Don’t like seeing The Epoch Times in your mailbox? Toss it

For anyone who really doesn’t want Canada Post dropping a strange pro-Donald Trump newspaper in their mailbox there is a ready, if extreme, solution. Move to China.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. And no one quoted in a recent Peterborough Examiner article on a controversial publication showing up free of charge at homes suggested extreme measures are necessary.

So, no moving to China and no demands that Canada Post refuse to deliver The Epoch Times here, or anywhere else.

Still, the fact that people are contacting their political representatives and local media to complain about the publication turning up in mailboxes suggests that some people do hope delivery can be stopped.

And a Canada Post representative confirmed it has in the past been asked to refuse to deliver Falun Gong’s propaganda publication.

With that in mind, the China reference is appropriate.

One, because Falun Gong was founded in China in 1992. The Chinese government eventually began an organized campaign to defame the organization and persecute its members.

Two, because the issue in Peterborough is not about Falun Gong’s relative merits, but rather censorship.

China has no trouble censoring the organization. No delivery agency there would be allowed to help spread its message.

Mailboxes in China, and every other avenue of communication, are safe from The Epoch Times along with other media that country’s government doesn’t want its people to see.

Canada, fortunately, has a different system.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled Canada Post cannot censor the flow of information through its mail systems. Unless a newspaper or flyer meets the test for hate speech, it has to be treated the same as a postcard from your aunt.

The true nature of Falun Gong and the relative value of its propaganda paper would not be central to a court decision on censorship, but are a useful way to frame the discussion. Particularly so when there is so much justified concern about “fake news” and the success former U.S. president Donald Trump achieved by both spreading lies and misinformation himself and applying the term to anything he didn’t want people to believe.

Falun Gong began backing Trump when he adopted a hard line on relations with China. The Epoch Times appears to repeat any and all misinformation it can find on China, and in support of Trump’s positions.

It also claims homosexuality is abnormal and has a tendency to dismiss women’s rights issues.

None of that fits with the majority views of contemporary Canadian society. But the organization’s public statements don’t cross the line into hate speech.

Falun Gong’s views are objectionable and objecting to them is the best response.

Having a free and uncensored press that prints those objections helps. So does access to social media, where objections can be shared even more widely.

Easier avenues to deal with the problem of The Epoch Times were mentioned by a woman upset at receiving it and local MPP Dave Smith; the kindling box or the blue box.

Rejection of nasty opinions, ones that fall short of hate speech, is censorship at the personal level, which is where it should remain.