Randy’s back tweeting, for now

Jeff Green | Apr 14, 2021

Oh, the sacrifices I make so others don’t have to. I consider it my responsibility, as a reporter and editor, to follow certain people on social media, mostly on Twitter. It is usually not that onerous. In fact it brings information and story ideas.

But among those people whose accounts I follow are local politicians, and among those politicians is our local MPP, Randy Hillier.

One fall-out from Randy being turfed from the Conservative Party Caucus just over two years ago has been an unleashing of his opinions on his Twitter feed. Some of the old Lanark Landowner invective has re-surfaced, and now that Randy has decided to take on the mantle of chief COVID denier, he has become untethered in extreme ways.

Being reminded day after day, sometimes minute after minute, about what Randy stands for is not something I really need in my life. That’s where the sacrifice comes in.

Just under a week, I noticed that I was feeling a little less angry at the world. Then I noticed why. There were no Hillier tweets of retweets. He tweets a lot and retweets a hell of a lot. Out tax dollars at work.

The last thing he posted before disappearing was a retweet of post by a Pastor Henry Hidebrandt (@Aylmerpastor) that included this line, “Now we pause for a message from the Calgary division of the Canadian Gestapo.”

Interestingly enough @Aylmerpastor was tweeting away last week

I looked up twitter policy for suspending an account and there are three stages. A one-day suspension, which happened in February to @Randyhillier, a one week suspension, and a lifetime ban.

Ever since I have been waiting to see if @Randhillier would be back on Tuesday morning, and sure enough he was.

Among the pictures of “No More Lockdown” billboards, there was this tweet, in reference to the suspension – “Like the PCR test, the rumours of my contracting Covid were exaggerated & just as accurate. I’m alive, well, healthy & out of Twitter jail. This virus attacks social media accounts more than people. The trolls can once again wail & gnash their teeth.”

I love it when Randy talks about internet trolls.

While I am back in the mud now, reading these tweets, I am buoyed by the fact that the next time @Randyhillier disappears it will be forever.

And when the next election comes along, we will have a new MPP for this riding.

I hope Randy runs again, however. It will be a chance for all of us to call his bluff. He bullied the Conservative Party into accepting him as a candidate back in 2006 by threatening to run under his own banner and stripping votes from their rural base at time when the party was weak and vulnerable. It took them 15 years, and four leaders that he undermined one after another, until they finally turfed him out of the party.

Let’s see how many votes Randy gets in Lanark Frontenac Kingston, all on his own. It will tell us something about him, and maybe ourselves.