Sidney will not have its door-to-door postal service restored, but the rest of the region can rest easy knowing Canada Post will continue to drop letters in household mailboxes after the federal government axed a program to convert household service to community mailboxes.
The program to end door-to-door mail delivery in Canada, initiated by the Harper Conservatives, came to an end Wednesday as part of a Liberal government plan for Canada Post.
The change comes too late for Sidney, which fully implemented community mailboxes in the fall of 2015. That move meant eight postal routes were cancelled, though the workers were redistributed throughout the region and no jobs were lost.
Jessica Dempster, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers Local 850 in Victoria, said that when the Liberals took power in 2015, Canada Post halted the conversion to community mailboxes, which at the time was imminent in Colwood, Langford, View Royal, Vic West and Esquimalt. Conversion in those municipalities would have meant the loss of 20 postal routes.
“It is very disappointing they are not going to restore door-to-door service. We lost that in Sidney and we really hoped we’d get that back,” Dempster said. “But there is other stuff in [the announcement] that is good. The government is pushing Canada Post to expand services, which is a positive thing.”
About 840,000 Canadian households are in the same boat as those in Sidney and will still have to walk down the street for mail.
“We’re not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube,” Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough told a news conference Wednesday at a Canada Post sorting plant in Mississauga, Ont.
“We’re not going to reverse these decisions that were made by the former government, but we are going to guarantee exceptional services to Canadians.”
Because door-to-door delivery will continue, Canada Post won’t realize savings it estimated at $350 million annually from converting the remaining 4.2 million addresses across the country that receive mail at their doorsteps.
A task force will study how to enhance the corporation’s accessibility program for seniors and people with mobility issues who have lost home delivery.
Canada Post will be allowed to make a profit and then re-invest the money to improve services.
The government is encouraging Canada Post to promote its money-order business to people who send money abroad. CUPW had called for a re-introduction of banking services as a way to make money, an idea that has been rejected by Canada Post.
The government wants Canada Post to focus more on its parcel service, since that’s where the money and growth are. Parcel delivery revenues increased by 41 per cent in the third quarter of 2017 compared with the same period the previous year.
The corporation said it made a profit of about $81 million from all of its operations in 2016, down from $99 million in 2015.
