In April 2022, which was more than a year after I quit the organization I saw a Facebook post from the Canadian Coast Guards public Facebook page. This post was celebrating my past supervisor stating that ‘he strives to do his best and leads by example’. I felt this was a complete mischaracterization of him and I posted a reply that explained why. My comments related to concerns that I had with this supervisor which I raised while employed.
Admittedly, challenging the veracity of the CCG’s Facebook (FB) and Twitter postings were not the best forum for re-raising my concerns, but I felt social media was the only remaining avenue left to me. I wanted to warn others and make managers and union members aware of my continuing concerns about this supervisors harassing and belittling behaviors’ and the toxic workplace at Prince Rupert MCTS office.
In my post, I questioned whether he was a suitable member for the CCG to publicly celebrate given my, and other colleagues’ serious concerns with his long term and well-known bullying and harassing behaviors’. I also did not want general members of the public to be led to believe that all was well within Prince Rupert MCTS. I felt that serious workplace environment issues continued to be present. In short, I did not want others like me to experience what I had experienced from him and the dysfunctional MCTS workplace.
In this FB exchange, it became apparent that nothing had changed. Comments from presently employed MCTS members and a supervisor continued to reflect the negative and demeaning manner with which I was treated while employed. I was attacked and bullied on-line. As an institution, the CCG circled the wagons and blocked our FB accounts. We can no longer access the CCG’s public FB page and are not free to publicly comment on their page. Management in the West asked National Headquarters of the CCG communications office to effectively ‘cancel’ and silence us from making our views known on their authorized Government FB page. The status quo, of allowing MCTS members to bully and make abusive comments intended to belittle and demean me, continued to take place – even though I was now a member of the public.
I filed an Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) report to gain information as to who initiated the block to the public CCG Facebook page and found it was my manager. In her emails to the National Headquarters (NHQ), and the superintendent of MCTS Western, my manager calls my actions ‘deplorable’, and she immediately defends the supervisor which I accused of bullying and discriminated against me during my whole tenure at MCTS. I was left with the belief that she had minimized and suppressed the concerns I had raised with her and never investigated or actioned them further.
Here is a copy of a few of those social media exchanges: 2022-Apr – Social Media Exchanges – redacted