Article content

At home one night last month, Michael Harris was surprised to discover that Glen Murray, minister for the environment and climate change in Ontario’s Liberal government, had blocked him on Twitter.

Harris, a Progressive Conservative MPP, had been following a discussion thread on the social media platform and was taken aback to discover he was cut off from reading it. So he decided to use parliamentary procedure to compel Murray to tell him why.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ontario minister blocks opposing MPP on Twitter. MPP uses parliamentary procedure to ask why Back to video

Harris has a power at his disposal that most Twitter users don’t: the order paper question. Placing a question on the order paper lets an MPP get specific information from a minister’s office. Each MPP can have 10 questions on the order paper at a time, which usually relate to budgets or complicated policy programs. “Will the Minister of Finance provide the total number of licensed tobacco growers in 2015,” reads a typical recent one.

On May 17, Harris used one of his questions to force Murray to account for blocking him.