Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for being here this morning.
On behalf of the town and our residents, I would like to take this opportunity to express our collective concerns regarding Canada Post's placement of community mailboxes in our neighbourhoods.
The government needs to follow through with its election promise to restore door-to-door delivery to our communities. Many of our older neighbourhoods were never designed to accommodate community mailboxes. Many of the community mailboxes have been installed in areas where there is no sidewalk and no designated area for parking, too close to an intersection, and in areas that offer little or no street lighting, etc.
Many of the community mailbox locations are in areas that are not accessible for, most importantly, our senior residents and the disabled. The status quo is simply not accessible to seniors, those who are dependent on home delivery.
I have provided a summary of complaints the town has received in regard to the mailbox locations. I've also included pictures of some of the community mailbox sites. The need to maintain safety is paramount at all times, and has not been the case in the conversion to community mailboxes in Tecumseh.
Canada Post has not given us the opportunity to build safety measures in the proposed mailbox locations. Canada Post has not carried out meaningful consultations with the town or its residents where they've denied public meetings with our constituents. They did not take any consideration and offer suggestions for alternatives, such as delivery every other day, or two to three times per week. Delivery every three days as opposed to every five days would probably have been more effective, and I firmly believe much more effective than the conversion to community mailboxes in those old neighbourhoods.
In my opinion, decision-making was not driven by business or service considerations, but rather politics. In the process, there has been an unreasonable downloading of costs from the federal crown corporation on to our own municipal government, including the Town of Tecumseh. Local government now has to clean up the mess with little co-operation from Canada Post. It has had a complete disregard for immediate and future impacts to our communities with the conversion to the community mailboxes.
I strongly believe the government should stand by what it promised, to restore door-to-door mail delivery.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.