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Canadian Political Parties Really Suck at Vetting Their Candidates

On Monday, the Conservative party dropped two candidates after one was outed for making offensive prank calls years ago, and another for having urinated in a cup during a sting of appliance repair jobs by a television program.
Former Conservative candidate Tim Dutaud

Canadian political candidates are being caught both literally and figuratively with their pants down. All three major parties have dropped candidates after the unearthing of social media flubs — and a video of a Conservative candidate peeing into a stranger's mug — raising questions of how heavily parties vetted him and the others before running them.

In 2012, Toronto Conservative candidate Jerry Bance, a former repairman, was called to a home to fix a sink. CBC cameras caught him peeing into the homeowner's mug before dumping the urine into the sink. Following the revelations, on Monday the Conservatives announced he was no longer running. Bance said he "deeply regrets" the incident.

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Also on Monday, the Conservatives ditched another Toronto candidate, Tim Dutaud, after a YouTube video he posted in 2009 surfaced in which he prank called a woman and asked how long his viagra-induced erection would last. He then faked an orgasm.

And social media comments have led to the dismissal of candidates for the other two major Canadian parties, too.

In August, Calgary Liberal candidate Ala Buzreba stepped down in response to criticism over tweets she posted in 2011, when she was a teenager, including one that read: "Go blow your brains out you waste of sperm." In a statement, she said her comments were reflective of a younger person and she doesn't think that way anymore.

Also last month, the NDP cut loose Nova Scotia candidate Morgan Wheeldon after Conservatives unearthed a controversial Facebook post by Wheeldon that said in part, "One could argue that Israel's intention was always to ethnically cleanse the region." He said the post was taken out of context.

Social media comments took down a Conservative candidate last month, too. Giles Guibord's presence was scrubbed from the Conservative party website following scrutiny of his online posts over the years.

According to CBC, one of his posts read: "To be fair, I think it's better to speak of men's authority over women, than of superiority. I think that male-female relations were not determined by religion, but rather by forces present before religions [existed]. Man was stronger than woman, the woman was placed under his protection. Because of pregnancies, women were often in a state of fragility or insecurity, so men protected them, etc."

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Despite the numerous social media gaffes and dropped candidates this election, political analyst and head of Aurora Strategy Group Marcel Wieder tells VICE News it's the responsibility of the candidates to tell the parties about their questionable behaviour before they run.

"The parties don't have the resources to look under every nook and cranny of a person's life," Wieder said. "It's all based on voluntary disclosure, and so candidates have to be upfront with the parties, and in the agreement to be a candidate, parties usually stipulate that should something come out, that they're not aware of, they reserve the right to terminate that candidate's candidacy. That's because of things like this."

Any potential candidate has to fill out an extensive document, and then a party staff member will conduct an online investigation, "but it may not turn up anything, and therefore the candidate is given the green light."

Related: PM Stephen Harper Triggers Canada's Longest Election Campaign Since 1872, Amid Faltering Economy

The opposition will then start going through their backgrounds in the same way, and will try to turn up a nugget that will reflect badly on the party. That's often how the past surfaces, as in Wheeldon's case, in which his past comments were posted to Conservative attack website Meet The NDP.

Extreme examples of peeing into mugs or viagra prank calls aside, Wieder says the issue of past social media comments is akin to the old question parties used to ask candidates: have you smoked marijuana?

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In the past, a potential candidate admitting they had smoked weed would have disqualified them from running, he says. But changing values have made the weed question a non-issue today.

"Social media is going to mature over the years, and public attitudes toward social media are going to evolve as well," said Wieder. "People I believe will see some of those common indiscretions the same way that they saw whether you inhaled or smoked marijuana in the '60s or '70s — they're going to say yeah, it was something they did at the time, but that shouldn't disqualify them from holding public office."

For one Alberta politician, controversial social media posts surfaced after her election, in May.

Calgary NDP MLA Deborah Drever faced criticism after an album cover emerged in which she posed as if she were about to be sexually assaulted. The 26-year-old politician apologized and said the photo no longer reflected her values.

But it wasn't her first questionable post online — she had previously posed next to a marijuana leaf T-shirt, and was accused of being homophobic after she wrote "gay boyz" under an Instagram post. These led to calls for her resignation, including by one unimpressed Grade 10 student, who organized a protest.

"Your past can never escape you," Wieder told VICE News. "That's the motto. Everything lives on the Internet, and there is no delete button on the Internet."

Follow Hilary Beaumont on Twitter: @hilarybeaumont