Montreal’s municipal opposition leader and a civil rights group are accusing Mayor Valérie Plante of censoring Canadians’ free speech rights after she defended her decision to block replies to her social media posts.
The mayor currently only allows limited comments from her followers on Instagram.
Plante posted screenshots of vulgar names she’s been called in a post to X on Thursday, saying that her posts have been dominated with insults for months, prompting her to block people altogether.
“Some people may believe that there is a fundamental right to call someone a “bitch” or a “stupid” and to normalize online violence. I do not,” wrote Plante.
However, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Aref Salem, leader of the city’s official opposition argue that elected officials who use social media should be willing to hear from constituents on those platforms. Montreal is one of the few cities in Canada that has party politics at the municipal level and an Official Opposition leader.
“This is not the way of democracy,” said Salem in an interview Tuesday. “This is really unethical, even, to not let the population of Montreal interact with the mayor.”
Salem said that social media is one of the avenues that citizens have to interact with Plante and the residents should be permitted to express their concerns outside of the limited 90 seconds few can have during question period at city council meetings.
“Having a social media feed is to connect with the population and ask the population about their opinion,” said Salem. “It has to be an interaction.”
Plante and her party’s Projet Montreal currently only allow comments from people or organizations mentioned in posts by those accounts. Plante’s Instagram posts also limit comments and users may not tag her in their stories.
True North contacted Plante for comment and a spokesperson said that the decision was made earlier this summer to the “limit discriminatory, violent, racist, harassing, hateful, homophobic, disrespectful, sexist and defamatory comments” she was experiencing on social media.
“Although all of the mayor of Montreal’s digital platforms are places for discussion, it is essential that the tone of the exchanges remains respectful,” said the spokesperson.
However, Salem said elected officials must engage with their constituents, arguing that Plante is free to block specific individuals who are engaging in online harassment.
“When we decide to be public figures, that goes with the position,” he said. “When we want to be representative of the population, we have to be representative of the whole population.”
Director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association Anaïs Bussières McNicoll agrees with Salem that a “blanket prohibition on comments” is an unreasonable limitation of people’s freedom of expression.
“I would say that elected officials with significant resources shouldn’t have their cake and eat it too,” she said. “In that if they choose to have access to and to use social media platforms in the context of their public work, they should also accept that their constituents might want to comment on their work on that very public platform.”
In June, the Quebec government implemented a law that included fines of up to $1,500 for anyone who intimidates or harasses a politician, despite critics arguing that the legislation suppressed free speech.
A Federal Court judge ordered Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to unblock Ezra Levant, founder of Rebel News, from his X account for as long as he remains a Member of Parliament last September.
“It might sound like a small thing, but if Guilbeault can cut us off from receiving news and other information from the government, what else can he cut off?” wrote Levant at the time.
Justice Zinn also ordered the federal government to reimburse Rebel Media’s legal fees, to the tune of $20,000. Levant initially filed an action against Guilbeault in 2021, alleging that the Liberal minister’s block violated his constitutional rights.
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