From the House of Commons – April 5, 2000:

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express the objection of the NDP to the fact that Canada Post has turned down a request to issue a stamp in honour of the 75th anniversary of the United Church of Canada.

Census figures show that almost three million Canadians identify themselves as United Church members. Refusing a stamp that so many Canadians could relate to shows bad judgment at best on the part of the stamp advisory committee or at worst, more evidence of what one United Church spokesperson has called “the tendency to marginalize the place of an historic Christian communion in the cultural life of the nation”, in this case, the largest and most uniquely Canadian Protestant denomination in Canada.

I urge my former colleague, André Ouellet, chairman of Canada Post, to right this wrong against the United Church and restore some perspective to the issuing of commemorative stamps.