Fredericton member of Parliament Jenica Atwin, pictured in 2023, was first elected in 2019 with the Green Party before crossing the aisle to join the Liberals in 2021.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Jenica Atwin is leaving federal politics for the “time being” in part because of the online hate she receives, saying the level of toxicity she’s had to face has been surprising.
The Fredericton member of Parliament was first elected in 2019 with the Green Party before crossing the aisle to join the Liberals in 2021. It was around the time she joined the party of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that she decided to close her X account “because it was actually harming my mental health.”
“Just the constant barrage, the vitriol, the threats, and I think women, in particular my female colleagues, we’ve got it on a different level than a lot of our male colleagues,” she said in a recent interview.
She knew that going into politics would make her a target of negative online comments, but the amount of vitriol she received took her by surprise. The hate-filled messages on social media and in emails increased in 2022, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when thousands of truckers and other people occupied Parliament Hill during the convoy protests against vaccine mandates and other restrictions imposed by government.
During the protests, Atwin’s office regularly received “hate calls” from people in Canada and the United States. She said that “any time” she would speak in the House of Commons, “it would follow with a flood of these hateful messages and voice mails being left or things my team had to sift through, sometimes, again, actual threats that we had to follow up on with police.”
The hate she received included bomb threats, threats of sexual violence, and other verbal abuse. “It’s very bizarre stuff that people are feeling somehow emboldened enough to type and send.”
Such constant hate and insults “chip away” at people’s resiliency and take a toll on mental health, she said, adding that her parents, siblings and husband would get upset seeing vitriol about her online.
But it isn’t just her and other female colleagues who face such toxicity. She said she also worries about the effect the hate has had on the prime minister and his family. “My goodness, the prime minister – he bore the brunt of it all,” she said.
“I worry for his children. Anyone associated with him. He’s made the comment to us before, those “F— Trudeau” flags – Trudeau, that’s the name of his children, too. His kids have really picked up on that.”
In Quebec, following a wave of resignations of elected officials, the provincial government introduced legislation last year that includes fines up to $1,500 for people who threaten or intimidate politicians.
Chris Tenove, assistant director at University of British Columbia’s centre for the study of democratic institutions, said online hate speech has increased over the past decade, influenced by U.S. politics.
“I think the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the political and cultural clashes over it exacerbated polarization in politics, and that has played out as having more online abuse of politicians,” he said.
While there isn’t rigorous research on whether women face more online hate than men, or whether certain political parties are targeted more than others, there are patterns, Tenove said. People who are in the public eye, politicians, people with large followings on social media are all at risk of getting more hatred than those who are less visible, he said.
Online abuse toward women politicians takes a “gendered form,” he noted. “They’re either being dismissive of women because of their gender, or if they’re being threatening, it’s more likely to be sexually threatening.”
Tenove said some politicians can manage high levels of abuse and hostility, while others are more sensitive.
“They find that over time, the continual hostile and negative messaging that they’re getting undermines their mental, their emotional resilience and their interest in continuing to serve in this public-facing role, it also makes it harder for people to do their jobs, and including to run for office or to engage (with) their constituents.”
For the time being, Atwin said she will spend more time with her family, especially with her two sons, ages seven and 12.
She hopes that online hate begins to fade soon, and people start to understand that disagreements should be aired respectfully.
“It’s not like we can just put an algorithm on these sites and eliminate any of the hate speech or vitriol. That’s not the answer, right? So it’s not really clear-cut. It’s got to be a societal shift,” she said. “There’s no real silver bullet to how to do that.”
