Local business wants downtown Canada Post

Canada Post has left downtown Yorkton. With the closure of Dowie’s Quick Print at the end of March, the postal service is going to reduce the number of service outlets in the city to two.

“After an extensive review of how Yorkton residents are using our services and looking at mail volumes, we determined that the market will be well served by the postal services available at the Parkland Mall Shoppers Drug Mart and Canada Post retail counter on Ball Road. The Shoppers Drug Mart has expanded their postal outlet space to more than accommodate the increase in volume,” says Phil Legault, Manager of Media Relations with Canada Post.

Joelle Bohn of Joey’s Children’s Apparel hopes that Canada Post will change their mind about losing a downtown location. The business owner had hoped that she would be able to take over the postal franchise. Her plan was to keep the same staff and location, and she says she contacted multiple people within Canada Post to try to get the franchise, before being told that the service would be moved to the Shoppers Drug Mart location. While she wanted to take over the franchise, Bohn would be happy with any downtown postal franchise.

“If it stays anywhere downtown, whether in my location or anywhere else, it would be beneficial.”

The loss to the downtown will be a blow to local businesses, Bohn says, whether it’s the convenience of having a nearby postal outlet or having something to draw people into the downtown area. She notes that for her own business and other businesses with an online presence, they would use that location for all of their shipping needs, but it was also a benefit even if a business did not have to do a lot of shipping.

“Just traffic-wise, getting people, the traffic downtown was always busier with the post office there. Whether it was just them picking up a package and going to a downtown store, it was benefitting all of our businesses with that being there.”

While the official word is that there will no longer be a downtown location for Canada Post, Bohn remains optimistic that these plans will change and there will be a new outlet set up in the downtown again.

The Yorkton Business Improvement District (YBID) also wants to see a downtown postal location kept, and wants to put pressure on Canada Post to reopen a franchise. Phil De Vos with YBID explains that the city has been served well by the locations downtown and in the mall, and they want to see the same level of service maintained, with both locations operational.

“We’ve always had two facilities, the one at the Parkland Mall which has been operational for a long time, and the one at Quick Print which has also been around for a very long time. We’d like to see that maintained.”

The concern for YBID is the very small businesses, those with very few employees who will have greater difficulty with a postal location located further away.

“For example, we do have a lot of mom and pop operations where sometimes there is only one person in the store. If they are relied on Canada Post to get their mail, or their parcel, which hugely involves the product they sell, or they’re shipping via Canada Post, they have to close their store, walk to their car, drive down to the mall, do their business with Canada Post there, drive back and reopen their store. The closure of the store is the thing that seems to worry some people.”

YBID has contacted  Canada Post representatives and the local MP Cathay Wagantall about the issue. The organization is now looking at finding out how the closure will affect people and businesses in the city, and is seeking input at [email protected].