Letter sent across town in Wynyard, Sask., takes a week, makes 330-km round trip

By The Canadian Press

WYNYARD, Sask. – A woman in an eastern Saskatchewan community wasn’t impressed recently when a letter she sent to a home just blocks from hers took over a week to arrive.

Janice Belak says she went to her post office in Wynyard to find out what the problem was and to voice her displeasure.

She says she was told her letter was first sent to Yorkton, about 130 kilometres to the southeast, and then back west and even further south to a sorting centre in Regina.

The letter was finally sent back to Wynyard to be scanned and sorted for delivery.

Belak says it added up to a 330-kilometre trip for a letter sent to a house in a town of about 2,000 people.

Canada Post confirmed to CTV News that most local mail must be shipped to a provincial sorting centre before it is sent to its final destination.

“This ensures that all mail, regardless of the address or destination, is handled and processed in the same way, and that all of our customers receive the same level of service,” the postal service said in a written statement.

Canada Post also said mail is always entering and leaving small towns, and trucks that normally pick up and drop off local mail are driving the longer routes anyway.

Taking the mail to sorting machines in the city is easier than hiring someone to do it by hand locally, it told CTV.

Canada Post said the system is used by large shipping companies across the country, even if packages take a longer journey than originally intended.

Belak would like to see mail in smaller communities stay closer to home.

“(It’s) creating more waste by wasting fuel. People these days are very concerned about emissions,” she said. “The cost of our postage keeps going up.”

(CTV Regina)

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