03.01.2016 01:17 AM

In this week’s Hill Times: does Judy Foote care about Holocaust denial?

Does Judy Foote care about racism and Holocaust denial?

She must. She’s a veteran of politics, and has been in the game for a couple decades, both in Ottawa and in her home province of Newfoundland. She won re-election in 2015 with 82 per cent of the vote. She has clearly been effective, or she wouldn’t be where she now is, which is sitting in the palatial offices of the Ministry of Public Services and Procurement across the river in Hull. She’s done pretty well.

Unfortunately for Foote, she is also answerable for Canada Post. Historically, the Minister of Public Services – or Public Works, as it was long known – has typically been responsible for that Crown corporation. It hasn’t been easy.

Canada Post, to most people in government – be they Liberal or be they Conservative – is a big pain in the ass. When I was Chief of Staff to the super-ministry that included Canada Post, we used to call them “the evil empire.”

Back then, we disapproved of Canada Post using taxpayer millions to advertise – they had no competitors in the home mail delivery business, I told their unctuous “CEO” once, so why does Canada Post need to advertise? They spent tax payer money on private boxes in sports arenas. They spent tax dollars putting Canada Post’s logo on golf balls and golf clubs. They refused to fly the Canadian flag at post offices in Quebec, for fear of upsetting the separatists. And so on.

In recent years, there’s been more of the same. They’ve tried to cut home delivery for millions of Canadians, and they’ve plopped mausoleum-like “community mailboxes” far from peoples’ homes, so that your 80-year-old grandmother is obliged to trod through mountainous snow banks to get her mail. They’ve reported millions in losses, while simultaneously paying their new CEO half a million bucks yearly – and bonuses of up to a third of his salary.

Oh, and they promote Holocaust denial and racism and homophobia and sexual assault.

It’s true. For quite some time now, Canada Post has been getting paid to distribute a tabloid newspaper called Your Ward News to tens of thousands of homes in Toronto. Your Ward News is edited by a creep named James Sears – who has in the past pleaded guilty to sexual assault, and lost his licence to practice medicine for sexually assaulting patients.

Among other things, Sears has lately started appearing in public with one of the leaders of Canada’s neo-Nazi movement, Paul Fromm. Sears is also an unabashed Hitler enthusiast, and has called the gas chambers at Auschwitz a “lie.” And he has used Your Ward News – and Canada Post – to giddily encourage anti-Semitism, racism and (occasionally) sexual assault.

In his most recent issue, Sears published a photo of Jesus Christ seemingly preparing to sodomize a naked woman clutching a crucifix. In the same issue, he likens Christ to Hitler, and approvingly writes: “Hitler saw his own campaign against the Jews as a Christian fight for truth and justice.” He entreats people to join his political movement, and “the war to expel the parasite,” by which he means Jews. He calls 9/11 a “lie” perpetrated by “ZioMarxists.” Oh, and he publishes one extraordinary glorification of misogyny and anti-Semitism beneath the headline: “THE LIBERAL PARTY’S MARXIST KOOL-AID IS SPIKED WITH SOPHIE TRUDEAU’S MENSTRUAL BLOOD.” That’s a quote.

For months, some of us – including our riding’s hard-working Liberal MP, Nate Erskine-Smith – have been attempting to get Judy Foote’s attention about all this, to no avail. Personally, I have contacted her “director of operations” on multiple occasions to try and get them to stop Canada Post’s willful promotion of hate and Holocaust denial. No response (until this week, that is, when I finally got fed up and tweeted that Foote was ultimately responsible for James Sears’ willing business partner, Canada Post – and he finally replied, tersely acknowledging my objection: “Yes. On Twitter. Thanks.” That’s it.)

As a result, James Sears continues to promote hatred against identifiable groups – still a crime in Canada – with impunity. The new edition of Your Ward News should by landing in 77,000 Toronto mailboxes sometime this week.

Like we said at the outset: Judy Foote sounds like an accomplished politician. She clearly knows how to get herself elected, and how to acquire power.

It’s time for her start using it. When an organization she’s responsible for starts accepting money to distribute hatred and Holocaust denial – when it facilitates criminal offences – she’d damn well better.

Because, you know, Judy Foote cares about this problem.

Doesn’t she?

 

 

14 Comments

  1. BillBC says:

    “They’ve tried to cut home delivery for millions of Canadians, and they’ve plopped mausoleum-like “community mailboxes” far from peoples’ homes, so that your 80-year-old grandmother is obliged to trod through mountainous snow banks to get her mail.”

    –this is peripheral to your main point, with which I heartily agree, but I can’t let the above comment pass. A surprising number of urban Canadians have NEVER had door to door service. I live in a town of 7000 where everyone treads as much as a hundred yards (!) to get their mail. People who can get to the grocery store can also get their mail. If they can’t do either one, either someone gets it for them, or they are in some sort of assisted living arrangement. Lack of door to door delivery is really not a big deal.

  2. Steve T says:

    I’ve got to agree with BillBC above. The critique of the situation with Your Ward News is dead-on. Canada Post should not be distributing this crap. It is not a business decision – it is a moral/ethical decision. By contrast, the cessation of home delivery was very much a business decision, and (as BillBC points out) for the majority of Canadians, it was simply a matter of fairness, and realizing the reality of physical mail delivery in the 21st century.

    As has been discussed on this forum previously, conjuring up images of granny plodding through the snow is a false premise. At a minimum, it is not the majority view of Canadians. If there is a desire to condemn the leadership of Canada Post for distributing Your Ward News, many of us need to have the community mailbox issue detached from the critique.

  3. davie says:

    Delivering junk mail that includes a squalid flyer in a small section of Toronto = holocaust denial.
    It will take me till July to connect all the dots.

  4. Suresh says:

    Warren, I’ve been lurking on your blog for years and love your posts, but I had to finally speak up because this one does not do justice to just how dangerous this newspaper is. I live in Your Ward News’ delivery area and my partner and I are exposed to this filth every month. You spend an undue amount of time rightfully criticizing Canada Post but you only briefly touch upon the content in Your Ward News. These Nazis are hiding behind the defence of “humour” and “parody”, which is probably why they haven’t been arrested. My naive neighbours have referred to the paper as “Canada’s Charlie Hebdo”. As a gay Indo-Canadian and lifelong Liberal party supporter, I am deeply disturbed by this analogy. This paper is the intellectual masturbation vehicle for neo-Nazi holocaust revisionist, misogynist, anti-Semite, racist, homophobe and all-round psychopath “Dr.” James Sears. The people who enjoy reading this rag are not that far off from Trump supporters. They’re wooed by the cult of personality and the lack of “political correctness”. But at some point, political incorrectness crosses the line into hate speech.

    FYI and to correct your article, Your Ward News is now being delivering to 300,000 homes (see their web site, which I will NOT link to here, that contains a map of their new distribution area). So you might want to correct your article, as it will highlight just how widespread the dissemination of this hate has become. I did a calculation based on cost of printing and volume discount rates through Canada Post, and it has to be costing them $70-80K per month! The question is, where is the money coming from? We recently saw how a Nazi in New Brunswick bequeathed an estate to a group of Nazis, and heroic anti-Fascists blocked the estate in court. Many of these Nazis are getting up there in age and are likely realizing that they can’t take it with them and that their wishes may not be honoured after their deaths, so they’re funnelling money to Fascists like these.

    Finally, I just want to say that I have ZERO faith Canada Post will do anything here. And as an Indo-Canadian, I find this fact especially sad, since one of my own is leading the “evil empire”.

    • Warren says:

      300,000? I did know that.

      Meeting with folks this week to start applying more pressure – including lawsuits. Stay tuned.

      And thank you.

      • nobonus4nonis says:

        Amazing. Pressure Amazon and poof Bernardo’s book disappears, same with Picton but try and remove this garbage from planting seeds and nada zip zero. I don’t get it. If jews were replaced with Syrians then all hell would break loose so the theme is anti-semitism and that is a crime. I would pound on that theme till the cows came home barring the better solution… attack their money. any which way you can because it’s always about the money.

        • nobonus4nonis says:

          by theme i meant pound over and over again one message. Canada Post supports anti-semitism and through proxies make sure Trudeau hears about it.

    • davie says:

      I am far away from your ward, but with the references on here to this flyer, I looked at what I could find on line about the flyer and the people who put it out. The fellow you mention might be a doctor, or might not. He seems a self indulgent person, and I agree fully with you that someone is funding this stuff. I know, Follow the money’ is a bit of a cliché, but I think it would be useful to all of you in Toronto land to know who is paying for this stuff.

      Particular issues might be found to be hate speech in criminal law. I wonder if there are any civil law remedies. Know any lawyers?

    • Kelly says:

      Wow. In a previous post I wondered aloud why CP would bother, thinking the delivery area was relatively small and that the rag only amounts to a few thousand bucks a month in revenue at best. Boy was I wrong. If the circulation is 300,000 then the postal bill will be in the area of about $45,000 a month and over half a million a year. This will represent a significant chunk of Our Ward News’s Canada Post rep’s bonus. This all makes the situation even MORE disgusting. Find out who that Canada Post Rep is and name and shame. Find out who the rep for the union is. My guess is they hate delivering this crap.

  5. Ridiculosity says:

    The LGBTTIQQ2SA family of far-fetched fetishes. Dishonest and profiteering Jews. Closet dyke. Herr Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Neo-Nazi Fascist. Hey Trannies… transition this!

    All of these words come directly from Your Ward News.

    If that’s not hate speech, I don’t know what is.

    It needs to be stopped.

  6. P. Brenn says:

    I dont get it …CP is what it is but to allow this is inconceivable…does as union carrier have to handle this stuff….we all should grieve it …ridiculous …

  7. Suresh says:

    My partner just alerted me to the fact that Your Ward News has posted their newest edition on their web site (he’s been checking a few times a day). We’ve noticed a pattern. It usually means the paper is already being delivered. I hate to break the news to you Warren, but in addition to the front cover featuring the anti-Semitic image of a Jewish male named “Farber” bribing MPP Arthur Potts with silver coins, YOU are featured drinking the blood of the publisher. I’m sure you can sue for that. The inside of the paper features extreme holocaust denial, Islamophobia and glorification of Adolf Hitler as a great artist. In reference to Michael Coteau, it reads “Guys like Coteau are the parasites who create Marxist-inspired, thug-based actions like the “Black Lives Matter” movement in which ZioMarxist House Negros push the buttons of impoverished Field Negros.” I haven’t finished the whole thing, but what little I’ve read is truly sickening.

  8. e.a.f. says:

    like all good politicians, when faced with a mess, they try to ignore it hoping it will go away.

    Yes, the union is aware of it. One of the posties refused to deliver the rag and was told by management he has to.

    At $45k worth of revenue, they aren’t going to give that up, no matter how offensive it is. Now of course one could ask, who is paying that $45K a month. Can’t be that many advertisers who want to have their products associated with this rag. so who is paying the $45K per month?

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