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“Being able to receive parcels is all the more crucial in Nunavut because a lot of the items they order are daily essentials.”
Bell says city council has been pressing Canada Post to improve service and storage at their Iqaluit facilities for nearly a decade, and their patience is now wearing extremely thin.
“Every day, we hear from residents about lost packages, and at least once a month, I personally received someone else’s mail,” Bell described. “Everyone is also just really tired of waiting in line. Canada Post has been promising change since I was on city council in 2012.”
On social media, city councillor Kyle Sheppard even encouraged Nunavummiut to write the CEO of Canada Post and share their frustration with him.
“The two Canada Post locations we have now are not working. It is woefully inconvenient and wait times are ridiculous. The local outlet is completely under-resourced. Imagine the current outdoor wait times in February, in the wind with -50° temperatures. It can’t continue as it is,” Sheppard tweeted on July 23.
In response, Canada Post says they’re well aware of these issues and are actively working to find solutions, including bigger spaces to store parcels and hiring more staff.
“Even before this, we were and are today, exploring ways to reconfigure our post offices, hire more staff and review our overall logistics to meet the demand and city’s high rate of growth,” Magermans said in a statement. To process the increase in volumes, we regularly extend our customer parcel pick-up hours … on weekdays and weekends at both our facilities. We also regularly remind customers to pick up their parcels as soon as they arrive. We are developing short and long-term solutions to manage the increased volumes and create a better experience for our customers and employees.”
But those are all words Bell has heard before, and little has changed since. And recent interactions between city hall staff and Canada Post have him feeling less and less optimistic that the situation will improve before the bitter winter cold settles in.
“This summer, Canada Post staff organized a call with my staff, and during that meeting, Canada Post blamed our citizens for the way they order. I’m actually glad I wasn’t on that call, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been pretty,” he said.
