The Peterborough Examiner e-edition

MP apologizes for salty rant

Ferreri also drops paid subscription page on Facebook

JOELLE KOVACH

A video of Peterborough-Kawartha MP Michelle Ferreri drinking wine and unleashing a profanity-laced rant — shot last year, but newly surfaced on social media — prompted an apology tweet this week from the MP.

The video shows Ferreri in late March 2020 taking aim at a woman who’d written her a comment online that had upset her; in response, Ferreri drops eight f-bombs in a one-minute clip.

During the tirade she holds a wine glass on which she wrote the F-word in marker.

“F- - - you Karen!” Ferreri shouts in the video.

Ferreri is a former television news reporter with CHEX-TV (now Global Peterborough) who posts frequent videos of herself talking about politics on her Facebook page. Her account clearly identifies her as the MP for Peterborough-Kawartha.

In one candid video from Sunday, Ferreri and her sister are chatting when the sister asks what it’s like sitting in the House of Commons.

“It can be extremely boring,” Ferreri responds. “But democracy is boring, because every single person has the right to speak. And so you have to listen — everybody gets a turn, that’s what democracy is.”

By Tuesday, viewers of Ferreri’s Facebook videos were being prompted to pay $6.49 monthly “to get exclusive access to unique perks like a chat mode only for supporters, and early access to livestreams.”

Although The Examiner did not subscribe, some local social media users did — and one of them posted the clip of Ferreri’s rant, stating that it was part of the exclusive content available to subscribers.

By Friday, the subscription service — which was introduced on Monday — had been deleted.

On Thursday, Ferreri issued an apology about the rant.

“As an elected official, I have to be held to a higher standard,” Ferreri posted on her Twitter account. “I apologize to my constituents and to anyone who took offence to inappropriate language I used in a video circulating online.”

She doesn’t mention in the posting or elsewhere on social media that the clip had been available through paid subscription.

The Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner for the House of Commons was asked this week whether Ferreri contravened the code of conduct for MPs by charging for access to her Facebook content.

Jocelyne L. Brisebois, the communications officer for the office, told The Examiner that strict confidentiality rules prevent her from commenting on individual cases such as Ferreri’s.

However she did state in an email that there is nothing in the conflict of interest code that prevents MPs who are not ministers from holding another paid job or from running a business, as long as they can carry out their MP obligations.

Meanwhile there is an area of the conflict of interest code that states MPs are prohibited from “acting in any way that would further your private interests or those of a family member,” which could include using their MP position to increase their income “from employment, a contract, a business or a profession.”

Prior to her election as the Conservative MP, Ferreri described herself as a vlogger, speaker and marketing consultant and she used social media platforms to carry out business. But in a Facebook video she posted in September, she tells viewers that all the paid content on her page would soon “go away” and she’d use Facebook for promotion of the riding.

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2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://thepeterboroughexaminer.pressreader.com/article/281505049504736

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