Some B.C. mail to take 617 kilometre detour

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Letter carriers in southwestern B.C. say a decision by Canada Post to reroute mail to a sorting center hundreds of kilometers away from its origin is an example of snail mail in the most extreme.

Starting September 1, letters sent on Fridays from Interior and Kootenay cities like Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton and Castlegar will be shipped to Vancouver for processing – in some cases a driving distance of 617 kilometres away.

The other four days a week of mail collection will remain local.

In a memo to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Canada Post said the move is being made to take advantage of the automated machine capacity in the Vancouver mail processing plant – extra space now available because of a reduction in mail volume at the facility.

They anticipate the mail will be arrive back in the local regions on Sunday night, in time to be sent out Monday morning.

"The change should be invisible to our customer," Canada Post's Colleen Frick told ctvbc.ca.

The company plans to use existing highway shuttles to transport the mail. Canada Post said the change would result in a reduction of overtime and part-time staffing in the local regions, but is not expected to impact its Vancouver operations.

John Bail, the national director for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, told ctvbc.ca the change will hurt the people working in these regions.

"They're taking out viable income out of the local areas where the mail is generated," he said.

"We think it's a precursor of things to come to take the work away from those offices."

Bail is also worried about service disruptions, especially when inclement weather forces the shutdown of the area's roadways in the winter.

He is campaigning for people living in those cities to only send mail out on days where it is processed locally.

"What we want is to discourage customers from mailing on Fridays -- give the company a message and see what they think," he said.