For the second time in less than a month, the mayor of Wickham tendered his resignation, bullied by citizens. A revolting situation, which illustrates the urgency of acting to counter online hatred.
In his letter of resignation, the second resigning mayor of the small municipality, Charles-Antoine Fauteux, worries about “how are we going to interest young people in running if we let things like that happen? We cannot, as a society, afford that! »
When people elected by the population to lead municipalities resign because a handful of citizens intimidate them and threaten them on social networks, our whole democracy is affected.
- Listen to the column of Karine Gagnon, political columnist at the JDM and JDQ at the microphone of Benoit Dutrizac on QUB-radio :
Minimized gestures
Cases of online hate are not limited to elected municipal officials, but these, with proximity, seem particularly affected. This is even more true in small municipalities, which will eventually become unmanageable if this continues.
It is so true that groups of municipalities are uniting to demand action. They organize national awareness campaigns and offer training on online hate for elected officials.
For too long, our society has downplayed hate and threats on social media.
Without a framework to force the owners of these networks to moderate the content, or to set up an effective system for reporting illegalities, it should come as no surprise that things go off the rails.
Significant delay
During the last election campaign, the federal Liberals pledged to quickly table a bill to counter online violence. Since then, Minister Pablo Rodriguez has held consultations, but is slow to produce results.
Canada lags far behind other countries on this issue. We have to take action, with a bill that has teeth.