A candidate for municipal council in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality says someone is impersonating him in the online comments section of a local newspaper.

Mike Targett, who is running in District 5, said there was a comment attributed to him on the Cape Breton Post website that he supports Cecil Clarke for mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.

Targett denied endorsing anyone.

"The comment section of a community newspaper could be a really amazing resource," he told CBC News.

"We could be having a community wide conversation on there but the fact that you can't trust necessarily what you're reading is highly unfortunate, it means that it's essentially a wasted opportunity for a community wide conversation."

Targett said someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like he supports Clarke — they even created a fake email address in his name. He said the whole experience makes him question the value of online discussions when people can post anonymously or use false identities.

Targett isn't the only person to have their identity hijacked on the Cape Breton Post's online comments section — former mayoral candidate Owen Fitzgerald had the same problem.

He thinks the newspaper should do more to verify who's commenting on their website.

"When people are putting outright lies out there, to distort things, it's just not constructive and shouldn't be allowed," said Fitzgerald.

The Director of Editorial at the Cape Breton Post said the paper gets between 100 and 200 comments everyday.

Tom Ayers said all comments are read before they're posted, but the paper can't possibly double-check the source of each one.

"It really is a difficult balance between creating a space for conversation and making sure that conversation is legitimate and within legal bounds," said Ayers.

Ayers said when the Cape Breton Post discovers a fake comment, as in Mike Targett's case, they remove it right away.

The Cape Breton Post is soon moving to a new system that will require everyone who wants to post a comment to register first, a change that Ayers hopes will discourage impostors.