Dewar scolds Canada Post for community mailbox plan
By Alex Robinson
Ottawa East News, Mar 20, 2015
Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar is fighting back against a Canada Post program to install community mailboxes.
Facing massive revenue shortfalls, Canada Post plans to install clustered mailboxes for residents across the country, ending door-to-door service by 2019. Dewar called for a moratorium on March 18 to any more being installed, claiming there has not been enough community consultation on the plan.
“It seems like a simple idea to actually ask people, but unfortunately Canada Post did not consult my constituents,” he said outside a home on Normandy Crescent, which has been designated for a community mailbox.
The Ottawa Centre MP conducted his own flyer blitz to reach out to residents to get feedback on the program. Of the 400 responses he received, he said only three were in favour of having community mailboxes.
“We need to consult people, and that hasn’t happened,” Dewar said.
Jon Hamilton, a spokesman for Canada Post, said the crown corporation has conducted extensive consultations in the areas where it has started the process, adding that more than 260,000 residents nationwide have responded to a survey about clustered mailboxes.
Hamilton said the process to install the mailboxes includes a 10-month period of drawing up plans for the city and consulting residents.
“It’s an extensive process,” he said.
In the consultation process, Canada Post may be open to changing the location of a proposed community mailbox and it has done so in 25 per cent of instances so far, Hamilton said.
“We’re consulting extensively through surveys, door knocking and mail,” he said.
Carleton Heights residents Peter and Wendy McClintock, claimed they received no such survey. The couple came home in early March one day to find a rendering of a community mailbox that had been proposed for their property.
“I asked why it couldn’t be put in the community centre, where there is about a three-block radius, great parking and open spaces,” Wendy McClintock said. “They said no. It was set here and that was it.”
The McClintock’s said they are worried the mailbox might bring an increase in traffic around the house, resulting in a loss of privacy. They are also concerned about the value of their property going down.
Some senior residents have expressed concern about being able to reach a community mailbox.
“Somewhere down the road, it’s going to be a lot harder for me to get to a mailbox and I certainly don’t want to be in a situation where I have to move because I can’t get mail anymore,” said Don Stewart, of the Westboro Beach Community Association.
Canada Post said they have a plan in place to help the elderly get their mail, which includes distributing extra keys for caregivers to pick up mail to be delivered once a week.
This did not go far enough for Dewar.
“There is no real plan,” he said. “It’s ad hoc. It’s making things up and at the end of the day, there’s one thing we want from Canada Post –that’s to deliver the mail to people.”
Around 8,000 residents in Kanata were transferred to the community mailbox program last year and Canada Post expects to convert 50,000 residents in Ottawa in 2015. City councils in a number of large municipalities, including Toronto and Montreal, have passed resolutions opposing the installment of community mailboxes. Ottawa’s city council has yet to follow suit.
http://www.ottawacommunitynews.com/news-...-canada-post-for-community-mailbox-plan/
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