The mail is finally moving again, but the postal workers’ return to work hasn’t come fast enough for many Canadians waiting for important documents and letters.
Divyam Sood missed his flight home, and his last chance to say goodbye to the grandmother who had fed him, tucked him in, and raised him in India, because the postal workers’ strike trapped his passport somewhere in the mail.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada mailed his passport, stamped with a temporary resident visa, on Sept. 24, the night before postal workers went on a nationwide walkout. Despite a dozen calls Sood and his family made to both the postal office and IRCC, the 22-year-old mechanic living in Toronto still has not seen his passport today.
“We felt so disappointed, so disheartened,” said Sood’s older sister Eashita, who handled the visa application for him. “Had they given us a notice to go on strike, I would not have mailed that with Canada Post at all.”
The full two-week national strike, which ended on Oct. 11 when the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) moved to rotating strikes, has sparked even greater backlash than last year’s job action, partly because it came without warning on Sept. 25 — stranding thousands of commercial parcels and vital documents, from passports and visas to driver’s licences and medication, across the country.
Even with the return to work, Canada Post is warning that “uncertainty and instability” will persist during the rotating strikes and, as a result, it is suspending all service guarantees. The Crown corp. said in a recent statement that due to the nature of rotating strikes, “we are not aware of which locations will be impacted.”
During last year’s strike, which lasted from Nov. 15 to Dec. 17, Service Canada held about 185,000 passports that were ready to be mailed out. This year, the IRCC continued to deliver all outbound domestic passports and travel documents through alternative couriers, such as FedEx, Purolator and DHL, according to an IRCC spokesperson.
“Canadians will continue to receive passport deliveries through alternate providers during the Canada Post labour disruption, although some delays may still occur,” the IRCC said, adding that Canadians who require their passport to travel within six weeks should apply in person or use a courier.
But Sood and others, whose passports were already in the mail when the strike hit, find themselves playing the waiting game.
Sood, a graduate student at Niagara College, submitted his passport to IRCC in August for a work permit visa stamp. He lost $600 when he had to cancel his flight to Chandigarh, India, on Oct. 4, and another $100 sending a UPS shipping label to the immigration office in hopes of having his passport returned, a move that yielded no results.
“I ate two meals in three days,” he said. “I just wanted to see her last time, but couldn’t do that.”
Mavis Windsor, 71, who lives in Bella Bella, B.C., home to the Heiltsuk Indigenous community, said her village — with a population under 2,000 and no bank — relies on Canada Post for many essentials, such as receiving bills and ordering clothes and medical supplies.
Windsor has a stoma and needs to order colostomy bags every two months. The medical supply company mailed her latest order just hours before postal workers went on strike. Fortunately, Windsor said her daughter in Vancouver will pick up the supplies and deliver them to her personally.
“I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have family members who could pick up my supplies,” said Windsor.
What worries her even more is the news that Canada Post plans to close some rural post offices. She fears that if her community, which lacks commercial couriers, is among them, the impact would be devastating.
Munit Kaur, 32, from Brampton, said her father in India was recently hospitalized after a head injury, and she has booked a flight for Nov. 10 to visit him. She must travel with her 10-year-old son, but she had just mailed his passport to IRCC for a student visa stamp before the strike — a process she says normally takes about four weeks for the passport to be returned.
“It’s a very stressful and frustrating situation. I have contacted every customer care representative of Canada Post. I told them my problem, and they are just saying they cannot do anything,” Kaur said.
Dylan Scott, from Carleton Place, is trying to secure French citizenship through his mother and spent nine months gathering the extensive documentation required by the government of France, including a family tree, birth certificates, and death certificates.
He dropped off the original documents at the post office on Sept. 25, a month ahead of the Oct. 30 deadline, only to learn a few hours later that a strike had begun. Scott said if his package arrives after the deadline required by the French government, it will be destroyed, forcing him to start the entire process from scratch.
“I don’t feel that (the strike) was well thought out,” said Scott. “I also think that they’ve eliminated that they pretty much removed any public sympathy from them.”
“They’ve really just lost a lot of confidence from the Canadian consumer.”
