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A seemingly celebratory Easter weekend tweet by Veterans Affairs Canada has sparked an unholy storm online.
“We want to wish Veterans, current members of the @CanadianForces and @rcmpgrcpolice and their families a happy March holiday season! ☀🌷 #CanadaRemembers,” the organization shared in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Good Friday afternoon.
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Critics, and there were many online, noted the post skirted around mentioning the Easter Christian holiday celebrated around the world both culturally and religiously. Good Friday is also recognized as a Statutory Holiday by the Government of Canada. Good Friday is observed by Christians as the day Christ died on the crucifix and Easter Sunday is celebrated as the day he rose from the dead.
“What is a March holiday season?” questioned X user Sue Kelland-Dyer. “I think the holiday is Easter. I am not even Christian and I recognize it is Easter,” tweeted X user, Vance Yung.
The Veteran Affairs tweet had over a million views, over 3.3K comments and over 800 shares at the time of publication.
“It’s Easter. I grew up in India and it was Easter then. We celebrated our friends and neighbours religious celebrations as they did ours. Eid, Diwali etc. I’m ashamed and scared that this is what our forces are spending time on instead of protecting the country for all. You have only one stand – protect and defend the country,” tweeted Shawn Desouza.
Multiple prominent Conservatives mocked the tweet, including Larry Brock, Member of Parliament for Brantford-Brant, who dismissed it as “politically correct” in a post of his own. Tweeted Sarah Fischer, the Conservative party’s director of communications: “Canadian men and women didn’t sacrifice their lives to defend the principles of freedom for our government to classify Easter as ‘March holiday season’.”
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The post did refer to the Christian holiday in a lesser way. The description of the image as seen on X reads: “Sailor First Class Saje Olson and Sailor First Class Megan Ivany standing side by side in a kitchen smiling while preparing a special Easter meal for the crew of HMCS FREDERICTON during Operation REASSURANCE, on 09 April 2023 in the Mediterranean Sea.”
“If you wanted to dismiss Easter so badly, why did you refer to it in the ALT text? Your social media manager gets paid how many tens of thousands of dollars a year in public dollars and still can’t get the workplace critical theory stuff down pat? Embarrassing!” said Ryan O’Connor, X user, lawyer and partner at a GTA firm.
Although Veterans Affairs Canada didn’t respond to any of the Twitter comments, National Post has reached out to them for a comment.
As Conservative MP for Oshawa, Colin Carrie put it: “Respectfully, this was beyond silly.”
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