By Bruce Walkinshaw

It is something he may never get a chance to do again.

Yesterday morning, Penticton councillor Dan Albas was downtown mailing a package through Canada Post.

He did so at the crown corporation’s only downtown Penticton post office, located inside the Smartshopper Discount store on the 200 block of Main Street. It is an outlet Canada Post Corporation confirms will shut down this Friday.

“I have well over 3,000 signatures for a petition urging Canada Post to maintained the current downtown post office until an alternative service provider is established or they open one up themselves,” said Albas, who posted the petition in several downtown businesses.

“There are a lot of people who use that post office who won’t be able to get to the next nearest outlet (located over a 1.5 km away). The decision to pull out completely is going to put a huge burden on both the seniors and families that live downtown and on businesses too.”

Besides getting nearly 10 per cent of Penticton’s population to sign on, Albas also started an online petition (found at: www.petitionspot.com/petitions/penticton) where at press time more than 400 users had added their support. In addition, city council offered full support to the effort and the Downtown Penticton Association is conducting a survey to see how many more residents are upset with the closure.

And last week, Okanagan Coquihalla MP Stockwell Day got involved, asking for information from Canada Post in terms of how it is handling the situation.

“(I think) they understand the concern for a location in the area,” reported Day. “We are going to continue to stay on top of the situation and see how things unfold.”

The controversy began with two new Canada Post policies aimed at upgrading standards of decorum and technological service at its post offices nationwide. Both required dealer-operated outlets, such as the Smartshopper store, that fall below standards to spend money on what Canada Post calls “image upgrades” (renovations) and “new point of purchase systems” (new computers).

“All postal outlets must get image upgrades as a condition of contract renewal,” said Canada Post spokesperson Sandra Sobko, stressing that the conditions of those upgrades could differ from outlet to outlet. But what is non-negotiable, she explained, is the deadline for upgrading to the new computer system, because the old system would be unusable as of Oct. 30.

“We offered, what we thought, was a more than a reasonable compromise to the dealers and they declined,” Sobko said. “We are actively looking for another dealer in area and are certainly very keen on finding a replacement as soon as possible.”

Albas is not convinced.

“I understand that it is a private business arrangement between Smartshopper and Canada Post, but they knew that this was coming for a while now and yet they still didn’t come up with a backup plan to make sure that there is going to be some level of service in the downtown area,” he said.

“If they can’t find someone to run it, then they should be obliged to run it themselves.”