Canada Post is facing stiff opposition to its plan to close the Oshawa
Post Office. About a hundred people, including local, regional and national CUPW representatives, turned out
for a rally to save the Oshawa office, which is slated to close on October 5th.
Colin Carrie, Conservative member of Parliament for Oshawa, was also in attendance at the invitation of the
Oshawa local. He told CUPW representatives that he would deliver their petitions to the Minister responsible
for Canada Post. Carrie also said he would ask the corporation to hold off on the closure and urge the
Minister to extend the moratorium to include Oshawa because it is the last remaining public post office in
the city.
Oshawa local president Donna Hardy said members would continue to press the
government and Canada Post.
“We’ve had a lot of support. No one wants to see this post office leave the community,” said Sister
Hardy.
Oshawa City Council has urged Canada Post to reconsider its plan to close the
office. So has Bob Malcolmson, CEO of the Greater Oshawa Chamber of Commerce.
CUPW President Deborah Bourque said Oshawa local members deserve to be congratulated for taking on this
difficult struggle. “They’ve worked with the membership, the community and business. They’ve done the kind of
work we need to do to prevent the corporation from farming out this work to private sector franchises.
Bourque pointed out that while the government's moratorium on post office
closures protects about 3800 public post offices in rural and small 'one post office” towns, it does not
protect almost 200 offices in urban areas.
“This is wrong. This is discriminatory and it needs to change,” said Bourque “I believe that urban residents
have as much right to public postal service as other residents.”
When the moratorium was introduced in 1994, CUPW negotiated a provision protecting the number of urban
outlets in its next contract. This provisions currently provides that 'the number of retail counters shall
not be less than 493' as of January 31, 2011. The number was 481 when it was first negotiated in 1995.
“We have enviable protections but they don’t do what the moratorium does and protect the last public post
office in town,” said Bourque. “When the moratorium was announced, urban locations normally had more than one
office. But Oshawa is the last public post office in the city and it deserves to be protected by the
moratorium. I would go further and say that since cities serve so many people, it would be reasonable to
protect the remaining public post offices in urban areas. Canada Post certainly shouldn’t be reducing the
number of corporate outlets.
