Terms and Conditions - Twitter

The Military Grievances External Review Committee (MGERC) is an independent administrative tribunal reporting to Parliament through the Minister of National Defence.

The MGERC reviews military grievances referred to it pursuant to s. 29 of the National Defence Act and provides findings and recommendations to the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Canadian Armed Forces member who submitted the grievance.

Interacting With Us on Social Media

This notice has been written to explain how the Committee interacts with the public on social media platforms.

Content and Frequency

We use our social media accounts as an alternative method of sharing the content posted on our website and interacting with our stakeholders. By following our social media accounts, you can expect to see information about our activity. The number of tweets will vary, depending on the relevant material available. Your comments are welcome at any time.

Because the servers of social media platforms are managed by a third party, our social media accounts are subject to downtime that may be out of our control. As such, we accept no responsibility for platforms becoming unresponsive or unavailable.

Links to Other Websites and Ads

Our social media accounts may display links or ads for websites that are not under our control. The MGERC is not responsible for the information found through these links or ads, nor does it endorse the sites or their content.

Following

At this time, the MGERC will only follow other Government of Canada institutions and organizations which we believe are relevant to the mandate of our work. This could include following the Twitter accounts of non-profit organizations, associations and other governmental agencies.

Our decision to "follow" another social media account does not imply an endorsement of that account, channel, page or site, and neither does sharing (retweeting) content from another user.

Retweets

The Committee may retweet relevant material posted by other Government of Canada Twitter accounts and/or other accounts determined to be relevant to our followers and of significant value. This may include cross-linking, research findings, statistics, relevant events and conferences.

Comments and Interaction

We will read comments, but we cannot commit to replying to every one of them. We ask that your comments be relevant and respectful. The MGERC cannot tolerate comments that are offensive to an individual or an organization, rude in tone, or abusive. We do not discriminate against any views, but we reserve the right to delete comments that violate this notice, and the user may be blocked and reported to prevent further inappropriate comments. You are fully responsible for everything that you submit in your comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain.

We cannot engage in issues of party politics or answer questions that break the rules of this notice.

We reserve the right to edit or remove comments that:

• Contain personal information;
• Are contrary to the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
• Express racist, hateful, sexist, homophobic, slanderous, insulting or life-threatening messages;
• Are personal attacks and/or defamatory statements;
• Put forward serious, unproven or inaccurate accusations against individuals or organizations;
• Are abusive, aggressive, coarse, explicit, vulgar, violent, obscene, or pornographic;
• Are offensive, rude or abusive to an individual or an organization;
• Are not sent by the author (nor the copyright holder, if applicable) or posted by anonymous or robot accounts;
• Are solicitations, advertisements, or endorsements of any financial, commercial or non-governmental agency;
• Similarly, we do not allow attempts to defame or defraud any financial, commercial or non-governmental agency;
• Encourage or suggest illegal activity;
• Contain announcements from labour or political organizations;
• Are written in a language other than English or French;
• Are unintelligible or irrelevant;
• Are written using all CAPS (it is difficult to read and is interpreted as yelling);
• Are repetitive posts copied and pasted by multiple users or spam; and
• Do not, in our opinion, add to the normal flow of the discussion.

In short, please be respectful and make sure that your comments are relevant to the section where they are posted. The views of users commenting on our social media accounts do not necessarily represent the views of the Committee or the Government of Canada.

Anyone acting contrary to these rules may be temporarily or permanently excluded from the dialogue spaces on this site.

Users may provide video responses as long as they respect this commenting policy.

Direct Messages and @replies

Feedback and interaction are highly encouraged. All @replies and direct messages, as well as email sent to the Twitter account will be read, and any emerging themes or helpful suggestions will be passed to the relevant people in the department. Although we are not able to reply individually to all messages, they will be handled on a case-by-case basis and responded to when deemed appropriate.

Reporters are asked to send questions to the appropriate individual identified in Questions and Media Requests.

Accessibility of Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms are third-party service providers and are not bound by Government of Canada standards for Web accessibility.

If you have difficulty accessing content on our social media accounts, please contact us and we will try to solve the problem or provide you with the information in a different format.

Copyright

Information that we post is subject to the Copyright Act.

Privacy

The Committee's Twitter accounts are not Government of Canada websites and represent our presence on Twitter which is a third-party service provider. Users are encouraged to read Twitter's privacy policy.

Information shared with the MGERC on Twitter is subject to the provisions of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, which means that the information you share with our Twitter account may be captured, stored, accessed and disclosed in response to a request under either of these acts.

The personal information provided by you to the Committee’s social media accounts is collected under the authority of the Financial Administration Act, in accordance with the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada. This information is being collected to capture conversations between you and the MGERC via the committee’s social media accounts. “Conversations” include questions and answers, comments, retweets and other interactions where you provide feedback on content posted.

To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, the MGERC recommends that you do not include personal information in your comments or other content you post. Personal information includes home addresses and telephone numbers, photographs containing images of identifiable individuals, and any other information consisting of personal information as defined in paragraph 3 of the Privacy Act.

Official Languages

Many social media platforms have multiple language options and provide instructions on how to set your preferences. The Government of Canada respects the Official Languages Act and is committed to ensuring that our information is available in both French and English and that both versions are equal quality.

We reply to comments in the official language in which they are posted. If we think the response is a question of general public interest, we may respond in both official languages.

We may share links that direct users to sites of organizations or other entities that are not subject to the Official Languages Act and available only in the language(s) in which they are written. When content is available in only one language, we make an effort to provide similar content in the other official language.

Questions and Media Requests

Reporters are asked to send questions to

Najwa Asmar
Manager, Communications Services
60 Queen Street, 10th floor
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 5Y7
Tel.: 613-995-5120 or 613-240-4080 (cell phone)
Fax: 613-996-6491 or 1 866 716-6601
E-mail: Najwa.Asmar@mgerc-ceegm.gc.ca

Public Inquiries

Military Grievances External Review Committee
60 Queen Street, 10th floor
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 5Y7
Tel.: 613-996-8529 or 1 877 276-4193 (Toll-free)
E-mail: mgerc-ceegm@mgerc-ceegm.gc.ca