Government Operations Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. McNamara. It's a download, certainly.

Ms. Jones and Ms. John, you talked about risk associated with these community mailboxes. Of course, in the Windsor area there are areas that have always had community mailboxes and there are areas that have just gotten them. And there are areas that probably still have some home delivery. Just like St. John's, there are all methods. Do you have any evidence of comparative risk associated with harm, or access, or slips and falls, or assaults, occurring at the existing community mailboxes that you can compare or that show that there's actually a real risk with those as compared to home delivery? Do you have facts and figures for the city of Windsor?

[Gayle Jones]

I don't. It's not within the scope of my job that I would have such figures. I do note that most of the community mailboxes that exist right now were built into the neighbourhood, they were built in to fit into those neighbourhoods. We're dealing right now with something very different, we're dealing with retrofits.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Actually, it was the same question.

[Gayle Jones]

There are things that you need to have for safety. You want to make sure you have the lighting, you want to make sure you have accessible pathways, a hard surface. You want to make sure there's no barrier such as snow and so on.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

But you don't have data on that.

[Gayle Jones]

No, we were only given several days and I've been moving this week, so I had about one day to prepare.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

That's fine.

If the city does have some type of a record of assaults, or records of slips and falls at the mailboxes, it would be nice to know.

[Gayle Jones]

I don't think it's even relevant, though, because it's a very different situation. The point I wanted to make was Canada Post says they want to put these new mailboxes in areas with lighting and they want to put them in areas where there are municipal sidewalks. But I'll tell you that in review of the locations chosen, most of the chosen locations were not along municipal sidewalks and, when I looked at the photos, there was not reasonable lighting in those situations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm sorry but we're past the time. Hopefully, Ms. John will be able to make a response in subsequent questions.

We're over to Mr. McCauley, for seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks for being with us today. Mr. McNamara, I can imagine how busy you are, so it's great to have you with us.

I'll start with Mr. McNamara. We've heard from other municipalities and pretty much they say that the boxes are there, some are working, some are not working, but they need more consultation. They were willing to send their engineering people to meet Canada Post to select the right areas, even provide monster recycling boxes for ad mail. Do you get a sense that a reset can be done where everyone can move forward better with the community mailbox system?

[Gary McNamara]

If you're talking about the recycling—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

By that I mean having a little piece of tape, for you, Ms. Jones, and Ms. John, where the city will say, “Put it here. I know your rules for this, but this is where we need it for mailboxes.” and “No, this is not going to work.“

[Gary McNamara]

In a perfect world, that would have been nice, but I could tell you it was always a reactionary type—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We can't change the past, but for the sake of argument, if we have a complete reset do you see a more workable success if we can approach it along the way that you're talking about now?

[Gary McNamara]

Probably a large portion of them have to be moved, to be quite honest, so that's going to take labour costs—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Again, that's we want to hear.

[Gary McNamara]

Dollars have to be expended. The reality is that you'll see from some of the pictures...I mean, we have some where we actually have disabled people who can't even reach their box to start with. Some of them are 18 inches above the roadbed.

I think you mentioned recycling. That's a bit of a difficult one, because ads are a great generator of revenue for Canada Post. I asked why they don't have refuse containers or recycle containers right at the boxes. They said that if ABC business ends up looking at the boxes and they're paying x number of dollars and they're seeing all their material not even make it to the house, that's a problem.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I suspect a lot of times it makes it to the house and only makes it to the house's blue box anyway.

[Gary McNamara]

But it's the non-opportunity collaboration from the town and our engineers and Canada Post. That's a huge disconnect.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We need a reset and reconnect.

[Gary McNamara]

That has to be looked at.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Ms. Jones, Ms. John, thanks for being with us again.

Did you want to comment on that as well?

[Sungee John]

Yes.

In terms of certain seniors, as I mentioned in my presentation, there are the seniors who are housebound, who physically cannot leave their homes. They have no options. The association that I belong to, the Essex County Chinese Canadian Association, did a survey last year, and many of the concerns that seniors raised talked about this fear. Many of them do live in their own homes. They take pride in the fact that they were able to pay for their house. To ask them to move to a retirement community or whatever is not an option.

However, they are increasingly frail. Their mobility becomes an issue. For them, the concern about the total elimination of mail is really tough.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I understand. In a past life, I was head of very large hospital foundation for seniors, but also for the severely disabled, so I understand.

There is the system, and you talked about it, where Canada Post will do—from my understanding—a delivery every day to the community mailbox, and then once a week they'll collect it all and deliver it to the house. I haven't looked at it, but you were saying it's a very cumbersome system. I imagine anything related to government paperwork is cumbersome.

If it's simplified properly, as you see it, what consultation and input from groups such as yourselves is needed so that Canada Post knows what people have to go through to get it done? Do you see that as viable alternative or something that will help? Then seniors don't actually have to leave.

[Gayle Jones]

I think it would be helpful, absolutely.

Anything you can do to allow an individualized accommodation is what you want, and make it simple and easy for that person to access. That person should have a menu of options. Some might choose to have the lower mailbox because we've consulted with the public.

If we get a better consultation and they're able to go there, and it's a little more accessible, and we have worked out between the municipalities and the homeowners and Canada Post who's going to shovel snow and stuff....