Puzzling county sign
CR 30 paving price is lower in French
Is it really cheaper to pave a road in French?
That odd question has arisen because Northumberland County has posted two signs on County Road 30 north of Campbellford to highlight a project I wrote about recently.
Drain Brothers has won a $2.1 million contract to repave a large section of the road, south of the hamlet of Trent River between the 8th Line West and the 11th Line West and is expected to start work shortly, hence the county signs.
Most of us zipping by at 80 km/h or more wouldn’t have really noticed the signs and certainly not read the small print closely enough to note that they say in English that the project cost $2 million, while en francais it says $1.5 million.
But eagle-eyed subscriber Marcus Curle spotted the oddity on both signs and sent me photos. I went and took a look, thinking that perhaps the signs would be fixed or updated right away. But he was right.
I email the county’s communications director to ask for an explanation, but didn’t get a response. Will let you know if I hear anything, even if the response is en francais.
In his email to me, Marcus said: “Wondering what oversight goes into installing these signs.”
I think the answer is not much.
Junk mail flyers fill postal boxes
For the past several years it has been clear that The Community Press didn’t cover news in this area but it was delivered each week so that companies could get their sales flyers out to potential customers.
In fact, the lack of news from the Press is one of the main reasons I started this Substack newsletter back in 2023.
So, it wasn’t really a surprise last week when Postmedia owners of The Community Press, shut it down completely. They noted that no journalists would be losing their jobs as a result, which also wasn’t surprising since none worked on it. The stories were repurposed from the Belleville Intelligencer.
All this is a long preamble to a problem created by the death of the newspaper. Companies still want to get their flyers in front of us, so more and more of them are turning to the post office. This means our mailboxes are getting stuffed with paper products many of us don’t want.
If you get home delivery, you’re stuck with carting the junk mail in and dumping it in your blue bin. But for years as the flyer business has grown, many residents who gather their mail from the post office on Bridge Street, have dumped their flyers in a blue bin there.
But now the bin and a table that was handy for sorting out what you wanted from the many things you didn’t have been removed. In place there are a couple of hand-written signs urging people to “take your flyers home.”
The problem with that admonition is that for most of us, we don’t think of those flyers as ours. We didn’t ask for them, didn’t agree to accept them, and just want to get rid of them.
When I saw the signs the other day I got to thinking about how the government has regulated email junk mail, the electronic equivalent and it has largely disappeared from my inbox.
Much to my surprise, when I went looking at the Canada Post website I discovered it has a somewhat similar policy.
“How to stop receiving unaddressed advertising mail,” the page says.
“To stop receiving unaddressed advertising mail, simply put a note on your mailbox stating that you do not wish to receive it. Place the note in or on your mailbox where your delivery agent can see it, or on the inside lip of your community mailbox, group mailbox or postal box.”
Canada Post calls this its consumers’ choice program.
“When you choose to be part of the Consumers’ Choice program, here are some examples of items that we will not deliver:
Flyers and restaurant menus
Free product samples and coupons
Unaddressed magazines and store catalogues
Notices from non-profit organizations
Offers from banking institutions and telecommunications services
Even if you choose to be part of the Consumers’ Choice program, we will continue to deliver:
Community newspapers (without commercial inserts/enclosures) – only inserts in the public interest are acceptable
Mailings in the public interest from government departments and agencies at the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal levels, as well as band councils
Materials from Elections Canada, provincial/territorial chief electoral officers and municipal election officials (or the deputy returning officer), including material from political parties and electoral candidates during an election
Any addressed mail, including addressed advertising materials”
When I went to the post office today, I found one letter that I needed and a few flyers that I didn’t. I haven’t provided the notice yet to stop the flyers, but seems like it should end my problem. Will report back if it doesn’t.
You can read all Trent Hills News stories on my website here.
Canada post revenues by product in 2025 (for stuff that winds up in your mailbox):
Letter mail: $2.6 billion
Parcels: $1.9 Billion
Direct marketing: $844 Million
I am less than fond of junk mail, to put it mildly. But if we all stopped accepting delivery of it, that $844 million would be eroded, and since Canada Post operated at a 1.57 billion loss last year, that would have to be made up some other way, which means increased cost of postage in a country where postal costs are already prohibitive. For that reason, I accept the influx of "stuff."
That said, if the junk goes into the recycling bin at the post office, presumably 100% of that stuff goes into the recycling stream. Forcing people to take it home means a lower rate of recovery.
I fail to understand what's so onerous about moving a recycling box worth of stuff each day that it's worth losing the revenue. It seems like a short-sighted move that costs more than it saves. In this era of so-called "producer responsibility" for recycling, it seems to me that Canada Post is the producer. Perhaps I should mark it as "return to sender" and put it in a mailbox.
If you have a mailbox at the Post Office, it's as simple as asking them to stop any flyers.