Canada - CPWU launches constitutional challenge

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Postal workers’ union launches constitutional challenge to end of mail delivery

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he Canadian Union of Postal Workers is asking the Federal Court to declare the plan to end home mail delivery unconstitutional and discriminatory under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In October, the union announced it was planning a legal challenge to Canada Post’s decision to terminate home mail delivery. On Tuesday, it filed a court motion co-signed by six organizations representing retirees and the disabled, and by two individuals.

“We’re ready to take this issue all the way. We have to be ready to go all the way on this issue so the Supreme Court can decide,” national union president Denis Lemelin said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The union, representing 54,000 workers, is fighting to save 6,000 to 8,000 jobs.

In their motion, the groups not only invoke the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but also the law that created Canada Post and even Canada’s international obligations under a signed agreement.

Among other things, they asked the Federal Court to rule that the plan to end home mail delivery is unconstitutional and invalid because it violates the Charter of Rights, which guarantees the right to equality for all, regardless of age or physical or mental disability.

“The elimination of home mail delivery discriminates against older people and people with mental or physical disabilities and creates a disadvantage for them, limiting their access to a fundamental public service,” the groups write in the legal motion.

Canada Post plans to replace home mail delivery with community mailboxes in neighbourhoods.

The plaintiffs also quoted former Postmaster-General André Ouellet in support of their case. When Ouellet transformed the Post Office Department into a Crown corporation in 1981, he gave public guarantees on the continuation of postal services. “The creation of a Crown corporation will not mean a decrease in services usually provided to the public. Article 5 guarantees specifically that he same level of essential services that we now provide will continue and that is a goal that the law assigns to the new corporation,” said Ouellet, who served under late prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.