Here is the full text of the Canada version of the Email Surcharge Legislation hoax:

Subject: NRET: E-MAIL SURCHARGE  Date: April 15, 1999 1:08 PM

Internet Subscriber:
Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and
continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming
trend in the Government of Canada attempting to quietly push through
legislation that will affect your use of the Internet.

Under proposed legislation Canada Post will be attempting to bill email
users out of "alternate postage fees". Bill 602P will permit the Federal
Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing
Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in
turn by the ISP. Toronto lawyer Richard Stepp QC is working to prevent
this legislation from becoming law.

The Canada Post Corporation is claiming that lost revenue due to the
proliferation of email is costing nearly $23,000,000 in revenue per year.
You may have noticed Canada Post's recent ad campaign "There is nothing
like a letter". Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of
email per day in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an
additional 50 cents per day, or over $180 dollars per year, above and
beyond their regular Internet costs. Note that this would be money
paid directly to Canada Post for a service they do not even provide.

The whole point of the Internet is democracy and non-interference. If the
Canadian Government is permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a
surcharge to email, who knows where it will end.  You are already paying an
exhorbitant price for snail mail because of beaurocratic inefficiency. It
currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from Mississauga
to Scarborough. If Canada Post Corporation is allowed to tinker with email,
it will mark the end of the "free" Internet in Canada. One back-bencher,
Liberal Tony Schnell (NB) has even suggested a "twenty to forty dollar per
month surcharge on all Internet service" above and beyond the government's
proposed email charges.

Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only
exception being the Toronto Star that called the idea of email surcharge
"a useful concept who's time has come" (March 6th 1999 Editorial). Don't
sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! Send this email to all Canadians
on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their MP and
say "No!" to Bill 602P.

Kate Turner
 Assistant to Richard Stepp QC
 Berger, Stepp and Gorman
 Barristers at Law
 216 Bay Street
 Toronto, ON
 MlL 3C6