Government bars Canada Post from delivering controversial Your Ward News

Posties told to cease distribution of publication, whose editor vows a legal fight.

Thestar.com
June 16, 2016
By Dan Taekema

The minister who oversees Canada Post has issued an order to stop the distribution of Your Ward News, a Toronto publication that has been called anti-Semitic and racist by its critics.

“I have issued an interim prohibitory order to this individual, who is its editor-in-chief, advising him that he can no longer use Canada Post to spread this offensive material,” reads a statement issued by Judy Foote, minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Your Ward News, which describes itself as an “anti-Marxist publication,” is distributed free to more than 300,000 homes in Toronto and often includes articles and illustrations of religious caricatures, among other controversial features.

At the centre of the controversy surrounding the publication is a cover image from last year that featured a postal carrier wearing Orthodox Jewish garb and glowing red eyes spitting and yelling about the Holocaust while dropping a bagel.

The same cover also depicted two lawyers with overly large noses, speaking in Yiddish slang.

Last year the Toronto police hate-crimes unit investigated the publication after a Beaches resident complained about receiving it in the mail. The investigation was closed after police deemed the publication was not committing a hate crime, but many disagreed.

“It’s hate material,” said Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. “They’ve published anti-Semitic images, caricatures of letter carriers and our members should not be subjected to that sort of hate material in their workplace and the community should not be subjected to it in their mailboxes.”

Palecek said some of his letter carriers had been disciplined for refusing to distribute the paper, and called Foote’s decision “great news” - earlier this month, Canada Post issued a statement saying it had received the minister’s order and would comply immediately.

Members of the public who have been lobbying to block Your Ward News also celebrated Foote’s order.

Lisa Kinsella, a founding member of a group called Standing Together Against Mailing Prejudice (STAMP) which has campaigned against the paper, explained that a prohibitory order criminalizes any attempt by a particular mailer to send offensive material through Canada Post.

“We are ecstatic about the minister’s decision,” said Kinsella. “Minister Foote’s swift and decisive action means that this disgusting material will no longer be landing in the mailboxes of people who don’t want it.”

However, James Sears, the editor of Your Ward News said he has officially requested a board review of the order and intends to fight it.

“Judge Judy has violated multiple sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and I will for sure be lawyering up for battle,” he wrote in an email to the Star.

Sears argues that by shutting down the “only ultra-right wing satirical” newspaper in Canada the government is violating freedom of speech laws.

He insists Your Ward News has done nothing wrong.

“If we were spreading hate or libel of a criminal nature, we would have been charged a very long time ago,” Sears added.

Sears said Foote’s decision has delayed the paper’s 2016 summer issue as apartment mailboxes, which make up a large portion of the circulation, are only accessible by Canada Post, but added that if the postal service refuses to back down, the paper could be distributed by hand.

“If we must, we can get a stormer army of free speech volunteers to hit houses with the papers (we would just distribute all 305,000 copies to houses instead of apartments, and double the distribution area to compensate for the extra copies),” he wrote in an email.