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Stop the Cuts Bus arrives in North Bay

\ The Stop the Cuts bus made an appearance in North Bay during its cross-Canada tour to try and draw attention to Canada Post Cuts. Photos by Dennis Chippa.

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The Stop the Cuts bus made an appearance in North Bay during its cross-Canada tour to try and draw attention to Canada Post Cuts. Photos by Dennis Chippa.

Many city residents likely saw the large bus with Stop the Cuts driving around the city Wednesday.

Late in the afternoon, during an information session, the reasons for the bus were made clear.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has spent months on the road, sending the message that cuts to Canada Post are hurting local economies.

Local CUPW President Keith Bradford says the cuts and job losses will impact his co-workers, but on a larger scale, the entire city, a trickle down effect of as much as a million dollars. 

“That’s not including any loans or any borrowing, that’s general overall economic activity. People buying houses, buying cars,  buying groceries. You take those jobs away, the impact is quite significant. Then you talk about a million dollars being taken out of the local economy without anyone even having a say as to whether that’s okay or not.”

Mike Palecek, the National President for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, says the first problem with the cuts is the fact that Canada Post is, in fact, not losing money.

“Canada Post made a profit of over 200 million dollars last year. There’s really no economic justification for the cuts they’re putting forward. More than that they should be expanding services like other postal administration services around the world are doing to bring in more revenue.”

Palecek points to countries like France, where that country’s post office has become a wireless carrier, as well as the concept of postal banking, which Palecek says the government looked into, and apparently abandoned, without telling anyone why.

Palecek says he thinks the plan was simple: eliminating the labour movement.

“It’s quite clear when you look at the documents we’ve been able to look at under Freedom of Information. First the Prime Minister’s study on privatizing the postal service, followed by the killing of the postal banking study at Canada Post, it’s very clear that this is a broad agenda coming from the government that this is a plan to deconstruct this piece of Canadian infrastructure.”

The session also provided a chance for those present to question two of the four candidates for the Nipissing-Timiskaming riding, Liberal Anthony Rota and the NDP’s Kathleen Jodouin.

MP Jay Aspin and Green Party candidate Nicole Peltier were not present.

Local CUPW President Keith Bradford discusses the local impact of the cuts, while National President Mike Palecek looks on. 

Bradford said the bus tour is also designed to encourage some kind of discussion around the cuts, something he says wasn’t done by the government before cuts were announced.

“Almost 600 municipalities nation wide  have passed resolutions to ask the Harper government and Canada Post to stop the cuts. They don’t want this, they’re not interested in this, they’re not happy about it. But they're not listening.”

Among those municipalities protesting the cuts are several area municipalities, including Burks Falls, Chisholm, North Bay, West Nipissing and Bonfield. 

The Stop the Cuts bus tour will continue to wind its way across the country until the election.