Canadian Parliament Gets Bill on Anti-semitic Material in the Mail

David Orlikow, Member of Parliament, today introduced a bill to give the postmaster–general the power to stop mail service to such organizations as the National White Americans Party which has announced it intends to distribute 1,000,000 anti-Jewish leaflets this year in a membership campaign.

The Winnipeg Jewish MP submitted the bill to House of Commons officials after the Justice Ministry said that the Attorney General of Canada and leading Justice Department officials had found no way to stamp out hate literature without simultaneously curtailing freedom of expression.

Postmaster-General Nicholson had previously said that the Post Office could not censor the mails though he personally considered the White Americans party literature “disturbing and shocking.”

The Jewish Labor Committee of the Toronto Labor Council meanwhile announced plans to fight the “fascist” elements in Toronto who are flooding the city with hate material. Joseph Meslin, executive member of the Jewish Labor Committee, said the group was determined to hunt down and expose those responsible.

He declared that since the assassination of President Kennedy last November. Toronto, Montreal and other Canadian cities have been deluged with material aimed at arousing hatred of Jews and Negroes. One of the mailings to Toronto was from the White American party. The cards were mailed from Scarborough, a Toronto suburb.

He added that the committee held a two day conference at which a plan was developed to unmask the “anonymous fascists.” He asserted that from the experience of the Hitler era, it was clear that “racist propaganda, anti-Semitism and the trampling of human rights are but the by-products of harassment and attacks on labor as a whole.”