Editing Postal codes in Canada (section)

===Planning===
As the largest Canadian cities grew in the 1950s and 1960s, the volume of mail passing through the country's postal system also grew, to billions of items by the 1950s and tens of billions of items by the mid-1960s. 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. New technology that allowed mail to be delivered faster also contributed to the pressure for these employees to sort the mail properly.

A report [[Table (parliamentary procedure)|tabled]] in the [[House of Commons of Canada|House of Commons]] in 1969 dealt with the expected impact of "environmental change" on the Post Office operations over the following 25&nbsp;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".<ref>
{{cite news
 |title=Technical advances in communications will erode Post Office work, report says
 |page=A3
 |newspaper=[[The Globe and Mail]]
 |date=6 May 1969
 }}
</ref><ref name="history1">
{{cite web
 |url=http://www.civilization.ca/cpm/chrono/ch1971ae.html
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930055242/http://www.civilization.ca/cpm/chrono/ch1971ae.html
 |archive-date=30 September 2007
 |title=A Chronology of Canadian Postal History: The Postal Code (Archived version)
 |author=[[Canadian Postal Museum]]
 |date=16 September 2001
 |access-date=7 January 2007
 }}
</ref><!-- GA – Uncited material cloaked ----- Actual system design was carried out by a retired Canadian Army officer named William JA Groom.{{Fact|date=January 2009}} -->

In December 1969, Communications Minister [[Eric Kierans]] announced that a six-character postal code would be introduced, superseding the three-digit zone system.<ref>{{cite news
 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iaIyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-uwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=886%2C3315014
 |title=Postal coding in '70
 |page=50
 |newspaper=[[Ottawa Citizen|Saturday Citizen]]
 |date=24 December 1969
 }}</ref>
He later tabled a report in February 1970, entitled "A Canadian Public Address Postal Coding System", submitted by the firm of Samson, Belair, Simpson, Riddell Inc.<ref>
{{cite news
 |title=To speed sorting and delivery: Proposed national postal code system for Canada
 |page=5
 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GvgvAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FkkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2957%2C1220661
 |newspaper=[[The Stanstead Journal]]
 |date=26 February 1970
 }}</ref>