On Friday November 19, 2021, Canada Post advised the community of La Crete that their post office was closing indefinitely, affecting 3,000 customers in the area. The federal postal service had wrote they were working on bringing back service as quickly as they could in the meantime.
Peace River-Westlock MP Arnold Viersen got news of the post office closing due to a lack of staff shortly after it the community got the news.
Viersen chatted with the Trending 55 Newsroom on the matter and updated us on the situation.
When we asked Viersen why the post office was closing he said “I haven’t been given any reason as to why this is happening. It appears they are having trouble getting staff in, so this is a problem in La Crete but it turns out it’s a problem in Falher as well.”
“Canada Post is in the process of bringing new people on board, getting them trained up. There’s some security training they need to go through and so they hope to have a number of new employees on line soon so we won’t be facing this situation.” Viersen replied to being asked what a long term solution looks like for the community.
Canada Post will be requiring employees to be fully vaccinated by November 26, 2021 or risk being put on unpaid leave.
When Viersen was questioned on the possibility of the closure being due to the vaccination policy Canada Post has implemented for their employees, he responded saying “I do not have any confirmation as to what the issue actually is, I do leave it to people to draw their own conclusion.”
Viersen wanted to put at the end of our conversation “It’s always a privilege to be the member of parliament for northern Alberta and if anyone is having issues with Canada Post in their area, contact your local post office and if they can’t get through I’m happy to help them to get in contact with Canada Post in Ottawa.”
The MP is currently in Ottawa with a new session of Parliament since the federal election in September.
-Erika Rolling, Trending 55 Newsroom
