Earlier this week, the Globe and Mail’s “Caption Writing Person” set off an online frenzy with a series of epic one-liners mocking Hollywood excess in the age of the Occupy Everywhere movement. But it wasn’t long before people began wondering—for no good reason, really—whether the Globe had been hacked. For its part, Gawker published a post saying the caption writer had gone “rogue” (an adjective we think remains best reserved for failed vice-presidential candidates). Of course, we’re just grateful that this Can Con moment was far less embarrassing than the usual appearances. Nonetheless, some Toronto Gawker headline highlights, after the jump.

• “Canadian G-20 Flash Mobs Hate Capitalism, Love Smartphones”
The G20 weekend was one embarrassment after another, but Gawker chose to rip on the seeming contradiction between smashing the window of a Starbucks before, uh, liberating a smart phone. They also made some jokes about Quebec.

• “Canadian Newspaper Runs Full-Page Anti-Gay, Anti-Transgender Ad”
Apparently, word reach New York about the National Post’s decision to run (and subsequent weak apology for running) an illogical and transphobic advertisement late last month. Millions of people around the world now know about the Post’s bad decision and the advertiser’s belief that sex education is warping the minds of children. Just don’t tell Gawker that the Sun ran a similar ad shortly thereafter.

• “Mayor’s Office Tries to Hide All Naked Portraits of Toronto Mayor”
We’re not sure who to blame for this one: Now’s editors for choosing to run a doctored image of half-naked Rob Ford, or the mayor himself, who, as Gawker put it, “turned a mildly embarrassing local event into an international story about freedom of the press.”

• “Moron Student Who Accused Jewish Prof of Anti-Semitism: I Am The Victim Here”
Earlier this year, a student at York University accused her professor of anti-Semitism after he uttered the words “All Jews should be sterilized.” The professor was using the statement as an example of an unacceptable opinion, but the student wasn’t paying attention. It was bad enough when the initial news made it to Gawker. It was even worse when the student’s insistence that she was the victim provided material for a follow-up.

• “Canada’s Jersey Shore Copycat Will Piss Off Every Ethnic Group at Once”
Gawker called Toronto’s failed Jersey Shore rip-off “the least important sociological experiment of our time.” That’s actually a pretty generous description, considering the program’s overt racism.

• “Canada Sprayed Teens with Agent Orange Until the ’80s”
The Toronto Star’s discovery that the government had used Agent Orange to clear-brush in Northern Ontario provided some of the paper’s most shocking investigative reporting to date. Of course, we should’ve known Gawker wouldn’t turn this into a story about the strength of Toronto’s newspapers.

“The Elaborate, Lucrative Cancer Lie of Ashley Kirilow”
According to the Star, Ashley Kirilow “shaved her head and eyebrows, plucked her eyelashes and starved herself to look like a chemotherapy patient.” She netted thousands of dollars in the process. On second thought, we’re glad Gawker jumped in on this one. Bless.

“Some Idiot Actually Got a Charlie Sheen Tiger Blood Tattoo”
And that idiot was a Toronto tattoo artist. Ugh.

• Photo caption writer goes rogue [Gawker]

Office workers mill around after evacuating a building in Arlington, Virginia (Image: Mrs. Gemstone)

If the hundreds of reports on Twitter are to be believed (and the reports of about half of the Toronto Life office), Toronto just experienced this summer’s lunchtime earthquake (last June, we had a similar tremor). According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Virginia was at the epicentre of a 5.9 magnitude quake about 10 minutes ago. We wonder how long it’ll be before the inevitable ironic commemorations begin.

UPDATE: MSNBC reports that parts of the Pentagon and the White House were evacuated following the quake.

UPDATE 2: Well, that was fast. The “committed capitalists” over at Spacing have already mocked up some commemorative buttons »

Did you feel the earthquake where you were? Let us know in the comments.

From OpenFile’s coverage:

The development in question is a proposed six-storey, 47-unit condo building at 580-592 Kingston Road, just up the hill from Glen Davis Crescent. The development is placed precariously on Glen Davis Ravine, a City-designated ravine at the bottom of Lake Iroquois. If the Kingston Road Development Co. has its way, the ravine itself will be threatened by a parking pad, concrete retaining walls, a paved walkway, and other features that are largely out of character with both the ravine and the sleepy little cul-de-sac below it. The developer has also applied for a rezoning variance, which could further increase the height of the building by 50 percent.

“The developer has made no overtures in accommodating us,” said Neil Sinclair, another friend of the Glen Davis Ravine.

So to follow the logic here: the condo is required to have an underground parking garage because of its size (the local activists would prefer a set of townhomes, which would need fewer parking spaces). While protecting the ravine is all well and good, the question is really whether the parking garage will be the threat that the locals fear, and whether there’s some way to accommodate a six-storey development. It’s not exactly gargantuan by the standards of Toronto development, after all, and the city is nominally committed to greater density.

In particular, we’re curious whether there was any attempt to waive some of the parking requirements for a building of this size to make the garage less of a burden on the ravine. The OMB hearing for the Kingston Road development was supposed to take place next week, but according to the OMB planner in charge of the file, that’s been postponed until September to accommodate the different parties. So it will be at least another month or so until we start to get some answers.

• In Upper Beaches, the fight to save a ravine [OpenFile Toronto]
• Nature versus venture: Beaches condo project threatens nearby ravine [Globe and Mail]
• Community council approves development at Glen Davis Ravine [Inside Toronto]

Sun papers: never fond of political correctness (Image: torontocitylife)

This is all a bit insider-y, but we can’t help but detect Kory Teneycke’s hand at work here: the Sun chain of papers has pulled out of the Ontario Press Council, following the lead of parent company Quebecor, whose papers in other provinces had done the same with their respective councils. The OPC is basically a self-regulating body set up in the 1970s to deal with complaints to the press. Apparently, even the coziest self-regulation is as intolerable to the Sun papers as a human rights tribunal is to Ezra Levant.

The Sun’s owners explained their logic to the Toronto Star:

Sun Media has pulled its newspapers out of the Ontario Press Council, complaining about the “politically correct mentality” of the province’s print-media watchdog.

Glenn Garnett, Sun Media’s vice-president of editorial, sent a letter to the council earlier this week saying that the company’s newspapers were withdrawing their membership, effective immediately.

“The editorial direction of our newspapers, especially our urban tabloids, is incompatible with a politically correct mentality that informs OPC thinking, in the selection of cases it hears, and the rulings it renders,” Garnett wrote.

Ah, criticizing political correctness. That brings us right back to the early ’90s. (Up next, we’re hoping Quebecor Media will announce they’re replacing Sun News programming with an all–Fresh Prince and classic 90210 line-up.) More substantively, QMI’s departure from the Ontario Press Council leaves it regulating only a quarter of the dailies it was dealing with last week. Press councils have never exactly been lions in media regulation, but the fact that the Sun papers can just walk away from the OPC like this makes them look even less powerful. Maybe the OPC can hope that their brand is still worth something to the readers of the Globe and Mail or the Star.

• Sun Media ditches press council, citing issues with ‘political correctness’ [Toronto Star]
• Sun Media embracing ‘shock value’ over accountability: media watchdog [Vancouver Sun]
• Sun Media pulls out of Ontario Press Council [Toronto Sun]
• Sun papers pull out of Ontario Press Council [CBC]

Sure enough, The Grid’s Ed Keenan confirmed the news, followed by Blatchford’s new employers at Postmedia, who bestowed upon her the esteemed title of national columnist. Perhaps this is an indication of better financial health at Postmedia or perhaps Blatchford was just ready to move on. Either way, the whole incident reinforced something we already knew: Twitter is the police radio for media news in Toronto. Kudos to Mondoville for getting it first.

• Mondoville [Twitter]
• CONFIRMED: Christie Blatchford resigns from Globe and Mail [The Grid]
• Postmedia Network Appoints Christie Blatchford National Columnist [Postmedia]

In this conflict, we’re not sure which side to root for. Apparently Bell has pulled the Sun News Network, Canada’s newest 24-hour news channel, from its satellite TV service after neither side could agree on what Bell should pay for the privilege of showing the Quebecor-owned channel. The dispute came to a head last month when Quebecor sent a strongly worded letter to Bell Canada Enterprises, demanding the channel be removed if an agreement failed to materialize by May 3. So yesterday at 10 a.m., Bell yanked Sun News.

The Globe and Mail has the story:

Negotiations for the channel are ongoing with Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp., among others, but Quebecor has not asked that the channel be pulled from those services.

“We had hoped to come to a commercial agreement based on the fact that Sun News is a new and relatively untested channel on the market. But the price being asked is quite excessive—it’s in line with what would usually be quoted for a well-established and popular channel,” said Bell spokesman Mark Langton. He added that long before BCE acquired CTVglobemedia’s TV assets last summer, it carried CTV News Channel and other specialty stations under similar terms as other TV providers.

According to regulatory documents, CTV News Channel received fees on average of slightly more than 14 cents per subscriber per month from cable and satellite providers in 2009.

In other words, according to Bell, Sun News is asking for a price in line with what CTV or CBC’s all-news channels get, despite the fact that it has about four to five per cent of the primetime audience. In Sun’s defense, there may be a legitimate case that Bell is breaking the rules here on “undue preference,” something the CRTC will have to decide.

Of course, it’s hard to support either side in this dispute. Do consumers cheer for the Goliath of Canada’s Internet world, one that until recently threatened to crush independent ISPs with onerous charges? Or do they opt for the David of television news, even if Sun News’s reporting so far is something of a joke? We hope the CRTC tells them both to sit in a corner and think about what they’ve done.

• Bell TV pulls Sun News Network [Globe and Mail]
• Sun News pulled off Bell satellite TV [Toronto Star]
• Sun TV no longer being carried on Bell Satellite TV due to fee dispute: Quebecor [The Canadian Press]

The infamous fence (Image: Yeshwant from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

We’re only a few months away from the one-year anniversary of the G8/G20 summits that were ever so much fun for this city. In case anyone needs a hand remembering what kind of festivities we put up with last year, the provincial government and the news media have conspired to remind us all with a trio of stories that involve that magical weekend last summer.

1. The G20 fence law is on the way out
First, this morning, there was the news from the Toronto Star that the Ontario government is going to repeal the law that was used to confuse the public about pesky little matters like their Charter rights—a.k.a. the “G20 fence law.” If this goes ahead, Torontonians will not have to fear a repeat of the security fence, and the rules that saw people threatened with searches and arrest all over the city. Queen’s Park is planning on replacing the act with some different, more limited statutes—which we hope will be used with a little more discretion.

2. The auditor general’s G8 spending report is staying put
Then came the news that Avaaz—they of the Sun TV petition that turned out to be stuffed with fake names—will not be able to have their day in court. Avaaz wanted the court to force the auditor general to release her report on G8 spending in and around Tony Clement’s riding last summer. The lefty activist group had hoped to get the report out in full before election day, but the judge said no dice.

3. Score one for the cops
Finally, perma-activist Jaggi Singh has pleaded guilty to reduced charges based on the events of the G20, which makes the score for the police something like a small handful of successful prosecutions against more than a thousand arrests. This sounds like a win for the police, although the plea bargain reportedly bars the crown from using Singh’s decision as evidence against any other G20 protesters who were arrested. So it’s a pretty shallow win.

Outdated laws, deferred court cases and legal shenanigans that leave us wondering just what the powers that be are up to—it really is like the G20 all over again.

• Exclusive: Province to scrap secret G20 law [Toronto Star]
• Judge won’t hear G8 report release case before election [CTV News]
• G20 activist Jaggi Singh pleads guilty [CBC]

Click map for interactive version

BIXI is slated to launch in Toronto on May 3 with 1,000 bikes spread out over 80 stations. While we’re all for bringing the Montreal bike-sharing company to the city’s congested streets, the initial offering is a little limited. All 1,500 docking stations are confined to the area between Bloor, Spadina, Queens Quay and Jarvis Street, with a pair of outliers at Jarvis on Queen Quay and in Kensington Market.

For the uninitiated, BIXI is simple to use: it takes a small credit card payment to unlock a bike, which can be procured for a one-time fee of $5 for 24 hours or $12 for 72 hours (monthly and yearly subscriptions are also offered at $40 and $95, respectively). Considering the program’s success in Montreal—with 400 stands and 5,000 bikes scattered across the city—we’re hoping BIXI Toronto takes hold among the city’s commuters as the warmer weather rolls in. Of course, real success might require that the operation expands to include other Toronto neighborhoods. We’re pretty sure the latte sippers in far-flung boroughs like Trinity Bellwoods and Leslieville like to ride bikes, too.

• Need to borrow a bicycle? Bixi launces in May [Toronto Star]
• Bixi begins installing bike-sharing hubs [City News]
• BIXI Toronto station locations revealed [BlogTO]

Maria Augimeri and Gus Cusimano

Last week, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that Maria Augimeri’s narrow Ward 9 victory (89 votes!) in last October’s municipal election was invalid because of irregularities in the voter list. City staff are saying they’ll appeal the case, but if the court’s decision stands Toronto could be heading for a by-election in North York that would be a showdown between a Rob Ford critic and a Rob Ford supporter—in this case, we’re assuming Gus Cusimano will be running again. To make the situation even more juicy, the man credited for getting Ford elected—erstwhile electoral mastermind Nick Kouvalis—has offered to run Cusiamo’s campaign, should the by-election go ahead.

According to the Toronto Star:

“Augimeri isn’t keen on implementing Ford’s agenda,” Kouvalis said in a phone interview Monday, adding he plans to frame the by-election as “referendum” on Ford’s progress, with a plea to give him another vote to expand contracting-out, cut the budget and other conservative initiatives.

“Augimeri votes with the left on most occasions and, if we can replace her with somebody who votes on the center-right on most occasions, that would be a huge victory for the mayor,” Kouvalis said.

Calling this as-yet-theoretical win for the mayor “huge” suggests that either Kouvalis has never heard the words “diminishing returns” or he thinks that Rob Ford’s position on council is weaker than advertised. Adding one more vote to Ford’s 2:1 advantage on council isn’t going to make or break the mayor’s agenda. The Star reports that the mayor’s inner circle is worried about council’s “mushy middle” turning against them. But if that’s the case, it’s going to be because of the coming showdown over next year’s budget, not Maria Augimeri.

Aside from the grudge-match, Ford and his allies are eager to turn this in to a referendum on Ford’s performance as mayor so far. The question is: has the wave of inchoate rage that carried Ford to office receded yet? Can a man still run as an anti-incumbent gravy-hunter when his name is preceded by the words “His Worship”?

• Ford team eager to go up against Augimeri [Toronto Star]

(Images: Augimeri, toronto.ca; Cusimano, Facebook)

Here’s something the Grits didn’t want: one of the few GTA ridings that’s a possible pickup for the Conservatives sees the Liberal incumbent in hot water for elections tomfoolery. Basically, the story, as documented by Green Party canvasser Orla Hegarty on her Picasa page, is that while out canvassing for the Liberals, a volunteer working for (and only metres away from) Joe Volpe was taking Green literature in people’s mailboxes and throwing it out. This is both tacky and entirely unnecessary. Are the Libs really worried about Green vote splitting?

CBC reporter Kady O’Malley got in touch with the Volpe campaign, who have responded with the time-honoured Ottawa tradition of throwing the assistant in question to the wolves, or in this case, “releasing them from the campaign.” Somewhat appropriately, that sentence makes working for an election campaign sound like a term in prison.

• Orla Hegarty: 19,000 words for democracy. [Picasa]
• DirtyTrickWatch: Joe Volpe canvasser’s anti-Green Party leaflet shenanigans caught on film? [CBC]

Tangerine tide: Jack Layton at a Saskatoon rally (Image: Matt Jiggins)

Remember when the writ dropped and the national press spent 48 hours wondering if NDP leader Jack Layton could stand up to the punishing campaign schedule with his health troubles? Neither do we. The notion of a weak Layton seems downright quaint after a weekend where most polls point to a surge in NDP support. The one part of the country withstanding the orange tide so far is Ontario—and given the history of Liberal polling, it seems like the Grits’ last redoubt is the reliable Fortress Toronto and the suburbs around it. If the polls are right, the party of Wilfrid Laurier and Pierre Trudeau is now the party of the 416 and 905, and the NDP are the opposition to Stephen Harper in the rest of the country. Ouch.

In Quebec, the NDP surge has come at the expense of the Bloc Quebecois as well as the Liberals, and the BQ has responded by bringing out Jacques Parizeau. Gilles Duceppe is telling the Quebecois that this election isn’t about left-right battles, it’s about separatism and federalism—or, in the original French tweet (since revised): “élection n’est pas lutte gauche-droite mais lutte entre fédéralistes-souverainistes, entre le Canada et le Québec.” How this will all play out in Quebec is anyone’s guess, but having Duceppe and Parizeau dishing out hardcore separatism like it’s 1995—just as the Liberals bring out Jean Chrétien no less—is almost making us nostalgic.

Speaking of the mid-’90s: why has Ontario and the GTA opted out of the NDP surge?  Paul Wells of Maclean’s thinks that it all goes back to Bob Rae’s tenure as NDP premier in the province. The NDP were rejected so forcefully in 1995—much more so than the Mike Harris-Ernie Eves Tories were in 2003—that some Ontarians are basically not willing to vote for the NDP this side of the afterlife. It’s a plausible theory, but it also implies that Rae will never be the Liberal leader. Either that, or voters exist solely to confuse pundits.

If the NDP wave rolls right through election day, it’s difficult to say what the next parliament will look like. Conservatives will still form the government, and the NDP (new heights aside) would have to be much stronger to grab Liberal seats in Ontario and Conservatives ones out west. The leaderships are also shaky. Another all-time low in the polls for the Liberals would raise the question of whether Michael Ignatieff will still hold the post of leader. The anti-Iggy arguments are obvious, but the pro-Iggy arguments are not necessarily wrong: Layton himself has had his post for a long time, has never actually won an election, but has slowly improved his party’s standing. Now the Liberals are getting compared to the NDP in pieces like this, which has got to smart—and the party may take out its frustration on Ignatieff whether he deserves it or not.

• Strength in Ontario puts ‘squeaker of a majority’ within Harper’s reach [Globe and Mail]
• Ipsos Reid poll shows Liberals in third [iPolitics.ca]
• NDP’s surprising surge shakes up the campaign [Toronto Star]
• Boredom be gone! Layton’s rocking, Ignatieff’s bumbling. Here’s what to consider [Toronto Sun]
• Should Ignatieff get another chance? [National Post]
• Stephen Harper is winning [Maclean’s]
• Duceppe deploys Parizeau to shore up support [CBC]

A tire flattened at the home of a Liberal supporter in St. Paul’s (Image: courtesy Bennett campaign)

Until late last week, Toronto had been spared the election-themed vandalism that’s hit other ridings (notably Ottawa, where a Liberal sign had cross-hairs spray painted on to it). That’s all changed over the past few days as Liberal supporters were allegedly targeted in four Toronto ridings: signs were apparently stolen or defaced, cars keyed and tires slashed.

According to the Toronto Star:

Vandalism, first reported in the ridings of St. Paul’s and Trinity-Spadina, has now spread to Davenport and Toronto Centre where, among others, Liberal heavyweight Bob Rae and Eric Hoskins, Liberal MPP from St. Paul’s, woke up on Saturday to see their car tires hacked.

“This isn’t vandalism as much as voter intimidation,” said Hoskins on Sunday. “Really, it’s a vicious attack on individuals and families expressing their political preference on their lawns.”

During a campaign we’re told nobody cares about, some people certainly seem to be ornery. This makes it two elections in a row where we’ve seen this kind of mischief. At least things haven’t risen to the level of 2008’s vandalism where some Carolyn Bennett supporters had their brake lines cut.

While law enforcement does its thing, the city is asking itself what to do with vandals roaming the streets during the last week of the campaign. Josh Matlow, city councillor for part of the riding of St. Paul’s, showed some sharp thinking over the weekend by recommending that people park in the street, not their driveways. He even went so far as to say that that his office will deal with the inevitable tickets that follow. There’s an elegance to simply confusing a potential saboteur, so we’ll avoid the obvious joke about city councillors having practice at confusing the residents of this city.

• Election vandalism spreads, senior Liberals targeted [Toronto Star]
• Toronto ridings spooked by spate of tire slashings [Globe and Mail]
• Apparent anti-Liberal vandalism a ‘disgrace’: Ignatieff [National Post]
• Politicians denounce election-related vandalism [CP24]

The Supremes: judges of the Supreme Court of Canada (Image: Philippe Landreville/SCC)

Whoever wins the next election is going to have a bunch of things to deal with over the next [insert unpredictable number] months. One that has some groups freaking out is the question of what kind of judges the next prime minister will appoint to the Supreme Court of Canada. Theoretically, the next PM could appoint as many as four of the nine justices on the country’s highest court. Philip Slayton spoke with the CBC’s The Current yesterday about this issue; the interview can be heard here.

Slayton also spoke with Maclean’s:

Since the 1982 Charter, fundamental social, economic and political decisions have been taken by the Supreme Court of Canada: more than by Parliament or by the cabinet or by the prime minister. The court runs the life of every Canadian by deciding fundamental issues that we care a lot about. For example, in the Morgentaler case of 1988, the court struck down Canada’s abortion law and since that time there has been no abortion law at all…

The court is a political institution. Why not treat it like one? There is this uncritical acceptance by the Canadian people of a notion that judges are above politics. They are not.

Now, the natural instinct (especially in Toronto) is to worry that if Stephen Harper wins the next election with a majority, he’ll stack the Supreme Court with right-wing zealots. This is almost certainly wrong, for one big reason: Stephen Harper doesn’t need to bring his Supreme Court nominees to the House of Commons at all. If he was going to appoint such people, he could have done so already. Since 2008 he has stacked the Senate with loyal apparatchiks, and judges on the bench face even less oversight and scrutiny. Indeed, as Slayton points out to Maclean’s, the system lacks the “screamingly obvious partisan point of view one sees in the U.S.,” and the gap between the judges already appointed by Harper and those from the Jean Chrétien era is fairly narrow.

None of which is to say that this issue doesn’t matter. As Slayton says, the decisions that are being made at the Supreme Court just this year alone are going to be incredibly important, and the stuff that’s almost certainly going to end up there—prostitution, marijuana, polygamy—are all things that have a direct impact on people’s lives and their rights. Certainly, the various opinions regarding how to fill the Supreme Court deserve some of the time we’ve already spent obsessing over a coalition.

• Partisan judges, how the Supreme Court runs our lives—and why it should be an election issue [Maclean’s]
• Supreme Courts Justices [The Current]

Changing of the trash guard: the pedal operated bin (right) replaces an older model (Image: Neil Ta, from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

When the city started rolling out its new streetside garbage cans four years ago, we were taken with them in a “huh, that’s new” kind of way. It didn’t take long for us to find that many of the bins had broken foot pedals that had to be forced open by hand, making the foot pedals a waste. Astral Media, which is providing the bins to the city as part of an advertising contract, has finally admitted that, yes, the bins have some serious engineering problems.

According to the Toronto Star:

Astral Media is asking the manufacturer of the containers to rework the foot pedal and fix the tension cable that opens the recycling and garbage flaps.

“There were a handful of scenarios where the pedal—just from the sheer abuse in the downtown core—actually broke on one side,” said Kyp Perikleous, who manages the street furniture program for Toronto. “And we’ve had a number of locations where the tension cord gets overstretched and the flaps either remain open or don’t fully open for garbage when the foot pedal is pressed down,” he says.

The problem has occurred in about 40 of 4,000 bins. “But it’s enough that, because it’s early in the program, Astral brought it to our attention,” Perikleous said.

Only one per cent? Either we’re unlucky or the numbers are fishy. In either case, it’s nice to see that Astral is working on getting better bins made. It’s worth pointing out that despite what we’ll delicately call “design criticisms,” the overall deal has been lucrative for the city: Toronto is guaranteed $428 million over the life of the contract, and Astral actually paid the city extra last year because advertising had been more profitable than anticipated. So it’s really a good news story—or will be, once Astral gets the advanced technology of “foot pedal” figured out. Maybe subcontract to Honda?

• Putting mettle to the pedal [Toronto Star]

The time has come for one the country’s political traditions: Elections Canada trying to stop people from spreading information about voting results on election day. The good people at EC are reminding the nation’s broadcasters, as well as every Internet user, that sharing such information is strictly prohibited, and could earn violators a $25,000 fine. According to the Montreal Gazette, few are thrilled about the prospect.

Realistically, Elections Canada cannot possibly enforce a nationwide ban on premature tweeting or blogging or Facebooking of election results. It’s the equivalent of King Canute commanding the sea to go back.

Nonetheless, John Enright, who speaks for Elections Canada, says his agency has no choice but to administer the law as written. Citizens are allowed to phone or text friends, or send private emails. But posting to a Facebook wall, to a web page or to Twitter will be considered a violation.

“The legislation is still on the books, so our role as Elections Canada is to administer the legislation that is before us,” says Enright. “If there’s a breach of the law, Elections Canada is not going to discriminate between the Mothercorp and Joe Smith down the street.”

Really? Elections Canada is going to turn a 16-year-old getting her first taste of politics over to the RCMP because she tweeted what the poll results were in Madawaska–Restigouche before voting stopped in Esquimalt–Juan de Fuca? We’d like to see that—if only because Elections Canada would look as sympathetic as the music industry suing single mothers for illegally downloading Raffi to play for their kids.

• Ban on Twitter, Facebook election-night posts draconian [Montreal Gazette]