In the grand scheme of things, it may end up being just a blip on the radar screen of Canada Election 2021—or not.

But the Twitter dust-up over Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland’s “Donald Trump moment”, as the Toronto Star described it, has opened up a can of worms on the role that will be played by social media in this election. 

It also suggests that the Conservatives—and their crack communications team led by a U.K. fixer—are intent on playing the kind of politics witnessed on social media during last year’s U.S. elections. 

The dirty tricks started on day one of the election with the release of a Willie Wonka-inspired attack ad on Twitter featuring Liberal leader Justin Trudeau as the spoiled drama queen Veruca Salt in the popular children’s story. The Cons were forced to pull the video over copyright issues. Yesterday, they turned the tables on the Libs over a clip from a 2020 video posted by Freeland of Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole suggesting he supports the privatization of health care.

For those who haven’t been following, O’Toole is responding in the video to a question from Kate Harrison during the Conservative leadership race. O’Toole says in the video that he supports provinces exploring “for-profit” options for health care.

Harrison posted a tweet in response to Freeland’s post to charge that the video “was manipulated to exclude important context”—namely, a portion of the Conservative leader’s response in which he maintains that universal access to health care “remains paramount”. Twitter responded by slapping a “manipulated media” label on Freeland’s tweet.

The specifics of that decision remain unclear. Twitter Canada’s website says it assigns the label “to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context”. And that “in order to determine if media have been significantly and deceptively altered or fabricated, we may use our own technology or receive reports through partnerships with third parties”.

But aside from the edited clips, Freeland also posted the entire video of O’Toole in her Twitter thread.

That didn’t stop the ensuing storm, however, with the Conservatives suggesting that the Libs are trying to “manipulate” and “mislead” the Canadian public on the party’s health care platform. The party went further, calling on Elections Canada to investigate and for the video to be removed from online platforms.

The Conservative party’s healthcare platform does in fact leave the door open for provinces to pursue for-profit health care. In response to questions from reporters at a press conference on August 24, O’Toole once again avoided answering directly on the question of private health care. At the same time, he reiterated that it’s up to provinces to decide what they want to do with health care transfers from the feds.

So why was Freeland’s tweet tagged? On that, the Libs smell a conspiracy. 

It turns out that Harrison is a vice-chair of Ottawa-based PR outfit Summa Strategies. Her company profile says she leads the lobbying firm’s Ontario government relations efforts. She’s also a former Harper-era staffer, as is her former Summa Strategies colleague Michele Austin. Austin these days is head of public policy at Twitter Canada. Her connections to the Conservative party run deep. She served as chief of staff for Rona Ambrose and Maxime Bernier before that. Her LinkedIn profile also highlights her role as a “speechwriter, legislative assistant, and communications specialist” involved in the writing of former Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s first policy document.

Harrison did not respond to an email request from us for comment. Twitter Canada spokesperson Cam Gordon says in an email response to us that Austin had nothing to do with the decision on Freeland’s tweet.

“Enforcement of our Twitter Rules are led by our Trust and Safety team, not by our Public Policy team. For clarity, members of our Public Policy team do not make decisions on what does and does not violate our rules.”

Gordon adds that “Our teams enforce the Twitter Rules judiciously and impartially for everyone on our service. Political ideology plays no part in this process.”

Gordon notes in a tweet sent out yesterday that the social media giant signed the Canada Declaration on Electoral Integrity Online in 2019, as part of its efforts “to foster healthy, meaningful #elxn44  conversations”. The declaration commits to “ensure principles of integrity, transparency, and authenticity are in place to support healthy and safe democratic debate and expression online, subject to Canadian laws and consistent with other legal obligations”. Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, TikTok, and YouTube are also part of the declaration. 

The federal Liberals attempted to pass regulations on online content as part of Bill C-10 before the election, but the bill failed to be given royal assent by the senate. The Bloc and NDP supported the proposed legislation, but the Conservatives did not.

In remarks in the House, O’Toole called the bill “a direct attack on free speech”. The Conservative leader called on the Libs to withdraw the bill. He wrote in an op-ed in the National Post that the bill “opens the door to a massive abuse of power”.

O’Toole quoted George Orwell. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” That goes both ways except, it seems, where the Conservatives’ health care policies are concerned.