January 15, 2004

(Translation of a letter sent to Le Droit)

Dear Mr. Gagnon:

It is unfortunate that your readers were unable to benefit from a more complete picture regarding the 10 letter carriers who refused to work last Friday in Gatineau. This is not the first time that Le Droit has published articles about Canada Post that are quite unfavourable, in particular those signed by Paul Gaboury. This was again the case in the item entitled À cause du froid, dix facteurs pourraient subir des sanctions, published in today's paper. We believe that this article greatly lacked in objectivity.

Canada Post is very sensitive to the health and safety of all its employees. Moreover, Canada Post works very hard, in cooperation with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, to implement provisions to protect the employees. To this end, when it is very cold, the letter carriers have a series of measures available to them. On the one hand, Canada Post provides them with very warm clothing (boots, parkas, mittens, balaclavas). On the other hand, Canada Post recommends that they take regular breaks to warm up in apartment buildings, businesses, restaurants or public places. If letter carriers do not have access to such facilities, Canada Post will use vehicles to provide heated shelter. This is all at Canada Post's expense.

If all the resources have been exhausted, letter carriers who feel their health or safety is at risk may refuse to work. Did the 10 letter carriers use all the provisions at their disposal to keep warm? We are not sure and that is what we are going to try to find out over the next few days. We have reason to questions ourselves, however, considering that five of the employees who refused to work drive vans that all have heating systems.

This is the very relevant information that would have allowed your readers to gain a more accurate picture of the situation. Unfortunately, Mr. Gaboury chose not to include this information in his article, although he had been given these details. Most of the article was dedicated to the explanation of the issue and to the local union's comments. The result? A less than flattering portrait of the employer.

Finally, Mr. Gaboury said at the end of his article that Canada Post has 1,000 letter carriers in the Ottawa area. Perhaps it would also have been relevant to say that we have more than 20,000 delivery personnel throughout Canada. He also writes (in the conditional) "there were reportedly no other similar incidents elsewhere in Canada." Not only were there no other similar incidents elsewhere in Canada, but many letter carriers kindly gave interviews to the media to explain how they deal with cold temperatures (by the way, it was much colder elsewhere in Canada). Why didn't a similar incident occur elsewhere? That's simple: everywhere else, the union understands that there are provisions in place. Unfortunately, the Union's local representative, Mr. Philippe Arbour, does not appear to have understood that.

Sincerely,

François Legault
Manager, Media Relations
Canada Post