What can we do to combat the bullying or the hate that we see in social media or online that is directed at elected officials, specifically women? I will tell you that in my term I have a councillor on our council who has indicated that they are surprised by the amount of exposure they've received. There's a councillor in a neighbouring community who was targeted for bullying because they wanted to review a certain bylaw and that raised questions around gun legislation.
Again, women in leadership I think is the first start because we support each other, but in terms of combatting the negativity on social media, all I can tell you is what we've done in our small community, which is to ignore it. It's very hard. It's not fair. As elected officials, we're bound to a code of conduct in terms of engaging with the public in this regard. As for defending ourselves or trying to set the record straight, it seems that maybe you bring on an onslaught. I'm sure some elected officials at the provincial and the federal level are dealing with this type of online negativity and violence and even defamatory comments from other members.
For us, I think there's a policy or there's a legislative mechanism that can be made. The public has a lot of resources to report on the bad actions of elected officials, certainly, but I feel that, as an elected official, I have very little recourse to deal with the bad actions of the public. I've had the public at my doorstep. I've had to....
We've instituted those anti-harassment policies for a reason, because the only way we could figure out how to deal with that was to attempt to legally acknowledge that people's behaviour isn't acceptable, but it does fail on social media. Your personal life and your family are exposed in a way that is absolutely unpleasant.