Improving Rural Postal Services
Res #: 8-22M
Number: 8
Year: 2022
Midterm: Yes
Expired: No
Responses Received: Yes
Departments: Canada Post
WHEREAS Canada Post has changed their policy regarding outgoing mail. All letter mail is required to be sent to the main processing center in Regina.
WHEREAS Canada Post has eliminated the way wallet service which allowed the letter mail to be sent down the mail line to a neighboring town. This has caused the average time for letter mail to arrive at its destination to increase by at least 5 days.
BE IT RESOLVED that SARM lobby the Federal Government to amend the policy for rural Saskatchewan Post Offices to reinstate the use of the way wallet services and therefore allowing the post office to send the mail down the line to improve efficiency and delivery service.
Responses From: Canada Post
January 16, 2023
Thank you for your letter and enclosure to the Honourable Helena Jaczek, M.D., P.C., M .P., regarding Canada Post’s delivery service in rural Saskatchewan. While Minister Jaczek has high –level accountability for the Corporation’s broad direction, operational issues like this one are under the purview of Canada Post. Your correspondence was therefore referred to the Corporation for review. In my role as Chief Operating Officer, I am accountable for our daily operations and our delivery network and, as such, your query was entrusted to me for reply.
At the outset, I want to assure you we appreciate Canada Post’s unique role in keeping rural and remote communities connected, and we take our responsibilities, as mandated by the government, very seriously in this regard. We always consider such communities when making operational changes and meeting the evolving post al needs of all Canadians. An
important aspect of our mandate is to provide all Canadians with an affordable and accessible postal service, while remaining financially self-sustaining. To this end, following a significant increase in e-commerce and a steady decrease in Lettermail™, we began streamlining mail operations throughout the country a number of years ago by consolidating and transferring them to urban centres for sortation before delivery. This change, which is consistent with Canada Post’s Mail Delivery Standards, enables us to offer efficient services to Canadians in all regions at affordable prices and is necessary due to the required automation and expense of mail and parcel sortation and distribution.
Manon Fortin – Chief Operating Officer, Canada Post