New Canada Post rule riles rural residents

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This article was published 01/08/2018 (2340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new Canada Post policy that requires some rural people to change their mailing address, including postal codes, and even pick up mail at new locations, is making a number of rural people vent.

In some cases, Canada Post is making people use a different town for their home addresses.

“We live (just outside) Dufresne. I can see the grain elevator on Main Street,” said Kim Strong, a resident in the RM of Taché.

But now, according to Canada Post, she lives in Rosewood. That’s what she must write down as her address on everything from utility bills to her driver’s licence.

The problem is there is no town of Rosewood.

“They say our house is now in a different town and it’s a town that actually physically doesn’t exist, which is killing us,” Strong said. They live on Provincial Highway 501, also known as Rosewood Road.

It’s part of Canada Post’s countrywide rollout of a program to standardize the address system.

It is getting rid of rural route addresses in favour of the civic addresses used by most of the country. The change is apparently for people who live rural residential, meaning outside cities, towns and villages.

The rollout started in 2016. It’s southeast Manitoba’s turn to undergo the change this year. Canada Post said some other Manitoba communities have also converted.

Many rural residential postal addresses still look something like this: “Box 5, Group 8, RR4.” That stands for their postal box, their group box and their rural route number.

Now, their addresses will be the number on the little green signs at the end of their driveways. That standardizes their addresses with things like those used by emergency services.

“This way, customers can have and use one address only. It also allows Canada Post to deliver mail and parcels more efficiently, and proves to be very useful to first responders from the 911 service,” Canada Post spokesman Phil Legault said.

But it’s putting people through a lot of bother.

“There are some upset people out there,” RM of Taché Mayor Robert Rivard said.

Strong is one of them. She said it’s surprising how many things you have to change when there’s an address change.

“Physically, my house has not moved. I have not moved. But now I have to change everything mail-wise: my driver’s licence, utilities, magazines, health card, credit cards, other bills, the bank, everything.”

When she phoned her insurance agent to change her driver’s licence, she was told Canada Post is absorbing the cost of her new driver’s licence. “I wonder how much this is costing Canada Post,” she said.

Canada Post is providing change-of-address cards for free, and customers are being given one year of free mail-forwarding, starting Aug. 20.

“This will ensure that while ­customers update their mailing address with their mailers, none of their mail or parcels will be delayed or returned to sender,” Legault said.

People are affected in different ways, too. A business owner whose address is on the side of his truck now has to have his truck repainted with his new address at a cost of $500. If the new address on his driver’s licence is different from the one on the truck, he could face a hefty fine.

Out of safety concerns, Canada Post is also removing mailboxes at the end of driveways along provincial roads. That’s at the request of the province out of safety concerns. Residential mailboxes at the end of personal lanes along municipal roads will remain. They are grandfathered until the property changes hands.

Those people affected in Taché have until Aug. 10 to pick up their new mailbox keys at the Lorette Community Complex, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., excluding weekends and Aug. 6.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca