Canada Post is considering reducing its post offices’ weekday hours in Lynn Lake and Leaf Rapids, according to a July 6 letter from Ray Karlson, Canada Post’s Dauphin-based local area manager for Manitoba’s west and north.
“A careful review has determined that we have a very small number of local customers between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday,” said a letter to Lynn Lake Mayor James Lindsay. “Canada Post is therefore considering reducing the hours of operation on weekdays. We will be holding discussions with the local representative of our employees’ association, the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association (CPAA), and will communicate the results with you once these discussions have occurred.”
Churchill NDP MP Niki Ashton, whose riding includes the two communities, sent a letter to Karlson protesting the potential reductions.
“"As MP for Churchill, I join local government officials and residents in opposing your plan to reduce office hours,” Ashton said, arguing that reduction of hours contravenes the spirit of a moratorium on the closure of rural post offices. “Northern and rural Canadians deserve better from Canada Post."
Canada Post informed customers in Thompson and Flin Flon in July that door-to-door mail delivery in their communities would be phased out beginning in 2016.
“Today, we informed municipal officials as well as affected employees that neighbourhoods in Thompson – postal code starting with R8N – will be converted from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes in 2016,” said John Caines of Canada Posts’ media relations department in a July 20 email to the Thompson Citizen. “This represents 3,394 addresses.”
The announcement of the scheduled end to door-to-door mail delivery in Thompson and Flin Flon came less than a week after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) began a cross-country road trip to protest cuts to postal services and urge voters to vote the Conservatives out of power in the fall election.
CUPW national president Mike Palecek told the Citizen that the conversion to a community mailbox system is completely unnecessary, since Canada Post is a profitable Crown corporation that made $200 million last year and doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime.
