Liberals tolerate Facebook criticism, analysis shows
OTTAWA — Administrators of the Liberal Party’s Facebook page have spiked some comments critical of leader Justin Trudeau’s positions on abortion and marijuana.
But a Postmedia analysis of deleted Facebook posts shows the Liberals displayed greater tolerance for negative comments than did the Conservatives, who deleted many remarks that merely criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s performance.
Most of the comments that were wiped from the Liberal Party of Canada page over a two-week period were abusive or used foul language. Still, the party killed some comments that mentioned Trudeau’s contentious decision to not allow anti-abortion candidates or that made reference to his support for legalization of marijuana.
“How could you all support the abortion issue in NB?” wrote Joseph Guy Hachey on Sept. 15, before the comment was purged.
“He is going to be burnt out smoking that much pot buying vote!” wrote Facebook user Ross Haugen, who added an expletive that may have triggered the comment’s deletion.
“Forget about pot and murdered baby,s (sic) and start thinking about 31 years of FIPA!” wrote Mark David Munro, in reference to the Canada-China investment deal that goes by that acronym.
FIPA was the subject of numerous comments deleted from the Conservative Party’s website, a Postmedia analysis published last week found. The Tories, unlike the Liberals, also deleted many remarks that simply expressed concern about Harper’s record as prime minister.
Postmedia used a custom computer program to check which comments had been deleted from the federal parties’ Facebook pages.
The Liberals did allow some critical comments to remain on their page.
“Abortion is Murder,” wrote Christopher Cronin, in a comment that was not deleted. “You people make me sick to my stomach. Justin is just buying votes and as far as I am concerned he isn’t qualified to lead this country.”
“We now live in an extremely dangerous world where the threat of terrorism in Canada is very real and Trudeau talks about legalizing marijuana?” wrote Marilyn Taylor, whose other posts lauding Harper were purged from the Liberal page. And on a post about job creation, the Liberals even allowed one com- ment that referred to Trudeau by a dismissive nickname favoured by his opponents.
“Whoa... Shiny Pony has expertise in economics, who knew?” remarked Brent Piercey.