Twitter terms of use

Interacting with Us on Social Media

This notice has been written to explain how Environment Canada (EC) interacts with the public in a business delivery model on Twitter.

Content and Frequency

We use our Twitter accounts as an alternative method of disseminating weather alerts to Canadians. By following our community-specific Twitter accounts, you can expect to receive information about weather alerts issued by EC. Please note that weather alerts via Twitter for hurricanes, air quality and sea ice are not available at the moment.

This is an automated system. We will not respond to questions or comments via Twitter @ECAlert accounts; however, we encourage users to contact the National Inquiry Response Team. We also follow provincial hashtags to track public reports, including ones such as #ONStorm.

Because the servers of social media platforms are managed by a third party, our Twitter accounts are subject to downtime that may be out of our control. As such, we accept no responsibility for platforms that become unresponsive or unavailable. Should our Twitter accounts be unavailable for whatever reason, Canadians will still have access to severe weather warnings through Canada.ca/weather.

Links to Other Websites and Ads

Our Twitter accounts may post or display links or ads for websites that are not under our control. These links are provided solely for the convenience of users. The Government of Canada (GC) is not responsible for the information found through these links or ads, nor does it endorse the sites or their content.

Following

Our decision to “follow” another Twitter account does not imply an endorsement of that account, channel, page or site, and neither does re-tweeting content from another user.

Comments and Interaction

We will not interact on Twitter; however, we reserve the right to block and report users to Twitter who violate this notice to prevent further inappropriate comments.

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

  • Users should not post information that:
  • Contains personal information;
  • Is contrary to the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
  • Expresses racist, hateful, sexist, homophobic, slanderous, insulting or life-threatening messages;
  • Puts forward serious, unproven or inaccurate accusations against individuals or organizations;
  • Is aggressive, coarse, violent, obscene or pornographic;
  • Is offensive, rude or abusive to an individual or an organization;
  • Is not sent by the author or is put forward for advertising purposes;
  • Encourages illegal activity;
  • Contains announcements from labour or political organizations;
  • Is written in a language other than English or French;
  • Is written in a language other than English or French;
  • Is unintelligible or irrelevant;
  • Is repetitive or spam; and
  • Does 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 where they are posted. The views of users commenting on our Twitter accounts do not necessarily represent the views of the Government of Canada (GC).

Accessibility of Social Media Platforms

Twitter is a third-party service provider and is not bound by GC standards for Web accessibility.

If you have difficulty accessing content on our Twitter accounts, please visit Canada.ca/weather, or 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

Our Twitter accounts are not GC websites and only represent our presence on third-party service providers.

For more information, please refer to our Privacy Notice.

Official Languages

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

Questions and Media Requests

Reporters can find contact information on our media enquiries page.

Page details

Date modified: