Zann says harassment has increased
‘IT’S PAINFUL,’ SAYS N.S. MP OF STRING OF ABUSIVE CALLS, VEILED THREATS
A Liberal member of Parliament says she is installing a home security system in response to abusive online and telephone comments received after she advocated for increased gun control and a feminist analysis of the Nova Scotia mass shooting.
Lenore Zann said she noticed an increase in the vitriol after she supported her government’s introduction of a ban of many assault-style guns and joined a call for a probe into the role hatred of women played in the April 18-19 shootings that claimed 22 lives.
Zann’s part-time constituency assistant, Darlene Blair, says after the MP supported the gun ban, there was a steady flow of calls through May referring to the MP for Cumberland-Colchester with “unkind, vile, disgusting” language that on at least 15 occasions specifically targeted her gender.
Blair says one caller left the Nazi anthem on the phone and another man warned Blair that people he was friendly with had firearms, and “he wanted to warn me there was going to be blood spilt on the ground.”
More recently, a Truro resident who said he’d grown upset with Zann’s policies directed an obscenity at her on his Facebook account and said he wanted “her head on a platter.”
Zann said her office contacted the RCMP about the call regarding blood being spilt, and she directly contacted the Truro police about the Facebook post, adding that last week she took the first steps towards installing a security system in her home.
Truro police Chief David MacNeil confirmed that police advised Zann to consider a home security system after she reported the Facebook comments on June 27. MacNeil said Zann did not want police to follow up with the individual, so they did not contact him.
Bradley McLellan confirmed in an interview on Friday that he had posted the Facebook comment — which has since been deleted — and said he now regrets it. The account is not under his own name.
He said in a text message that he had sent an apology to Zann, “confirming with her that I feel terrible for scaring her, and I also assured her that she would never have any kind of violence from me.”