Letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, re: Editorial of December 13, 2007

BY MAIL & EMAIL

The Ottawa Citizen
1101 Baxter Road
Box 5020
Ottawa, ON   K2C 3M4

To the editor:

The Citizen’s editorial (Canada Post need not have a monopoly on mail, and it need not be delivered as a public service, whatever its union says, December 13) failed to mention that international remailers are breaking the law. The federal government has proposed legislation (Bill C-14) to change the law by removing international letters from Canada Post’s exclusive privilege to collect, transmit and deliver letters.
 
There’s a reason Canada Post has an exclusive privilege, under law, to handle letters - including international letters. The privilege helps the corporation fund its obligation to provide service to all Canadians, regardless of where they live. A recent decision by the Court of Appeal for Ontario acknowledged the importance of the exclusive privilege in serving rural and remote communities and noted that international mailers such as Spring are “not required to bear the high cost of providing services to the more remote regions of Canada.”

Court after court has ruled that international mailers are violating the law. Either we operate according to the rule of law or we don’t. Or we look at whether the law should be changed after a thorough public review. We certainly shouldn’t be ramming a one-clause bill through Parliament without public input or serious study.
 
Drawing attention to important issues is hardly “fearmongering” and it’s a bit of a stretch to call us “big labour.” However, some international mailers are certainly not the small businesses they say they are. Spring, for example, is ultimately owned by the postal administrations of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Singapore. Now that’s big.

Yours truly,

Deborah Bourque
National President