Students will no longer be able to access Canada Post services at Carleton as of Sept. 6 in the wake of relocation and renovations to the convenience store formerly known as Henry’s, run by the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA).
The change comes as a result of CUSA council passing its operating budget at an Aug. 8 meeting. The budget includes a complete overhaul of CUSA’s convenience store, formerly located on the first floor of the University Centre (UC), which will now be called “The Wing.”
Luke Taylor, CUSA vice-president (finance), said that Canada Post approached the association first and wanted to close the services on campus due to a lack of profitability.
“Canada Post doesn’t want to be on campus anymore, because they have been losing money. I think that they’re trying to shut down a lot of their operations in areas where they’re losing money,” Taylor said.
He added that it would cost approximately $97,000 to build a wall at the former convenience store’s location, which would be required in order to separate Canada Post from the new tenants of the location—the INS market, a Canadian convenience store franchise.
“At this point, it’s not responsible to spend that much money for a service that is already losing us money to begin with,” Taylor said.
According to Travis Lindgren, CUSA’s general manager, the postal services centre on campus was experiencing an annual loss of approximately $18,000 to $20,000. He added that the association had one year left on its contract with Canada Post when conversations about the relocation of the convenience store began this summer.
“We had every intention of honouring the contract, and we were pursuing maybe having a smaller version of their retail outlets,” Lindgren said. “[Canada Post] said they would not be adverse to actually terminating our contract earlier, because they also see the financial loss on their end.”
Lindgren said that the digitalization of the Ontario Student Association Program (OSAP) was a large part of why CUSA opted to close the postal services centre.
“I think that really solidified it for us, because it would’ve been an even more substantial loss, and that made us conclude that it was a pretty easy decision for saving students money,” he said.
According to OSAP’s website, the first page of the Master Student Financial Assistance Agreement (MFSAA)—a lifetime student agreement between students and the government of Ontario—is still required to be signed and sent via Canada Post. However, the MFSAA only needs to be signed once throughout a student’s post-secondary studies, and can be mailed to the National Student Loans Service Centre directly if they do not live close to a Canada Post outlet.
Charlene Herrera, a second-year psychology student, said that a lot of students rely on physical mail because of the comfort of having human interaction during the OSAP process.
“Some students actually want someone to talk to them and answer their questions about the process, especially because this Canada Post is inside the school, it would just be easier just to pop to the store directly after being at the financial aid office,” Herrera said.
She added that the closure of campus postal services will impact students significantly, because there aren’t a lot of “accessible postal services in the area.”
“I rely on the postal services in school, because I run a small business where I send out my work and my writing to other people internationally,” Herrera said. “As I run from one class to the next, I can just quickly mail my stuff. The removal of Canada Post is just kind of like removing the convenience of it all from campus.”
The postal services centre, which opened in 2003, will close down this month. Students in residence will still be able to receive mail in the mailroom and mailboxes in Residence Commons, but will not be able to send mail in person through Canada Post on campus.
There are two mailboxes—in front of Residence Commons, and at the University Drive—that allow students to mail smaller packages from campus. The nearest Canada Post outlet is in the Quickie Convenience Store, located at 1116 Bank Street.
Photo by Temur Durrani
