Vancouver isn’t a fan of Canada Post’s plan to stop door-to-door delivery.
Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask the postal service to suspend the service cuts pending full consultation with communities across the country.
Meantime, city staff will research how the changes may affect residents, specifically seniors and people with disabilities, NPA Coun. George Affleck said.
“It all came as quite a shock to us to see the mailboxes being taken away and then the flippant comments from the CEO of Canada Post, saying it was good exercise for seniors to get out and walk to their post box,” Coun. Kerry Jang said.
Jang also questioned how the changes could affect Health Canada’s medical marijuana system, which relies on the postal service for delivery.
On top of difficulties for seniors, many of whom depend on mail for cheques as well as connections to the community, it will be challenging to retrofit single-family neighbourhoods to fit collective mailboxes to avoid congestion and litter, Coun. Geoff Meggs said.
While the post office is “obviously” seeing a dramatic evolution with the advent of email and online shopping, Meggs said it’s unfortunate that the union of postal workers is shouldering the blame for labour costs.
“In the last round of bargaining, postal workers made major, major concessions to rectify some of the imbalances in the pension funds,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment