Canadian politicians have increasingly taken to social media to campaign as well as communicate with constituents, sharing updates on policies, local events, emergencies or government initiatives.
But stories have emerged of constituents being blocked by their representatives. Should Canadian politicians be free to block their own constituents?
Some politicians claim the blocking is to combat increased online harassment, while constituents have claimed that simply being critical of policies or initiatives is enough to get them blocked.
Some recent cases in Canada include federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault being asked to unblock Ezra Levant on X in 2023, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith blocking constituents on X in 2023 and Montréal Mayor Valérie Plante blocking comments on X and Instagram in 2024. In 2018, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson was sued by three local Ottawa activists after blocking them on X.
Official communication and important information should not be provided by the politician’s personal account.
There should be official accounts for that purpose and those accounts should not be allowed to block users or delete posts. Replies to other users are a grey area.
They also shouldn’t be allowed to do anything political on their personal accounts, such as trying to get contributions or clarify political stances, etc. if they have any potential constituents banned or blocked
I mostly don’t like the idea because too many politicians equate criticism with a personal attack.
That said, plenty of people online are insane and we have a hard enough time getting good people to run.
How are they going to distinguish between their constituents and random crazy people?
That, and bots, and AI, etc.
Great way for them to slowly create a nice echo-chamber around themselves.
That hardly would serve the people.
As someone who has a very quick trigger finger for blocking people I can say this logic extremely flawed.
Once you remove all the people that provides little substance and essentially just spam slogans its actually pretty transformative for what comes through.
In specific context of this conversation platforms should be forced to offer more blocking tools and granurity for those tools.
UCP has been doing it for years, for anyone who dares question them.
And no, it shouldn’t be allowed. Even in threatening or harassment situations, where the appropriate response would be calling in a third party like the police to evaluate, they shouldn’t be allowed to prevent others from speaking and to be heard. Because if we’ve learned anything from these government officials as of late, they are doing everything in their power to suppress freedom of thought, association, or speech. Any barrier that enables that, like this does, needs to be broken down.
I guess in a sense politicians’ social media profiles create a platform for others to spread their message by interacting with the politicians’ posts. So when Guilbeault posts something that gains traction, then Ezra replies, that gets his reply a lot of exposure. In that sense, maybe there is a point to allow blocking, in that it denies such figures this platform. A perhaps better solution would be for Guilbeault to have a social media army that ratios Ezra by debunking his bullshit. But could be very difficult if not impossible given how much easier it is for an actor like Ezra to generate bullshit compared to debunking it. It would educate his followers though and perhaps deflate his influence.
If the criticism and harassment is coming from verified constituents, then no, they should not be allowed to block them.
If it’s harassment coming from random idiots online, then obviously yes.
If they get a letter in the mail from some moron with a return address in Texas, I would not expect their office to mail a response. If the same moron was in their riding? Yeah, they get an answer.
