Who controls the mail?

A good argument for privatizing Canada Post, or at least ending its monopoly on regular mail delivery: members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, one of the most militantly left-wing unions in the country, appointing themselves postal censors.

Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor snow nor refusal to deliver an anti-gay pamphlet will keep the mail from getting through.

That seemed to be the message Thursday from Canada Post in reacting to a brief walkout over the letter carriers union's refusal to deliver a pamphlet the union regards as "homophobic" and "hate mail."

The problem began Wednesday when letter carriers at Station F on the city's east side were told they had to carry the pamphlets or face disciplinary action, said Ken Mooney, the Vancouver local president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

"One person actually refused to touch it and there were others who said they are not going to deliver it," said Mooney.

But Canada Post spokeswoman Colleen Frick had a different version, saying the only postie required to carry it on his route was being "intimidated" by his colleagues.

"He did not refuse it," she said. "He was basically intimidated into not delivering it and that's not appropriate."

The pamphlet is the September edition of The Prophetic Word, published by the Fundamentalist Baptist Mission in Waterford, Ont. The article that prompted the dispute was called The Plague of this 21st Century: The Consequences of the sin of Homosexuality (AIDS).

The pamphlet certainly sounds disgusting, but it is the government's right to decide whether it should be criminalized as hate speech or banned from the mail, not postal workers. On principle, I would not support such a move, but at least Members of Parliament have some democratic legitimacy. The members of CUPW are acting like, well, fundamentalists.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at October 26, 2006 07:42 PM