'A tremendous inconvenience': Rural communities prepare for potential postal disruptions

CTV National News: Canada Post strike impact As a possible Canada Post strike looms on Friday, Allison Bamford looks at the implications it could have on rural communities.

Rural communities have the most to lose if Canada Post services are disrupted.

In the small coastal town of Bonavista, N.L., community members rely heavily on Canada Post, according to former mayor Betty Fitzgerald.

The town has a few other private couriers that service the community. But on any given day, it’s the post office that is inundated with parcels, Fitzgerald said. The volume of deliveries is even higher around the holidays.

“With Christmas coming up and the cost of living the way it is today, they're looking for ways to buy cheaper than they did before and online seems to be the way right now,” Fitzgerald said.

“But now they're afraid to order because of the mail strike that could be coming.”

In rural Saskatchewan, it’s not uncommon to find the post office attached to the general store.

That’s the case in Osler, Sask., about a 25-minute drive north of Saskatoon.

Some residents who picked their mail up there on Wednesday told CTV News they weren’t too concerned with the possibility of a postal service disruption. They might miss out on a few flyers, newspapers or bills — the latter are mainly paid for online anyways.

The stakes are higher the more north you drive. The village of Love, Sask., solely relies on Canada Post to deliver mail and parcels in and out of the community.

“The rural (area) is going to get hit hard because there’s no alternative to the post office,” said Ian Lee, an associate professor of management at Carleton University.

“Many of the private, for-profit courier companies don't want to go in the rural (areas). The last mile in the rural is very, very expensive and they lose money.”

The inability to send and receive letter mail won’t be the main pitfall of a service disruption. The biggest concern for rural communities, Lee said, will be parcel delivery. Small communities often rely on online deliveries for items they cannot find locally.

“They won’t be able to use e-commerce. What that means is they're going to have to get in their car and drive an hour,” he said.

“I'm not trying to trivialize it. It's going to be a tremendous inconvenience.”

In certain areas of the country, rural mail routes can span up to 300 kilometres, according to Brahm Enslin, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) local 824 president. Those workers aren’t just delivering to small towns, but also remote areas that do not have a clear mailing address.

“Sometimes there are kilometres in between rural mailboxes,” he said.

Canada Post and CUPW were back at the bargaining table on Wednesday. Both parties have said they want to avoid service disruptions. Canada postal workers could walk off the job or the company could lock them out as early as Friday at 12:01 a.m. ET. if a deal isn’t reached.