The current state of the Canadian Forces
(media.omegacanada.win)
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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.
You don't have to be a lawyer to understand the distinction between making statements as a representative of the CAF, and making them as a private citizen.
I bet a lawyer could also successfully argue it isn't separate, but since neither of us are lawyers we pull out our ASSumptions.