Under Chief Justice Richard Wagner, the Supreme Court of Canada has become an institution obsessed with publicity. Which is why its decision to leave Twitter/X, where it has the strongest following, is clearly a political move — and an inappropriate one, considering the court’s supposed commitment to neutrality.
“Dear subscribers — moving forward, we will be focusing our communication efforts on other platforms,” read the announcement, posted Wednesday. “We invite you to follow us on our LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts to continue receiving our updates. Thank you for your support!”
The official reason for this, we are told via Free Press writer Rupa Subramanya who extracted the brief, vague explanation of “strategic priorities and resource allocation” from the court.
“We are focusing on platforms that allow us to best serve the public and provide relevant information about the Court’s work within our limited resources.”
It was a load of total corporate drivel. Taken literally, though, we are to understand that the court’s strategic priorities concerning outreach do not involve actually communicating in places frequented by the general public, and that it no longer has the staff and finances to post there from time to time.
The better explanation? Politics.
It’s all a little hard to believe. First off, social media management tools make it easy to post to multiple platforms. Second, the court hasa nine-person comms (including a six-figure outreach director). Are we really to believe they can’t handle a simple Twitter account?
And despite the court’s lack of resources, it’s still managing to tour the country — that is, speaking to members of the legal profession, with some high school students and Indigenous people peppered in — to “bring the Supreme Court closer to Canadians,” in the words of Wagner.
It’s also poured an unknown amount of its “limited resources” into revamping the website (a change that has inspired variouscomplaints by lawyers who note that it’s now harder to find important content) and starting up a YouTube account that has gained only 157 subscribers since its launch in January. Effective outreach? I think not.
That YouTube account posts little of consequence: clips no longer than three minutes in length consisting of archival footage, promotional material, information about the court that would be better communicated in a PDF and brief slideshow of the court’s recent trip to Victoria. Really, it’s a make-work project for court staff used to conjure up new accomplishments to list in annual departmental reports.
Elsewhere, the Supreme Court’s Instagram account, with just over 3,100 followers, only has modestly more reach than on YouTube. Facebook is somewhat better, with 12,000 followers. And on LinkedIn, likely due to the high concentration of legal professionals and those aspiring to join them, followers number 40,000.
Nowhere is the Supreme Court more popular than on X (follower count: 43,000), which shares the space with 600 million other users and which, per American data from the fall, is the platform with the most even political split. The court used it to tweet out announcements of new decisions, hearing dates and updates about the other activities outside the courtroom. If it were truly looking to efficiently maximize reach, it wouldn’t be leaving Twitter. No, the better explanation comes down to politics.
Twitter is owned by Elon Musk, billionaire, high inquisitor of the United States public service and ally of President Donald Trump. And thus, it’s been a target of recent boycotts: some Reddit communities have banned X links while certain large accounts on the platform have left for alternate sites such as BlueSky.
Canada’s leading promoter of gender ideology, Egale Canada, even left last summer, citing a “rise in anti-2SLGBTQI hate.” The charity, a frequent intervenor at the Supreme Court particularly when a gender-related case is at bar, often ran into critics on X who mocked its pronoun guides, obscure gender identity awareness campaigns and lawfare updates (all still available on LinkedIn).
The Supreme Court, like Egale and plenty others, has been the target of a dogpile or two, too. In 2024, when the court declared that “Achieving gender parity among judges at all levels in Canada” was a step in the right direction, it received a hurricane of blowback from people who just want to see courts staffed according to merit.
Beyond that, critics use the platform to question the court — both its decisions and its non-judicial activities as an institution. As far as the law goes, frustrations are aired each time the court oversteps: from enabling the slippery slope of government-provided euthanasia, to inventing race-based procedures within the criminal law, to promoting the view that gender exists on a spectrum separate from sex, to attacking Parliamentary supremacy.
And then, there are all the other missteps. The choice to hear proportionally fewer appeals than were heard in the 2010s. The ethically suspect refusal by the court to reveal the identity of the presumably wealthy patron who sponsored a bronze bust of the chief justice. The removal of all unilingual decisions from 1970 or earlier from its website because they are “outdated” with “very minimal” legal interest in Wagner’s opinion and thus not worth translating. The list can go on.
Wagner has bragged about how impartial his court is despite declaring his pride in the court’s progressive values. Between that and his court’s tendency to legislate liberal policy from the bench, it wouldn’t be off-brand for the institution to exit a social media platform populated in part by skeptics of left-wing policy and owned by a prominent conservative.
When I asked the court’s communications team specifically why they left the platform — and whether it was related to Musk, or criticism encountered on the site — spokesman David Lauer ignored my inquiries and simply repeated the same statement he gave Subramanya, adding that the court’s online presence has been “bolstered” by its YouTube account and the “What’s New” section of its website.
Since Lauer wouldn’t deny that the court’s exit from the platform had anything to do with its ownership or any criticism it’s received there, we should assume the answer is “yes.”
National Post