Canada Post is temporarily resuming mail deliveries in downtown Vancouver East Side after residents protested Tuesday against a decision to suspend postal services on health and safety grounds.
Postal deliveries were not made between blocks 0 and 100 of East Hastings Street, the area between Carrall Street and Main Street, from March 23.
The corporation said postal staff had “health and safety concerns” about deliveries in the area, and an e-mail shared with CBC News by a resident said deliveries had stopped around mid-March because staff were stranded. in front of “verbal attacks and drug use. “
Affected residents were asked to pick up their mail at Canada’s 14-block office at 333 Woodland Drive, then open between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. PT Monday through Friday.
But delivery operations are now resuming in the area temporarily from Tuesday to Friday, according to a spokesman for the Canada Post. The spokesman did not say whether delivery would continue after that.
A protester is seen holding a sign illustrated as an envelope with the words “Return our mail !!!” (Ben Nelms / CBC)
“We have also extended the opening hours of the Woodland Drive post office, which will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., to help residents pick up any mail they may need,” spokesman Phil Lego said.
“These measures are in force because we are looking for a more lasting solution that will continue [to] provide services in a consistent and secure manner. “
“Mail is a human right,” he said
At a rally on Tuesday, residents and defenders of the East Side Center gathered at the intersection of Hastings Street and Main Street to protest the suspension of mail deliveries in their neighborhood. Residents of the area have been battling a number of overlapping problems for years, including poverty, homelessness and the drug poisoning crisis.
Proponents also said the suspension threatens the health and safety of those who rely on the mail to receive paychecks, as well as social benefits and benefits for people with disabilities.
“It’s unscrupulous. Mail is a human right,” said Hannah Dempsey, a community organizer with the Vancouver Drug Network.
Above a shop window hangs a sign during a rally to protest the cessation of Canadian mail deliveries in two blocks in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It reads: “Erase the stigma”, followed by “Welfare rights are human rights, return our mail!” The Canada Post logo appears in red ink. (Ben Nelms / CBC)
“People are waiting for their welfare checks … their disability checks, waiting for letters from home.
Dempsey says the Woodland Drive collection center, which is 14 blocks from the heart of the Hastings and Maine neighborhood, was too far away for residents, given that some have mobility problems.
The Canada Post also said residents must show government-issued IDs at the facility.
But this is a significant barrier for many residents, including those with mobility challenges, said Elsa Boyd, a member of the advocacy group Our Homes Can’t Wait.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act aim to protect people with disabilities from discrimination, Boyd said, adding that the suspension affected approximately 550 to 600 people.
“I really can’t think of another place in the city where an incident would cut off the mail of 600 other people,” she said. “There was no incident we were aware of.”
Dempsey says many residents only found out through the media that supplies were cut off a few weeks ago, and some have been fighting for options.
As is the last week of the month “week of checks” – the day on which disability and living allowances are sent by post to British Columbia – Dempsey says the decision has left many residents unanswered.
A sign at the rally reads “Do you have mail? We don’t! Welfare rights are human rights. ” Canadian Post has announced that it will temporarily resume mail deliveries in two blocks of the Downtown Eastside neighborhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, from Tuesday to Friday. (Ben Nelms / CBC)
“I’m glad to hear that mailing is resuming, but I think it’s a broader model of war against the poor in the center of the East Side and it needs to stop,” Dempsey said.
The Canadian Postal Workers’ Union did not immediately respond to a request for more information on security concerns.
Boyd says members of Our Homes Can’t Wait, which includes residents and supporters of Downtown Eastside, recently met with union representatives and hopes to work with the union for a solution.
When the Canada Post stopped delivering mail to the neighborhood in 2020 due to concerns about COVID-19, Boyd said the union had insisted on figuring out how to resume service.
“They said the daily delivery of mail was a human right and we should return it to Downtown Eastside, and they were able to help us overturn that decision,” Boyd said of the halt in the early days of the pandemic.
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