Satirical Montreal website digging up candidates' online gaffes

A Montreal-based satirical website is digging up controversial social media messages once posted by federal candidates.

And the project is raising questions about how voters should view online gaffes by politicians.

The True North Times is publishing a gaffe a day for nine federal candidates. 

One was Manitoba NDP candidate Stefan Jonasson who, in a 2012 Facebook post, said that Orthodox Jews are "much like the Taliban and other extremists."

Jonasson withdrew his candidacy after this gaffe was made public.

Another target was Ontario NDP candidate Alex Johnstone, who made a crude reference related to the Auschwitz concentration camp in a 2008 Facebook post. Apparently unaware of the iconic nature of the once-electrified fence in the photograph, she referred to the fence posts as "phallic," with  a "natural and healthy" curve.

Johnstone later said she didn't know what Auschwitz was.

A project to engage voters

While some of these online gaffes were informal, off-the-cuff banter among Facebook friends, the site's president says the project is meant to engage voters.

"When they see someone who may or may not be representing them say these sort of things, whether they agree or not, it'll motivate them to vote, whether it's left or right," said Simren Sandhu.

But as people's personal lives become ever more public in social media, one professor wonders if old online comments will be taken seriously by voters, with the passage of time.

"We're also encountering candidates that have grown up online and don't have the luxury of having some of their activities as a youth be forgotten," Fenwick McKelvey, an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University told CBC News.