Osoyoos’s Windsor Kallenberger drops a letter into one of the red mailboxes in front of Osoyoos’s Canada Post outlet. Canada Post has recently announced plans to ship weekend local-to-local mail to Vancouver to be sorted, prior to its return for Osoyoos delivery. Photo by Laurena Weninger - Click on picture for larger image
OSOYOOS TIMES-May 19, 2010
By Laurena Weninger – Osoyoos Times
Starting late this summer, if you drop a letter into a mail box in Osoyoos that is addressed to another address in Osoyoos, that letter will get to go on a bit of a journey before it gets to its final destination.
“Customers can still post their mail items on a Friday that are destined within their local trading area and they’ll still be ready for delivery on Monday,” said Colleen Frick, a director of communication for Canada Post Corporation.
“For Canada Post, it’s about the company’s overall efficiency and making the most out of mechanized equipment that is not being used to capacity here in Vancouver. Remember that the majority of Friday’s posted mail that’s collected in Osoyoos is already destined for receiving addresses in Vancouver and points east.”
There are two mailboxes at the Canada Post Office in Osoyoos.
One is for local-to-local mail, and the other is for mail that is destined to go outside the community.
Currently, the local mail is sorted at the Osoyoos Post Office and then delivered.
The majority of mail dropped off here, Frick said, is destined for other locations.
When the sorting location change comes into effect, all local-to-local mail will still be processed in Osoyoos from Monday through Thursday.
But on Friday, mail from both boxes will be sent to a mechanized sorting plant in Vancouver and then local mail will be returned to Osoyoos.
“Customer service will not be compromised in the communities undergoing this change,” Frick said. “The change should be invisible to our customers.”
The mail will travel via existing highway shuttles, said Frick, meaning there will be no additional transports added to accommodate this change and there should be no added risk of delayed services due to bad weather on the roads.
“Mail travels in and out of these communities on a regular basis – the Friday local-to-local mail will be added to an outgoing shuttle already in place and then brought back to the community on an incoming shuttle also already in place,” said Frick.
Currently, local-to-local mail is manually sorted on weekends through supplementary hours such as overtime and part-time extended hours, explained Frick, and those extra hours will be adjusted, though the change in sorting location won’t affect collective agreements between Canada Post and its employees or the number of staff in Canada Post’s various rural offices.
B.C. Southern Interior MP Alex Atamanenko is speaking out against the changes.
“This is absolute nonsense,” he said in a letter to the federal minister of state. “The idea of sending a letter over 600 kilometres for processing and then back the same distance prior to delivery defies all logic.”
“In this riding, the result will be that some letters will travel over 1,200 kilometres, round trip, for processing in Vancouver on the weekends and back again prior to delivery on Monday.”
In Atamanenko’s view, trucking locally addressed letters mailed on Fridays from Osoyoos and other communities such as Castlegar, Trail, Nelson, Grand Forks and Oliver to Vancouver and back makes no sense, in part because it introduces unnecessary risks in the delivery of local mail.
The possibility of delays, he said, especially during the winter when poor road conditions often prevail, has the potential to reduce both the level of service and the level of public trust in Canada Post.
He also said he is concerned about the Crown corporation’s gradual reduction in hours of work in rural communities.
“Canada Post has admitted that part-time and overtime hours will be reduced in our area,” Atamanenko said. “Combined with the downturn in the forestry sector, further loss of jobs and hours worked make it increasingly difficult for families to stay in rural communities.”
The changes are scheduled to take effect in Osoyoos and other local communities on Sept. 1.
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