SENDING Postcards is not as easy as it may seem.

Yesterday I went to my local Canada Post office to see about a problem that’s been plaguing my mailbox: The postcards have been returning with them is a big yellow sticker that says “Return to sender. Postage Due.”
What the dickens?!
From my understanding, it’s every Canadians right to write their friendly neighborhood MP postage free, but apparently here in Canada-land, there are some kinks in the system, not even a Zamboni can gloss over.

As the gentleman at Canada post explained, it’s free to write your MP at the House of Commons in Ottawa, but if you want to give any politician a holler at their constituency office back home in BC, you’ve got to pay up and slap a stamp on the sucker.

So my current task revolves around analyzing this wee .jpg here:

This pixel powered treasure trove tells me when politicians are at the House of Commons (green) and when they’re back home in BC (white). The image above is for the year of 2019. Since this project is a year-round affair, I want to send the postcards consistently wherever the M.Ps are. This means I might have to dole out the dough and purchase some postage.
If anyone has a huge stamp collection they want to get rid of, let me know!

Finally, a word of advice to all fellow M.P writers: To avoid undue returns, make sure to write your address with “M.P” on it clearly. Apparently, all Canada Post workers don’t have all M.P’s memorized by name. My bad.

-Emily