Multiple federal departments and agencies have interacted with social media companies to request online content be taken down, often times to have impersonating accounts removed but also to purge posts they deemed offensive.

The Canadian government provided the information on March 27 in an Inquiry of Ministry following an order paper submitted by Conservative MP Dean Allison.

Allison asked for an account from each governmental organization on efforts to “take down, edit, ban, or change in any other way social media content, posts, or accounts, since January 1, 2020.”

The most serious case involves employees of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) sharing private taxpayer information in a Facebook Messenger chat group. CRA requested the information be taken down but says it didn’t receive confirmation it had been.

Organizations in general didn’t provide the name of the accounts they were targeting and only provided generic information, but the border agency did.

The director general for communications at the Canada Border Services Agency sought to have posts removed for “hate speech or symbols,” “harassment or bullying,” as well as nudity and impersonation.

The agency flagged accounts associated at one point to former CBSA employee Patrick McNulty, who was reported to be under investigation last summer. McNulty made posts on social media critical of COVID-19 measures and advised travellers on how to avoid the once-mandatory ArriveCAN app to enter Canada.

Posts by Instagram accounts “exbordercop” and “the_real_mcnulty” were flagged for “harassment or bullying” but the social media company reportedly did not take them down. Those accounts currently appear to be inactive.

The National Post wrote in August about a social media post made by McNulty in which he reportedly made disparaging comments against a CBSA supervisor. The Epoch Times did not see the post.

A request for comment from the border agency was not immediately returned.

Other agencies under the Public Safety portfolio did not report sending many requests to social media companies. Public Safety Canada itself said it hadn’t and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service declined to answer citing operational security.

The RCMP reported making a single request for a take down and it involved a Facebook account impersonating then-commissioner Brenda Lucki which was sending out fake messages. Facebook deleted the account.

Multiple organizations contacted social media companies to have content they deemed offensive removed. Accounts involved and details of the targeted posts are not available.

The Public Health Agency of Canada’s online actions focused on “offensive language” on Twitter.

It made 21 requests to the social media company from December 2020 to have the flagged tweets removed, but Twitter only took action on three occasions.

Health Canada had more success with its requests to Facebook to have posts removed. In February 2021, its Chief of Social Media requested that three posts on “disinformation about lifting of COVID 19 restriction” be taken down and the document says the company followed through.

Two requests to Twitter in December 2022 to remove posts showing “abusive behaviour towards a Health Canada employee” were also successful, along with another exposing private information about an employee of the department.

The Digital Innovation and Engagement Division at Global Affairs Canada (GAC) handled all the departments’ requests for takedowns.

GAC reported having submitted eight requests over the period to Twitter and Facebook, mostly for “content violating terms of use.” One request to Twitter was for “threat of violence.” All of the posts were removed, says the Inquiry of Ministry.

The Business Development Bank of Canada under GAC also complained about an offensive tweet directed at one of its employees, but Twitter did not remove the post. It successfully flagged to LinkedIn and Instagram impersonating accounts.

The Treasury Board requested LinkedIn and Facebook delete comments made on posts about diversity and inclusion. It says the comments were “racist, hateful, sexist or defamatory.” The document says the comments were not entirely deleted. Another containing “hate speech” was removed by Facebook.

The Competition Bureau under Innovation Canada requested that Twitter take down an “offensive reply” to one of its tweets in March 2020, but the company did not take action.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), which oversees Service Canada and Passport Canada, flagged posts on Twitter for “encouraging criminal activity” by the promotion of fraudulent vaccination certificates.

Other ESDC takedown requests related to content making a “reference to violence (suicide/self-harm),” impersonating accounts and spam.

The director of communications at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada asked Facebook and Twitter to take down a post in September 2021 that linked back to a Toronto Sun article.

It said the article contained “serious errors of fact risking undermining public confidence in the independence of the Board as well as the integrity of the refugee determination system.”

The Inquiry of Ministry notes the posts were not taken down given they linked back to the Sun’s article.

The paper had reported on Sept. 6, 2021, that the Trudeau government was removing barriers for asylum claims in Canada, citing a leaked draft document from the Board.

The Board had more success when asking Facebook to remove a post containing confidential information on a refugee claim.

The Department of National Defence (DND) says it also makes takedown requests, but it did not provide any data due to not centrally tracking the information.

“When necessary, National Defence will ask social media companies to take down posts from other users if they contain information that poses a risk to operational security, or if the post violates the terms and conditions defined by the social media platform,” says DND.

It added that its Public Affairs group contacts social media companies several times a month to ask for the removal of fake DND or Canadian Armed Forces-related accounts.

The country’s eavesdropping agency under DND, the Communications Security Establishment, made numerous requests to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to have accounts removed for “brand infringement” and impersonation, and all were successful.

Public broadcaster CBC also says it requests that social media companies take down content that infringes on copyrights or that violates the platform’s terms of use, but said it doesn’t systematically track the information.

Heritage Canada, linked to internet regulation bills C-11 and C-18, says it has not made any takedown requests over the period covered.

The self-reporting by government entities through the Inquiry of Ministry likely only provides a partial picture of efforts to remove content deemed undesirable, with some organizations involved not providing any data.

Efforts in the U.S. by the government, NGOs, and elected officials to remove posts on social media have been more widely documented through the release of internal Twitter files since Elon Musk took over the company in October.

One recent release by journalist Matt Taibbi on March 17 detailed how Stanford University’s Virality Project had contributed to the censorship of true information on COVID-19 across platforms.

He wrote the project which started in 2021 “worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content.”