MP says she’s target of online abuse and veiled threats
Calls followed comments on mass shooting
HALIFAX • 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 toward 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 also said his comment wasn’t driven by her call for a feminist analysis in a potential public inquiry into the mass shooting or by the Liberal government’s position on gun control.
Rather, he said, he had grown angry over what he said was her focus on those topics, rather than on issues such as rural poverty, addictions and a lack of community economic development in Truro and surrounding areas.
“I’m not attacking feminism ... I’m asking her on numerous occasions, ‘Are you sure your time is being used wisely?’ ” he said during an interview.
However Zann said the post, coming on the heels of her comments on local television in favour of feminist analysis of the shootings, was unacceptable and made her uneasy.
“It’s painful. It’s a frightening image and I felt it was done in anger and to intimidate,” Zann said in an interview.
Zann said it was brought to her attention by Cheryl Paris, the chairwoman of the Lotus Centre, a women’s centre in Truro.
Paris said in an email that abusive language directed toward women in politics has become too commonplace, and that citizens should understand that the incidents aren’t isolated.
“A threatening post (nuanced or otherwise) gives power to the reader and allows others to follow suit with the group’s approval,” she wrote in an email.
Further comments Mclellan made regarding Zann’s home, including a statement he lived nearby, increased her concerns, and she says she called the Truro police to raise the issue.
She said she didn’t request Truro police contact Mclellan directly, and he said during an interview he had not been contacted.
Zann said the comments online and the veiled threats to her office reinforced her view that women in politics frequently endure hateful comments.
The MP also said she believes that U.S. President Donald Trump’s use of social media to make angry comments has emboldened citizens to make excessively crude comments to politicians.