By the end of this summer, all Estevanites should be picking up their mail either at the Canada Post Office or from community mailboxes.
The process of switching from mail carrier service in most of the city, to a community mailbox system, is well underway said Anick Losier, a spokeswoman for Canada Post, who spoke with the Mercury on July 2.
“The installations started on June 19, at 90 sites around the city,” she said.
Canada Post already uses the community mailbox system for mail delivery to about 1,000 residents, so this will complete the project for the rest of the population.
“In the community survey we carried out, prior to this happening, the Estevan residents overwhelmingly wanted smaller sites,” Losier said, which means a mailbox cluster will serve as few as 24 households and probably not more than 48, depending on the population density in the neighbourhoods.
“Another important factor was the location. About 23 per cent of the respondents were worried about security, and a few were worried about accessibility. Most worried about other people’s ability to get to the mail box, not necessarily themselves,” said the Canada Post spokeswoman.
If a mailbox station was to be located close to a home, Losier said Canada Post representatives made every effort to visit those home owners to discuss potential implications and inconveniences, since the proposed sites may influence traffic at certain times of the day. Local residents were also given the choice of having their community mailbox key delivered to them, or left to be picked up at the local post office.
“The new delivery schedule we expect, will begin in the last part of summer,” said Losier. She added Canada Post is open for continued discussion and will even consider the possibility of making last minute changes to the community mailbox locations, if there is a valid argument or disagreement concerning the proposed sites that have been marked. All residents have been notified as to where they will be found.
“So far, we haven’t heard of any major issues regarding site selections in Estevan. Of course, you will always have some people who never accept any change from previous routine,” she said. Similar switches to community mailboxes are happening in a few other Saskatchewan cities this year with the rest to follow in 2016.
Finding the right location can be tricky, she said, and noted that “they’re there for a long time,” in referring to the community mailbox sites.
“We try to have them blend in with the urban décor.”
Losier said she didn’t know how many Estevan mail carriers would be affected by the change and a call to the local Canada Post office did not yield an answer either, but Losier noted no carrier will be losing a job with Canada Post as a result of the switch.
“The collective agreement we have with the union is that they will receive responsible positions within 40 kilometres of their home office,” she said.
In fact, with the changes coming, Canada Post is expecting to hire more employees in the near future, only with different job descriptions, she suggested. Jobs, such as those performed by today’s mail carriers, will be eliminated through attrition, as well as the changes in job descriptions for the carriers who are not intending to retire soon. She said that with online purchases now being a normal practice for households, Canada Post is being selected as a reliable delivery service.
“Now, instead of the once familiar No. 10 business envelope, people are getting small packets or parcels through Canada Post and the new community boxes reflect that trend. They are designed to accommodate new packet and parcel sizes and a lot of businesses are choosing us to deliver these goods and information. Most people understand that if we are to have a future at Canada Post, this is a necessary change.”Â
