A dumb question I should already know the answer too, having been here for a while.
If I get the occasional bit of post for a previous occupant of my house, can I just put it back in the mailbox unopened with a 'please forward to:' instruction on it, as I could in the UK?

I live in a rental property so this happens every few weeks as there have been quite a few previous occupants. Most live in the same city as me (London).

Thanks
Jon

Yes, I've done it a few times.

Damn if I started caring about previous tenants' posts then I would be able do nothing all day apart from just marking letters. Cuz I live in an apartment building which surely is a couple of decades old so you can imagine how many people lived in my apartment before me and how much post I get for them (including debt collection notices).

we kept getting unpaid parking ticket notices for a couple of years. Then one evening a debt collector turned up at the door. I explained very politely that we weren't the people on the notices and in fact we had owned the house for some time. The previous tenants were long gone. Finally the post stopped so I can only assume the previous occupiers were tracked down.

In the UK we used to receive royalty cheques from the PRS for the previous owners who had both been TV actors - mainly the Avengers if I recall. We had no forwarding address so just had to keep posting them back. Whatever we told the PRS they still kept sending the bloody things!

Is there a legal obligation to forward mail to the previous occupant or mark it "return to sender" and put it back in the post?

The other option is just to put it in the bin...........

Thanks Auld Yin.

Not sure about legal obligations - I think in the UK you actually might be on dodgy ground just binning stuff as technically you don't have the right to interfere with HM's mail. Just something I read on some website I think though so no idea if true, and no idea what the Canadian situation is.