A man identified as Tim Dutaud is shown in a screengrab from a YouTube video. The Conservative Party says a man seen making prank calls in several online videos -including one where he pretends to have a mental disability - is no longer a candidate.The party says Dutaud is the same person in the videos posted on YouTube and will no longer be running in the riding of Toronto-Danforth. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HOThe Canadian Press
The recent spate of social media gaffes offering sideshows on the election trail highlights both the need for and dangers of scrutinizing the online personas of would-be politicians, say experts.
Video footage, tweets and Facebook status updates posted to the web long before the campaign kicked off have caused headaches among all political parties and forced candidates of all stripes to abandon their bids for elected office.
The content of the archived posts ranged from the sophomoric to the offensive, causing observers to wonder how party officials could have failed to spot the red flags while assessing each candidate's online history.
Experts say that's because social media has still not become a vetting priority for Canada's political parties.
"It's fairly obvious that all concerned are not giving enough weight to social media vetting before approving anyone's candidacy," social media analyst Carmi Levy said in a telephone interview. "They're not doing basic due diligence, and it's coming back to bite them."
Candidates wanting to run under any of Canada's three major political parties are far from given a free ride.
General "green light" guidelines on the Liberal party website warn applicants to expect background checks, questions about their political affiliations, and probes into their personal finances. The party also requires an application fee of $1,000.
The Conservative party declined to comment on what goes into their vetting practices beyond a party spokesman's emailed comment that said: "We have the highest standards for our candidates."
The NDP did not respond to requests for comment.
Observers, however, say that the guidelines touched on by the Liberals understate the scope of the scrutiny that nominees for all parties must go through.
Aspiring politicians must complete rigorous and often intrusive questionnaires probing areas such as past bankruptcies, previous divorces, criminal history and old political affiliations.
Copies of those questionnaires, published in part last year by the National Post, offer striking examples.
The Conservative party asked would-be candidates if they had ever supported or agreed with groups promoting any region's secession from Canada. The Liberals asked whether potential nominees had current matrimonial or child custody battles on their hands.
The NDP's sample questionnaire asked applicants to disclose all blogs and social media platforms on which they maintain a presence, but exploring those myriad networks is a task that many believe is beyond the scope of Canada's current system.
"This process is often conducted by volunteers. We don't have the money in Canadian politics or media to do exhaustive opposition research or vetting," said crisis management consultant Allan Bonner.
Levy said it's next to impossible to track down the average person's complete online profile, since activity is usually spread over multiple platforms over many years.
Recent examples of political gaffes show that controversial content can be found under nearly any online stone.
YouTube footage of former Conservative candidate Tim Dutaud making crank calls in which he pretended to be mentally disabled might not have been hard to find, but one would have had to look harder to track down the four-year-old tweets that cost Ala Buzreba her candidacy for the Liberals. Buzreba had previously told a fellow Twitter user that they should have been "aborted with a coat hanger."
Allegedly sexist remarks from ex-Tory candidate Gilles Guibord were even more obscurely found in the comment section of the Journal de Montreal website.
Levy suspects attitudes towards online transgressions will soften somewhat over time as social media becomes more entrenched, saying next decade's candidates may be able to weather the storms created by relatively benign social media gaffes.
University of Manitoba political communications professor Royce Koop hopes so, fearing relentless criticism of candidates' every online move could have serious implications for political engagement.
"When we say to people, 'if you're going to run for office you better be completely bland and inoffensive,' they have to start thinking of that 10, 15 years ahead of time," he said.
"You're going to get a certain kind of politician that maybe we don't necessarily want. Maybe we want people that have lived in the real world, they've lived real lives, they've made mistakes, and we're willing to forgive them for those mistakes."
List of candidates, party officials who have made headlines for various gaffes
Aug. 7 – The Conservatives showed the door to candidate Augustin Ali Kitoko in Montreal's Hochelaga riding after he shared an album of photos from Mulcair's Facebook page.
Aug. 10 – Morgan Wheeldon, an NDP candidate in Nova Scotia's Kings-Hants riding, was forced to resign after suggesting in a 2014 Facebook post that Israel was engaged in "ethnic cleansing."
Aug. 18 – Liberal Ala Buzreba dropped out of the race in Alberta's Calgary Nose Hill riding after four-year-old tweets surfaced of her telling someone they should have been aborted with a coat hanger and another to "go blow your brains out." She apologized for the comments.
Aug. 21 – Conservative candidate Gilles Guibord was forced to resign from the race in Montreal's Rosemont–La-Petite-Patrie riding over sexist comments he allegedly made in online comments section of the Journal de Montreal newspaper.
Aug. 24 – Conservative candidate Wiliam Moughrabi in the Montreal riding of Ahuntsic-Cartierville had to erase online comments that were deemed violent and misogynist in nature. He did not step down.
Aug. 25 – Soheil Eid, a Conservative candidate in Joliette, Que., apologized twice for a Facebook post that drew a parallel between the words of Mulcair and comments attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's infamous propaganda minister.
Late August – VirJiny Provost, a young Bloc Quebecois candidate in Megantic-L'Erable, embarrassed her party after a survey she answered came to light. Asked what she would need in the event of a nuclear attack, Provost wrote she'd bring "her cellphone, a penis and chips."
Sept. 7 – The Conservatives dropped Toronto-Danforth candidate Tim Dutaud after he was found to have posted videos of himself making crank calls on YouTube – in one, he posed as a mentally disabled man; in another, he feigned an orgasm.
Sept. 7 – The Conservatives cut ties with Jerry Bance, who was running in Toronto's Scarborough Rouge Park riding, after he was caught by the CBC on camera urinating into a coffee cup while he was an appliance repairman.
Sept. 8 – Sue MacDonell, a board member for the Conservatives' Bay of Quinte Electoral District Association, was fired after she posted on Facebook that a Cree woman recently crowned Mrs. Universe was a monster and a "smug entitled Liberal pet."
Sept. 9 – Shawn Dearn, the communications director for NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, apologized after two-year-old tweets surfaced in which he used an expletive in reference to Pope Benedict. Mulcair decided to keep Dearn on his team.
Sept. 10 – Christopher Brown, a Liberal candidate in Peace River-Westlock in Alberta, apologized for tweets in 2009 that used profane language and included derogatory references to women. Brown said he had become an alcoholic at the time after his partner died in a car crash involving a drunk driver. Party Leader Justin Trudeau said he accepted Brown's apology.
Sept. 10 – Joy Davies, who was running for Liberals in the B.C. riding of South Surrey-White Rock, left the campaign after her controversial Facebook posts about marijuana and cancer came to light.