Social media guidelines

The purpose of these guidelines is to describe how Citizenship and Immigration Canada will interact with the public through social media tools.

Official languages

Users are encouraged to participate in the official language of their choice.

What is and isn't acceptable?

Disagreements and constructive arguments are welcome as part of discussions and commentary. However, Citizenship and Immigration Canada reserves the right to edit, refuse or remove comments, including but not limited to those that:

• are contrary to the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
• express racist, hateful, sexist, homophobic, defamatory, insulting or life-threatening messages;
• put forward serious, unproven or inaccurate accusations against individuals or organizations;
• are aggressive, coarse, violent, obscene or pornographic in tone;
• are offensive to an individual or an organization, rude in tone or abusive;
• infringe on an individual's privacy;
• infringe on copyright;
• are put forward for advertising purposes;
• are written in a language other than English or French;
• contain announcements from labour or political organizations;
• are unintelligible or irrelevant;
• are repetitive or spamming of threads; and
• do not, in the moderators’ opinion, add to the normal flow of the discussion.

Anyone acting contrary to these guidelines may be temporarily or permanently excluded from the dialogue spaces on these channels.

To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, Citizenship and Immigration Canada recommends that you do not include telephone numbers or e-mail addresses in your comment or post.

How are comments moderated?

All comments are moderated. Some may be pre-moderated or screened beforehand. This means that Citizenship and Immigration Canada may read the comments before they are published to make sure they are acceptable. Comments that are not acceptable will either be deleted or not published. However, comments found on our channels do not necessarily represent the views of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

The moderating and posting of comments will generally occur during regular business hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time), Monday through Friday. Comments submitted after hours, on weekends or on statutory holidays will be acted upon as early as possible.

Can I contact Citizenship and Immigration Canada through social media?

While Citizenship and Immigration Canada aims to participate in discussions, we cannot commit to replying to comments or questions made through social media.

For privacy reasons, we will not comment on ongoing investigations, legal proceedings, applications or other matters where personally identifiable, confidential or restricted information is involved.