The Calgary Party is claiming that democracy is being subverted as half a million flyers are sitting idle at a Canada Post location in the city.

The municipal party wants Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) to grant an exemption on the delivery of commercial flyers so they can get campaign literature out to Calgarians.

What’s more, party campaign strategist Stephen Carter said they aren’t even able to get the flyers back from Canada Post to hand deliver them to city homes.

“Canada Post is telling our representatives that they’re in their possession, and therefore they are Canada Post property, and they will not return them, and they also will not return the money that we spent for them to deliver the brochures,” Carter told LWC.

Canada Post and CUPW have been in an ongoing labour dispute for some time, with the union workers’ most recent action being that Neighbourhood Mail (unaddressed flyers) will not be processed nor delivered.

“It’s been almost four weeks since we provided Canada Post with our latest global offers, and we’ve yet to hear anything meaningful in response,” read the CUPW notice on the neighbourhood mail delivery.

“With Canada Post abandoning bargaining once again, it gives us no choice but to ramp up the pressure.”

On Thursday, Canada Post said it would be responding to the CUPW’s recent offer with a new global offer, which they said is “designed to move negotiations forward.”

“With a planned return to the table, we have asked CUPW to amend its strike action and deliver the unaddressed flyers (Neighbourhood Mail) that are currently trapped in our network,” Canada Post said in a news release.

“The union announced its flyer ban last Friday, saying it was forced to take this action to get the parties back to the table, which is now occurring.”

Meanwhile, the flyers for the Calgary Party, and presumably other municipal candidates, aren’t reaching city households.  With a municipal election one month away, it leaves a narrow window for candidates to raise awareness through these means.

Roughly $100K cost for idle Calgary Party flyers

Ultimately, Carter said he just wants to see the election materials moving.

“I’d like to see CUPW deliver election materials, because they’re election materials, and no one should stand in the way of democracy,” he said.

“The second thing, and maybe I might be asking for too much, but at the very least, Canada Post should be giving us back our brochures, and if we have to put pressure on them using the media, I’m happy to put pressure on them using the media.”

Carter said there’s a roughly $100,000 monetary cost for the flyers, which not only highlights their mayoral candidate, Brian Thiessen, but ward-level candidates as well. They’ve had to contract another delivery company, Flyer Force, and produce more flyers, for an estimated $50,000 more, Carter said.

“We’re losing day after day after day with Canada Post taking their time and not determining whether or not they’re going to give these flyers back,” he said.

Communities First is also encountering the same issues, with several candidates having contracts with Canada Post for the delivery of flyers. Ward 10 candidate Andre Chabot said that he has 32,000 flyers (roughly $2,500 cost) that are waiting to be delivered.

He’s somewhat more fortunate, however, that his printer hasn’t delivered the flyers to Canada Post. Still, there’s a contract that’s not being fulfilled for delivery to homes, he said. The deliberate prevention of the delivery of election materials could be a breach of the Elections Act, Chabot added.

“They’re saying, ‘well, just give us the brochures, and when we can, we’ll deliver them. When we’ve reached an agreement, then we’ll deliver them,’” he told LWC.

“I was like, ‘but no, because this can’t wait.’ This has to be delivered now, not in a week or two weeks from now, because in two weeks from now, I was hoping to send out a supplementary brochure.”

Meanwhile, Chabot said he’s already paid his printers to arrange for delivery.

“The money that I paid to them, which they’ve been paid to Canada Post, either I’m going to be out of pocket, or they’re going to have to try and get reimbursed,” he said.

“There’s just no way that we’ll be handing over our brochures and put that much more money at risk.”

Chabot said it’s tough to find other delivery solutions in many areas of Calgary because Canada Post has what he called a “monopoly” on super boxes. They have access to most of the homes in a ward.

“Accepting money to deliver service and then refusing to actually deliver the service to me. That’s almost extortion,” Chabot said.

Canada Post said they were disappointed CUPW wasn’t delivering this Neighbourhood Mail.

“We understand the degree to which this ban on Neighbourhood Mail is impacting many businesses and organizations, however this is a legal strike activity that CUPW chose to undertake,” they said in a statement to LWC.

“Flyers currently in the network are being securely held for the duration of the delivery ban.”