Telus, western Canada’s largest telecom ad ADSL provider spends so much money on marketing hoopla to make itself appear to be a more benevolent entity (“the future is friendly”) than is realistically possible in the cut-throat world of monopolistic telecom giants.

However, Telus has now blocked access to two websites representing the Telecommunications Workers Union. Basically, if you use Telus and would like to learn about the employee point of view regarding the much-maligned labour negotiations going on between the worker’s union and Telus, you can’t do it through your internet service: Telus isn’t letting you.

To be honest, I could care less about the plight of the Telecommunications Workers Union. But to know that one of Canada’s largest ISP’s is unabashedly censoring a site that criticizes the telecom giant is somewhat unsettling. Plus, to know that Telus is arrogrant and/or ignorant enough to believe that it can block dissenting sites so blatently is simply bizarre. Even worse, the fact that Vancouverites and Canadians in general routinely overlook such an abuse of power is, unfortunately, not entirely unexpected.