Marin: Public officials not obliged to be abused on Twitter (London Free Press)

The London Free Press
By Andre Marin
Section: Editorial/Opinion
December 26, 2014

Prof. Erika Simpson, in the Dec. 20 Forum Public pay, public scrutiny, raises some serious issues in writing about her Western University colleague Andrew Sancton, who was aggrieved when I temporarily blocked him on Twitter.

However, it is difficult to take her seriously when she opines that “public officials should not be able to block members of the public from reading their tweets” and that, as the Ombudsman of Ontario, my posts “should be open, transparent and subject to public scrutiny.”

Twitter users immediately spotted the fallacy of this argument: Even when blocked, Sancton could still read my tweets. They are open, transparent and subject to scrutiny, not just on Twitter but on the home page of the Ombudsman Ontario website (www.ombudsman.on.ca).

The block function is useful when a follower, like Sancton, becomes obsessive in a bid to have a “debate” — in his case, over my interpretation of the Municipal Act. He doesn’t like my interpretation, but of the two of us, I am the only one empowered by the province to enforce the act’s open meeting rules, and none of my findings have been challenged in court. In any event, his unrelenting tweets recently caused me to block him for three days to allow him to cool down.

Blocking is also useful — and recommended by Twitter itself — for dealing with the vicious anonymous trolls who spend their days attacking public figures and their followers (including mine) with vile, bigoted and bullying tweets.

There is no constitutional right to follow a particular person on Twitter. And those in public office do not have a higher duty than others to subject themselves to abuse. I have been active on Twitter for nearly six years, amassing almost 29,000 followers. My office and I have embraced it as an extremely useful outreach tool that enhances our transparency. We also recognize that Twitter is a social medium at heart. That’s why the voice of my account is really me.

I see Twitter as a self-sanctioned stalking platform. In the physical world, for a public official like me, it could be compared to hosting a massive town hall meeting. If I and others at such an event were harassed or threatened by belligerent strangers, no one would suggest that I had a duty to let the behaviour continue. So it should be on Twitter.

Now, let me turn to the truly serious in Simpson’s piece. She proudly notes that when she served as a university ombudsman in Saskatchewan decades ago, she “made sure never to take sides on an issue, even in battles when tenured professors had asked for sexual favours in exchange for A-level marks.” I found this deeply disturbing. Such an approach would render an ombudsman virtually useless and likely embolden the harassers. Perhaps the sexual harassment on campuses today could have been stemmed if university ombudsmen had taken a more rigorous approach in speaking truth to power in the past.

Fortunately, the Ontario Ombudsman Act establishes a very different model. It contains robust investigative tools, such as the power to enter premises and ability to take testimony under oath. We are scrupulously impartial while conducting an investigation, but once it is completed, we make recommendations and use moral suasion (including social media) to convince the powerful to change their ways.

I can’t imagine the public interest would have been served had I “made sure never to take sides” on such things as the deaths or severe physical impairment of 50 newborns per year, or shoddy investigations of fatal police shootings, or any number of serious systemic problems or issues we uncovered, affecting millions of Ontarians.

New legislation was recently passed to extend my jurisdiction to universities, as well as municipalities and school boards. Once it’s in force, I will encourage ombudsmen in those sectors to serve as real agents of change. I sincerely hope they will follow me — and not just on Twitter.