Everyone loves to hate the Post Office. It’s almost a national pastime. However, recent incidents involving pro-life mail invite serious comments on the actions of mail handlers across the country.
A majority of these incidents involve the “Forgetting Someone” brochure available from the Eastern Ontario Pro-Life Association. It was recently reported in the Globe and Mail that letter carriers in Nelson, B.C., were so incensed at having to deliver these brochures, unpackaged as “householder mail” that they held up delivery while their Union Local made their objections to Post Office management. The Local then placed an advertisement in the Nelson Daily News stating that they neither supported nor condoned the pamphlet, but were obliged to deliver it under Post Office regulations. For this service Nelson Future Life had paid the Post Office over four hundred dollars.
As bad as the above may sound, it is really only half the story. In fact, the only reason Nelson Future Life received the brochures for distribution in the first place was that they were sent by transport truck from the Eastern Ontario Pro-Life Association.
A similar shipment sent by mail to Rossland, B.C., arrived in a state that can only be described as demolished. Of the 9,000 brochures that left Ottawa, only 3,317 arrived in Rossland in a usable state. The sides of the corrugated cardboard packing boxes had been slit and the brochures stuffed back inside. Only two of the three boxes shipped ever arrived. It is important that the boxes carried the printer’s notation “anti-abortion flyers” and were clearly addressed to “Right to Life, Rossland, B.C.”
After six months, the Post Office has informed Eastern Ontario Pro-life that their claim for damages cannot be considered because the Post Office requires “the entire parcel, the wrapping and the contents as evidence.” The shipping boxes and most of the brochures have been in the Rossland garbage dump for some time now and as a result the Eastern Ontario Pro-life Association is six hundred dollars poorer.
Shipments of these brochures to Pembroke and Sault Ste. Marie have also arrived in damaged condition. In the Sault Ste. Marie case the brochures showed plain evidence of water damage and although the Post Office explained that their truck “might have been damp,” no compensation was made. The Eastern Ontario Pro-life Association has resorted to shipping by bus and transport truck as it can no longer afford these losses.
“Moved”
Action Life Ottawa is experiencing another phenomenon. Mail in increasing numbers is being returned with the postal notation “moved.” Telephone checks have confirmed that these members have not moved at all. Action Life has also known for some time that mailings taken to one west-end Ottawa postal station will take a week to be delivered. However, mailings taken to a postal station several miles away in Nepean will be delivered within two days. At the time of the Jury for Life campaign information was received from within the Post Office that Winnipeg postal workers were refusing to process the postcards because they didn’t like the colour picture of the unborn child on the front of them. That mail started moving after Winnipeg pro-lifers informed the Post Office that they knew what was going on.
Coalition for Life mail is regularly returned with the excuse that it is overweight, yet the postal scale indicates that it is not. This problem has been solved by simply putting the mail back in the system – it is usually delivered the second time around.
Plain brown wrappers?
These are just some of the recent cases of discrimination against pro-life mail by postal workers. If a poll were taken among pro-life groups across the country many more cases would be revealed.
The Post Office recently warned that “anti-abortion stickers” are not allowed on envelopes, and while this is legally correct it must be assumed that mail handlers breathed a collective sigh of relief at the news.
In light of the cases outlined above it is obvious that handling mail which proclaims “Abortion Kills Babies” would simply be too much for them to bear. Perhaps the time has come to resort to sending pro-life mail in unidentifiable plain brown wrappers.
“We The Letter Carriers Local 75 wish to express to the Public that we neither support nor condone the position of Nelson Future Life as expressed in their recent pamphlet. We delivered these pamphlets in compliance with postal regulations.”
The above is the advertisement placed in the Daily News by the letter carriers’ union. Nelson Future Life has written to Canada Post acting president, Don Landers, asking what corporation policy permits workers to publicly advertise their opinions on mail items. If such commentary is not permitted, Future Life has requested an apology from the letter carriers of Local 75, by way of a similarly-placed advertisement.
