By Cecilia Nasmith
A compliment and a warning came to Northumberland County council at its June meeting from its integrity commissioner.
“We are very pleased to say we haven't had to resolve complaints we have had to investigate and report on,” said Janice Atwood-Petkovski of Principles Integrity – which represents some 40 municipalities including Northumberland.
The warning was for councillors to be extremely wary when managing their social-media accounts. In fact, Atwood-Petkovski recommended, “There's probably an opportunity to adopt a policy with respect to guidance on social media.”
The message came in one of the periodic presentations the agency has made to council since its appointment by council in 2018. Their work includes not only handling the complaint-driven side of things, Atwood-Petkovski noted, but also providing advice and guidance. One of the most recent matters of this nature was their input in 2020, as county council devised and initiated its new standing-committee governance model.
Given that social media is now ubiquitous (especially most recently, given constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic), “it is important to recognize members of council cannot simply, arbitrarily block or delete those who have a contrary view.”
When a social-media account belongs to a councillor, she said, it becomes a public conversation – even a town-square kind of forum where members of the public feel entitled to speak freely.
“There has to be recognition that there's no entitlement of that member to arbitrarily erase opposing views,” Atwood Petkovski stated.
As well, she continued, “it's not appropriate to simply start up on social media and walk away and ignore it for a month.”
It's an area that is growing and evolving – therefore, she said, response to it is in a sense a pioneering effort to respond to issues that are becoming evident day by day.
“What integrity commissioners are doing is providing interpretations and recommendations,” she said.
Atwood-Petkovski called for council to establish some kind of guidance on managing and curating social-media accounts, especially in the case of negative and offensive comments.
The motion passed in response to her presentation directs staff to consider an uptake to the social media policies in keeping with her recommendation.
