advance cryptography nobody is really using yet, can be changed - and one's own copies aren't canon anyway. Corporations won't keep records long enough (ever try to track anything from Teleus? Not after three months!) and will refuse to allow access when it suits them. (Courts in Canada are jammed with people trying to get access to bank records.)

I want my records to come from the source and be retained my myself.  

Err, no, Canada Post is not privatized. If it were, it could be legally insolvent and forced into bankruptcy, but its creditors cannot do that. Its structure is a Crown corporation, rather than a federal agency. Arguably, in addition to significant cost cuts and restructuring operationally, it needs a new structure, as a federal agency, with a mix of operating earnings and set level of annual government subsidy (like other federal government departments and agencies). We don't expect the CRA to generate an annual profit; we shouldn't expect the same of Canada Post.

Cheers,
Doug