The Department That Left the Public Square Needs Receipts

Women and Gender Equality Canada reportedly deleted its X accounts after an ATIP memo cited staff mental strain from public criticism. A taxpayer-funded department cannot answer scrutiny by vanishing from a major public channel.

A federal department does not belong to its communications staff. It belongs to the public that funds it.

That is why the reported decision by Women and Gender Equality Canada to delete its departmental X accounts deserves a full paper trail. Blacklock’s Reporter says Minister Rechie Valdez’s department became the first to delete all departmental Twitter/X accounts after an Access to Information memo said public social-media remarks had created “significant mental strain for employees.” Juno News reported that a May 25 memo cited comments targeting women, LGBTQ people and the department, but provided no examples.

Genuine threats should be referred to police. Targeted harassment should be documented and dealt with. But criticism, disagreement, embarrassment and hard questions are not emergency conditions that let a taxpayer-funded department retreat from scrutiny. If officials say the posts were threats, publish the examples with identifying details removed. If they were lawful criticism, say so honestly and explain why the public channel was shut down anyway.

The scale matters. WAGE is not a private advocacy group managing its own brand. Its own departmental report says it spent $320.9 million in 2023-24 and had 475 full-time equivalent staff. The same report says WAGE used social media, including X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, in public-awareness campaigns that generated more than 400,000 impressions. A platform useful enough for government messaging is useful enough for public questions.

This is not about forcing every civil servant to debate anonymous accounts all day. Departments can moderate replies, document abuse, limit direct messages and point people to formal service channels. But deleting official accounts without a public explanation changes the bargain: government keeps the microphone while taxpayers lose one of the places where they can answer back.

The Independent Press Gallery’s criticism is right on the transparency principle: Canadians need more access to government information, not less. That point is even stronger after Ottawa’s Online News Act helped drive news links off Meta platforms in Canada. When government narrows where it speaks, citizens and journalists lose real-time access to notices, corrections, announcements and accountability pressure.

Conservative accountability does not require pretending online abuse is acceptable. It requires separating abuse from accountability. Publish the ATIP memo, the decision note, the risk assessment, the examples relied on, the approval chain, any police referrals, the communications plan, and the replacement channel that gives journalists and citizens comparable real-time access.

If the Liberal government wants to regulate speech, fund media, lecture platforms and run national public-awareness campaigns, it cannot also decide that ordinary Canadians are too unpleasant to hear from. Public service includes the public. A department that leaves the public square owes taxpayers receipts.