The current state of the Canadian Forces
(media.omegacanada.win)
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Did they do it in uniform and/or using official CAF social media accounts?
You're entitled to political opinions - as a private citizen. That's why soldiers are allowed to vote. They're even allowed to participate in party politics to an extent.
It's when the military itself gets involved in politics that a line is crossed. So wearing uniforms in political demonstrations like pride parades, using official CAF twitter accounts to cheerlead for communist revolutionaries - that should get you kicked out at the very least.
Like, perhaps, the CDS encouraging CF members to participate in Pride parades in uniform? To have LGBTQ+ "champions". To hoist the LGBTQ+ flag on a base, on the 11th of September? THat kind of involvement?
This is a problem with your stance in my opinion. Where is the line? Can I post a picture of me in my uniform on Facebook with the caption "Trudeau/O'Toole is a traitor that has to be stopped" as CAF member?
And btw, no CPC member will speak out against this tweet. They would be kicked out by O'Toole faster than Bernier can spell supply management.
The distinction between doing something in an official capacity as a representative of the government and doing it as a private citizen is a pretty well established and easy to follow distinction.
No, because that would be a soldier - an agent of the government who has a duty to be apolitical - engaging in politics. You are not speaking with your own voice when you present yourself as a soldier in uniform, you're speaking as a representative of the government. You do not get to superimpose your personal political opinions onto the military by expressing them publicly while in uniform.
It's not as we see with the soldier that posted anti-Trudeau rhetoric. When is a solider an official representative of the government and when not? If I as CAF member have set the profile picture of my FB account to a picture of me in uniform does that change everything I can or can't say on FB?
When he's in uniform. That's the whole point of the uniform - to label you an agent of the Canadian government. Every soldier knows this. It's not a grey area.
You're also acting as a representative of the government if/when you're posting with an official government social media account.
No because in a court martial you could successfully argue that the profile pic is a non political statement, and the political comment you made with you account is a separate statement made out of uniform. That's why people don't get in shit for doing that.
What isn't debatable is if you stood there in uniform and made a public political statement to the cameras. Captioning a pic of you in uniform with a political statement would be the online equivalent of that.