How to reduce advertising mail

Unaddressed advertising mail delivered by Canada Post, such as flyers, menus, coupons, catalogues and offers, is sent by businesses to Canadians residing within a specific neighbourhood, region or across the country.

To stop receiving unaddressed mail simply put a note on your mailbox stating that you do not wish to receive it. Place the note where your delivery agent can see it, or on the inside lip of your community mailbox, group mailbox or postal box. You'll continue to receive crucial items such as community newspapers, government mailings, and addressed advertising mail.

Addressed advertising mail is used by businesses to advertise to an address, with or without a name. Addressed advertising mail delivered by Canada Post may use data and lists provided by Canada Post or it may use lists from specific businesses, charities or third-party mailing lists.

Please note that we're legally required to deliver any addressed mail to the address on the envelope, including addressed advertising materials. However, you can take steps to reduce the amount of advertising materials addressed to you.

Here is what you can do:

1. Remove your name from the Canada Post name and address database To stop receiving addressed advertising mail that uses Canada Post mailing lists, you can complete and submit our online form or phone us at 1-800-267-1177
2. Remove your name from other organizations’ mailing lists

   • Notify the individual organizations that you no longer wish to receive advertising mail from and ask to be removed from their lists.
   • Ask the Canadian Marketing Association and/or the Direct Marketing Association (for mail from organizations in the United States) to remove your name and address from their mailing lists. Businesses who belong to these organizations are committed to ensuring that they do not mail consumers who have asked to not be on these lists.

We help businesses send their customers promotional offers through the mail by providing address lists that may contain consumer and business names. These lists start with our postal code based address information and are expanded with information from publicly available telephone directories and consent-based surveys. We also use statistical postal code level data provided by government departments and/or private-sector data aggregators. These sources do not give us access to any personally identifiable information. This information is made available to businesses to geographically target their advertising mail.