B.C. family receives opened mail, prompting apology from Canada Post

CTVNews.ca with a report from CTV Vancouver Island’s Yvonne Raymond

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A B.C. family is upset after they said they received an envelope that had been sliced opened and their gift cards inside went missing.

Canada Post has since apologized to the Bayley family, which lives in Crofton, B.C., approximately 45 kilometres south of Nanaimo.

Family members told CTV Vancouver Island they’re concerned that their mail was opened.

“On Friday, my husband went to pick up our mail … at the local post office,“ Julie Bayley recounted. “He noticed that one of the card [envelopes] was opened on the side.”

Her son Jared said his father believed the cut appeared to have been an intentional “incision.”

“We actually phoned our relatives the next day, who sent it, and they said that they had included gift cards in the letter — so the gift cards were gone,” he said.

The Bayleys said they receive cards and gift cards from family in North Vancouver, every year.

A Canada Post statement said the Crown corporation apologized for “this unfortunate and rare incident” and that it took “matters and the security of the mail very seriously.”

In the family’s case, they believe the only missing items were Tim Hortons gift cards. But Bayley said that for other families, something more valuable could have gone missing.

“Our main concern with wanting to talk about this is that it could be happening to other people,” she said.

Her son said most families might have simply overlooked the opened envelope — completely unaware that potential gifts were missing.

“If we hadn’t known that these relatives send gift cards to us, we might not have phoned them and tried to investigate it,” Jared said.

The Canada Post statement went on to add that, “while we obviously can’t get into details, Canada Post has procedures in place to ensure the safety of the mail.”

“While it may have been difficult to identify what may have caused the damage to the envelope, such as a sorting machine, tampering with the mail is considered a very serious offence,” it added.

But Bayley and her son burst out laughing at Canada Post’s response and said, “there’s no way a machine would have got a perfect cut like that.”

The Bayley family is hoping for a thorough investigation.

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