All Coast mail is now being gathered and shipped to Vancouver for sorting before local mail is sent back to the Sunshine Coast for delivery in an effort to save money.
“By sorting mail in Vancouver we can leverage the existing technology that we have in Vancouver,” said Eugene Knapik, media relations person for Canada Post. “We can sort in Vancouver at about 30,000 pieces an hour, which is a lot faster than we can do it locally without that technology. Our delivery standard is two days and we can move the mail, sort it and move it back within the timeline and we can do it at less cost.”
Mail from the Coast has been making its way to Vancouver since February of last year; however, the Sechelt post office just started complying with the new rule this past October.
Sechelt’s acting postmaster Christian Tidder said the only reason the local post office complied is because, “I kind of got my hand slapped.”
“Me, I would rather do it here,” he said.
Some customers have complained the off-Coast sorting has resulted in delivery delays. Tidder said he directs those complaints to customer service.
“But so far there has been no change,” he said.
Knapik said no local jobs have been lost as a result of the new sorting directive because “they all have job security.” However, he noted that when employees retire, they won’t likely be replaced as Canada Post has been experiencing sharp declines in usage and “we are getting smaller.”
“Our business is changing and its changing pretty rapidly,” Knapik said. “Letter mail volumes are down. Last year we delivered one billion fewer letters than we did in 2006 and about 30 per cent of that decline happened since 2012. So this puts us in a real challenging kind of situation. We have a mandate to be sustainable and to have good service so we’re making adjustments to our network to ensure we’re viable to our customers and our employees going forward.”
