Coun. Rebecca Johnson believes residents would be willing to pay more for a more efficient and reliable postal service.
Officials with Canada Post met with city representatives Thursday at the Victoria Inn. The meeting was part of the Canada Post’s national tour. The struggling national postal service is looking at a billion-dollar loss by 2020 and is searching for solutions to its financial troubles.
Coun. Johnson attended the meeting and said some of the suggestions included community mailboxes, reducing daily services to every second day and increasing the cost of mail services.
A main issue during that meeting was making sure small businesses received their packages on time. Johnson said she would be fine if the price for sending mail increased, but only if Canada Post improved its customer service.
“I send a lot of cards,” Johnson said. “I want that guarantee that it is going to get there in two or three days. I’m prepared to back my stuff up, but I need to know there’s a guarantee. So I think the customer service is crucial. That’s what it is all about.”
She argued that poor customer service is one of the reasons why Canada Post is struggling financially.
Many small businesses at the meeting told Canada Post that they couldn’t trust their postal service to deliver their packages on time.
Johnson believes Canada Post got the message.
“They recognize that they have to improve in that area,” she said. “It was interesting because there was not one individual in that room who said ‘we would not pay if we got good customer service.’”
Steve Edmondson, vice-president of client relations at Canada Post, said all the suggestions have pros and cons to them and none of them will solve the problem alone.
It will take a combination of a number of suggestions in order to make Canada Post self-sustainable.
The primary reason for the financial troubles is the decline in letter mail, he said.
As Canada Post looks at all the options, Edmondson added they want to make sure that they don’t detract from other mail services.
“There’s no hard deadline to this consultation process,” he said. “We plan on doing these community touch points in 30 some communities across Canada.”
He suspected that any changes to Canada Post would take at least two years.
