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An arbitrator has ordered the reinstatement of an Ontario postman fired for hoarding at least 6,000 pieces of mail during the summer of 2022 because Canada Post wasn’t aware of his post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hyun Min Jang was terminated from his job as a rural and suburban mail carrier in King City, Ont., “for misdirection and delay of mail, as a result of the discovery of thousands of pieces of undelivered mail in his personal vehicle,” according to a recent decision from Kathleen G. O’Neil, the arbitrator.

“Items retrieved from (Jang’s) vehicle included a great variety of mail, some of significant importance to customers such as wedding invitations, cheques, health cards, tickets, jury summons and immigration documents,” O’Neil said.

“The delay in delivery ranged from days to over two months. As well, keys to community mail boxes and other property belonging to the employer were found.”

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers grieved Jang’s termination.

“The union acknowledges the undelivered mail as major misconduct for a mail carrier, but asks that (Jang) be reinstated to his position with appropriate accommodation for a health condition that affected the conduct that led to his discharge,” O’Neil said.

“The employer asks that the discharge be upheld.”

The union argued “that the medical evidence negates some of the intentionality in (Jang’s) delay of mail, and efforts to conceal the problem from the employer, despite the fact that he knew what he was doing was wrong,” said the decision.

“His underlying PTSD left him more vulnerable to the avoidant behaviour that partially explains his inability to deliver the mail and failure to alert management, in the union’s view. Counsel argues that this is the only plausible explanation supported by the evidence. Further, union counsel underlines that (Jang) derived no benefit from the situation, and was coming in early and working late, amounting to many unpaid hours trying to deal with the backlog.”

The arbitrator sided with Jang.

“I have decided to reinstate (Jang as a rural and suburban mail carrier) without compensation, given that at the time of the discharge, the employer was unaware of (his) medical condition, or its effect on his ability to do his job,” O’Neil said.

“He is to be returned to his position at King City, or such other position on which the parties can agree, on the condition that he can provide adequate medical evidence to establish his fitness to return to duty, and whether any current medical conditions would impact his ability to perform his duties to the extent that he would need accommodation.”

Until Jang “can provide evidence of his fitness to return to work, with or without accommodation, (he) is to be considered to be on authorized leave without pay, with access to such benefits as the collective agreement provides,” she said.

Jang, who needed a Korean interpreter for the arbitration hearing, “worked successfully for Canada Post for approximately eight years, starting in 2014,” said O’Neil’s decision dated Dec. 16, 2025.

“In late June 2022, he transferred from a route in Brampton to one in King City (40 kilometres north of Toronto), which he found considerably more challenging. He fell seriously behind over the summer and by mid-September, he had accumulated about six thousand pieces of undelivered mail in his vehicle.”

A psychiatrist who testified in the case indicated Jang’s PTSD symptoms “originated in early life, and that his vulnerability to having symptoms surface would likely be lifelong,” said the decision.

Jang “found the route at King City very difficult, with the need to manually sort a high volume of mail, which was different from his previous assignment in Brampton,” it said.

He also “found the mood at the King City facility ‘dark,’ and felt intimidated by his colleagues, interpreting facial expressions and lack of greetings as unwelcoming, especially as compared to what he described as a family atmosphere in Brampton.”

Jang “recognized in his evidence that his colleagues might not have felt that way, but said that memories of his childhood abuse came flooding back,” said the decision.

“At some point in his tenure at King City, a colleague noticed some error (Jang) had made, and commented that if he made another mistake, he would be fired. She later said it was a joke. Nonetheless, in the context of the general atmosphere at King City, (Jang) testified it had a deep effect on him. He said that he felt suffocated at King City and he experienced this as similar to when he was young and bullied, sometimes violently, at school.”

Jang “described a variety of symptoms from the summer of 2022,” that included “difficulty sleeping and eating, intrusive memories of childhood bullying and abuse, a frequently racing heart, feeling mentally and physically exhausted to the point of suicidal ideation at times.”

Jang “was also unsure of the supervisory structure at King City, which did not have an embedded manager,” said the decision.

“He was supervised by a non-managerial postmaster at King City, whose role he was unclear about, while he had had a supportive onsite manager in Brampton.”

Complaints from customers on his route about delayed or missing mail led a postmaster to discover mail left in Jang’s vehicle on Sept. 14, 2022.

Canada Post has been in dire financial straits. Its most recent quarterly report in November included a $541-million before-tax loss, the largest in its history.

• Canada Post, union reach tentative agreements, with vote expected in new year
• Canada Post is on strike (again). Here’s what it means for your mail

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

OTTAWA

— The federal Public Safety department says
16 people took part in a pilot of its firearms compensation program that resulted in 25 banned guns being turned over and destroyed. 

The department released the figure just days after revealing the results and “lessons learned” from the test it ran in parts of Cape Breton over six weeks last year, where it initially expected to collect up to 200 prohibited firearms.

“A total of 25 prohibited firearms, turned in by 16 participants, were destroyed,” spokesperson Noémie Allard said in a statement on Friday. 

“

The total compensation paid to pilot participants is $26,535.” 

Later this month, the government plans to launch the long-promised compensation program for individual gun owners with one of the more than 2,500 makes and models of firearms the federal Liberal government has banned since 2020, according to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s office.

While the federal Liberals and gun control advocates say such weapons are too dangerous for public use, many firearms groups, along with the Opposition Conservatives, say the government is wasting taxpayer dollars by targeting lawful gun owners and argue the program will have no impact on public safety.

Lobby groups like the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights say the results from the pilot demonstrate that the program is destined for failure.

The federal government has instituted an amnesty period for individuals with prohibited guns until October 2026.

As the federal government prepares to launch the program nationally, the Public Safety department is trying to formalize agreements with different provinces and municipal police agencies to assist with collection efforts.

This week, officials announced that a deal had been reached with Quebec that would see the federal government compensate the province to the tune of $12 million for its coordination of that work.

Police in Halifax, Winnipeg, Cape Breton, and Fredericton have said they are willing to participate.

Meanwhile, many police forces in the Greater Toronto Area and elsewhere in Ontario say they have not yet made a decision.

A spokeswoman for the RCMP did not directly say what role RCMP officers in divisions across the country would play in the rollout of the program, saying it could not comment on the government’s “

plans or timing” of the program’s rollout. 

“As part of the rollout, the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program will notify firearms licensees about the (program) and how to participate.”

A spokesman in Anandasangaree’s office this week said that while agreements were in the works with more provinces and police, the banned weapons would be collected through special collection units to be sent around the country.

In its lists of findings from the pilot, the Public Safety department said that a much longer declaration period was needed to allow more time for firearms owners to declare they own one of the government-banned guns, as compared to the several weeks it had during the test run. 

The department also emphasized the need for a clearer registration process and more “timely” guidance on how to participate.

The federal government last year opened the compensation program for businesses, which resulted in some 12,000 firearms being turned over and destroyed.

It has provided no timeline as to when it may reopen the program for dealers, despite the government announcing last fall that it would be reopened in the “coming weeks.”

National Post

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A Jewish advocacy group is condemning the use of the “Palestine” label for certain ancient artifacts at the Royal Ontario Museum.

“We were made aware that the label had been in place for some time,” said Tafsik CEO Amir Epstein in a statement to National Post. “This does not excuse the responsibility to correct errors. While we are willing to give the benefit of the doubt that this was an unintentional mistake, we simply ask that the information be corrected to reflect archaeological and historical facts.”

The artifacts in question have been on display at the ROM since 2012. The museum says revisions have already been underway for several months, which is prior to the online discourse that began when Tafsik posted about it on X in late December. The museum did not immediately respond to National Post’s request about what the new labels would be after its revision.

“The @ROMtoronto (Royal Ontario Museum) is rewriting history. Welcome to Canada 2025,” Tafsik posted on X last month. The group also shared a photo of

a swirled marble mosaic bottle

that is located in the museum’s Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Gallery of Rome and the Near East.

It is dated 25 to 50 AD. It is labelled as being from Syria or Palestine.

The @ROMtoronto (Royal Ontario Museum) is rewriting history. Welcome to Canada 2025.

During 25AD – 50AD the land of Israel was called “Judea” by the colonizing Romans and “Eretz Yisrael” (Nation/Land of Israel) by the Jews. 100 years later, the Romans colonized the entire land… pic.twitter.com/NAc3eZsFkP

— Tafsik Organization (@Tafsikorg) December 30, 2025

“From approximately 25–50 AD, the land was known as Judea by the Roman authorities and as Eretz Yisrael by the Jewish people. After the colonizing Romans killed and expelled much of the indigenous Jewish population, they imposed the colonial name ‘Palestine’ with the explicit intent of erasing Jewish history and connection to the land,” Epstein said.

“Historical revisionism is not new to the Jewish people. The Nazis used it to justify the genocide of Jews in Germany, and more recently, Palestinian religious and political leaders have employed similar tactics to justify the genocide committed against our people on October 7, 2023.”

He said that, throughout history, the erasure of Jewish identity has led to violence and genocide, driving the Jewish people to “meticulously” document its history “for thousands of years” — “documentation that has been corroborated through archaeology and, more recently, through recorded testimony.”

Tafsik has been in touch with the ROM and it is optimistic that the museum is taking the matter seriously, he said.

Another example from the ROM,

as reported by the Free Press

, shows blue glass pieces, including a jug, flask, bowl, aryballos (small, spherical flask) and flagon (large drinking container) in the same gallery of the museum.

The items are dated AD 25 to 125. They are labelled as being from Syria or Palestine.

In an emailed statement to National Post, the ROM said its curator has identified displays within the gallery “as requiring several label revisions.” The gallery was originally installed between 2011 and 2012.

“This work has been in process for several months, and related label updates (including for the swirled marbled mosaic bottle) are underway,” the statement said.

“Any changes to labels at ROM are informed by dialogue between curators, interpretive planners, and sectoral peers. Labels use the date of the object as the fixed starting point and, where known, indicate the location as it was named at the time of production. Contemporary place names are also included to aid visitor understanding. The location often includes multiple current place names if the exact area of production within a geographic region is not known, as is common curatorial practice for centuries-old objects.”

Carl Ehrlich, a York University professor of history and humanities, told National Post that labelling artifacts is “very, very complicated,” especially when words take on different meaning in the modern era.

“Until very recently — when Palestine and Palestinian became both the name of a country in preparation, as it were, and of a new ethnic group — Palestine was viewed as a very neutral geographic term, an amorphous term, for the area we could call the southern Levant or southern Canaan,” he said.

“That’s the reason why Palestine is, at least in the scholarly world, a designation that is used for a general geographic territory without necessarily being specific about ancient borders, territories or ethnicities, because there were a number of different ethnicities and a number of different peoples living in that territory.”

Judea was a “relatively small area and kingdom,” he said. “Under Herod the Great, for instance, who ruled in the last few decades BCE, it managed to expand its borders a bit…It moved out of the area of modern-day Israel into the territory of what is now Jordan, the West Bank, etc. It was a little bit larger at that time.”

Christian scholars started archeological investigations into the ancient Near East mostly in an attempt to establish a foothold in the region and look into “the biblical roots of Christianity.”

“They continued using this terminology of Palestine for the southern area, Syria for the northern area,” he said.

Over the course of time, the terms have become more complex.

“Nowadays, the term Palestine and Palestinian is loaded with political implications, and therefore the modern day Palestinians, the ethnicity, has been essentially piggybacking on that term in order to establish an ancient historical tradition leading up to the modern people, that essentially also involves the erasure of the Jewish history and the Jewish connection to the land,” he said.

“So, it’s not a neutral term anymore.”

The entire labelling system could use an overhaul when it comes to presenting ancient artifacts to a modern audience, he said, as the “old scholarly labels” have not “kept up with the changing meaning of the words involved.”

As for the artifacts at the ROM pointed out by Tafsik and mentioned in the Free Press, they don’t include a specific geography in their online profiles that would definitively determine that they came from Judea, Ehrlich said.

“(The curators) don’t know exactly where, so they use the old scholarly designations,” he said.

It only becomes problematic if objects from the territory of modern-day Israel or ancient Judea are referred to as Palestinian “because that then is an erasure of Jewish history.” He said there is an ongoing battle between “modern day labels and imposing them anachronistically on ancient times to fight modern wars of legitimacy.”

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