It's become the new normal in the social media era — candidates for office getting embarrassed by some of their old social media posts.
Last week, a council candidate for eastern NDG became the latest to generate controversy with some of her old Facebook posts.
Caroline Orchard, running under the Coalition Montreal banner, is getting attention for posts about women and feminists, and for suggesting that rape culture doesn't exist.
In October 2016 she wrote on Facebook that "a man with an erection is not a danger to anyone. He is just a man and he acts as a consequence."
Earlier in the year, she also referred to feminists as "hypocrites", and suggests that feminism was created "for idiots to work and pay taxes! Period!"
She has since deleted the posts, and has expressed regret for them.
Coalition Montreal's leader, Marvin Rotrand, who's running for re-election in the Snowdon district, says he doesn't necessarily agree with the views she's expressed, but adds that she shouldn't have to be punished for them, either.
"Some of this actually tells us about the nature of Facebook, Twitter and other social media, that you can reply in haste or anger, and then create a permanent record that somebody can then take years in the future and try to paint you in a certain sort of way."
He points out that Orchard hails from the working class, and speaks that way — but she's also involved with her community, having founded the community group Le Grand Pas, which works with the homeless, Indigenous people, and dropouts.
"She is working class, and she does have a salty way of speaking," he says, "and the reason we decided to run her is because she said that it's more the tony parts of NDG that get recommended, not the working class and ethnically poorer parts of NDG...she wanted to put ideas forward about recreation and housing, and we thought they were all valid.
Meanwhile, Rotrand suggests Orchard's comments on feminism shouldn't be put in the same category as posts which are clearly racist or which incite violence.
"To oppose feminism, which I do not do, is something that's open to debate," Rotrand says. "There are a lot of men and women that share the opinion that feminism has pushed us into an attitude of [things] being too politically correct in our behaviors. I don't share that view, but others do."
Rotrand says ultimately, it's up to the voters to pass judgement.
Another candidate, Equipe Coderre's Jeremy Murray in the Claude-Ryan section of Outremont, also came under fire recently for controversial Facebook posts, suggesting, among other things, that black and Latinos were criminals, and making fun of rape and Parkinson's disease.
He, too, expressed regret for the comments, suggesting he was in his early 20s when he wrote them, and chalked them up to a lack of maturity on his part.