Two Canada Post employees in New Brunswick have been suspended for their refusal to deliver a flyer calling for a provincial “child sex-change ban,” according to a union representative.
Shannon Aitchison, a mail carrier in the Saint John area said she was suspended without pay for five days for refusing to deliver material from Campaign Life Coalition, a registered national lobbyist group that has been distributing postcards across the province ahead of the New Brunswick election.
The postcards have accused teachers of “pushing transgenderism” and described gender-reassignment surgery as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Campaign Life Coalition’s most recent postcard said that “no child is ‘born in the wrong body,’” and that “God doesn’t make mistakes.”
Aitchison, who is the mother of a transgender child herself, told Brunswick News that “the third flyer was straight-up nonsense. God doesn’t make mistakes,’ so you’re telling me my child is a mistake?”
“I just looked at (the postcard) and thought I’m not giving this to people,” she said.
Although certain material may be objectionable to the organization, its staff or customers, Canada Post is still required to carry it.
Canada Post said that the content of the postcards didn’t meet the threshold of “non-mailable matter,” meaning the Crown corporation is still obligated to deliver them.
However, five Saint John-area Canada Post carriers opted not to deliver the most recent postcard last week, according to Aitchison, who also serves as the recording secretary for the local postal workers’ union.
Two of those five carriers were suspended while the status of the remaining three is still in limbo.
According to Aitchison, two additional carriers used paid personal days to avoid working the window where the postcards were to be delivered, following management recommendation.
Campaign Life Coalition threatened legal action against Canada Post last month after the national postal workers’ union claimed that some of its employees in New Brunswick had been granted the “option” not to deliver its initial postcard.
The union has since denied giving workers that “direction” while Canada Post wouldn’t confirm nor deny if it had granted such an option.
“I am glad that Canada Post, as a federal government agency, is taking seriously its obligation to provide services equally to all Canadians. How it accomplishes that service obligation is up to CP,” said Campaign Life Coalition spokesperson Jack Fonseca, reacting to news of the suspensions.
He added that Canada Post “simply does not have the right to engage in viewpoint discrimination.”
However, Aitchison argues that the flyer violates the Crown corporation’s Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination Charter, which Canada Post employees and customers must adhere to under a zero-tolerance policy.
“Whoever vet this (postcard) did not do a good job,” said Aitchison, who is now back to work and has been informed that she’ll be reimbursed for her days off.
Canada Post spokesperson Valérie Chartrand responded to claims that its Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination Charter had been violated by the postcards by saying that “internal policies cannot supersede our responsibility as the national postal service to deliver items.”
“Our important and longstanding role to deliver the country’s mail should not be seen as tolerance or support for the contents of any mailing,” Chartrand said. “We are a neutral third party regardless of our views, with limited regulated exceptions on what can be mailed in Canada.”
