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The Ontario Liberal Party is having a tough time finding a candidate for Sault Ste. Marie.

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In a week’s span, it has crossed off two potentials on its list – local Indigenous lawyer Naomi Sayers and Espanola teen Aidan Kallioinen.

The party’s vetting process and social media posts of the want-to-be candidates seem to have been the issue in both cases.

Sayers has since chosen to run as an independent candidate for Sault Ste. Marie and we’ll let that process unfold as it will.

It’s the Kallioinen issue that’s a little more interesting.

The Grade 12 student, 18, who is set to graduate from high school just weeks after the election, is barely old enough to vote.

In fact, based on his age, he’s never voted in a provincial election. Yet his political interests, and perhaps savviness, almost saw him as a candidate in the June 2 election. His social media presence may have ended his political career very early.

The teen holds steadfast that he didn’t pen the derogatory and racial social media slurs on a gaming social media platform. Instead, he counters that his identity was falsely associated with the social media posts.

“I have no prior involvement in any of those comments and I can’t control what people are saying,” he said in a telephone interview. “I can tell you they were not my posts. I was about 13 or 14 when I was part of that online gaming forum for Minecraft and those comments were not made by me.”

Hmmm. Perhaps he wasn’t as savvy at 13 as he is now. Perhaps he didn’t take precautions to protect his account. Perhaps he’s telling the truth. We will never know.

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Kallioinen no doubt has a strong interest in politics. He’s appeared as a panelist on Sirius XM’s Canada Talks PolitiKIDS channel. He’s been involved in a high school political group or committee. His social media posts follow or share both federal and provincial political highlights of the day. He’s even written his own stories on thecanadianidea.ca, a youth-led news site, met former Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing MP Brent St. Denis and has toured the Ontario legislature.

While it appears he was grooming himself for a future in politics, that came to an abrupt end after The Toronto Sun published a column that alleges Kallioinen’s name is associated with a number of derogatory and racial social media slurs. Some are found on a gaming social media platform where he allegedly used the name outfieldcheck, while others are on allegedly on Twitter, Instagram and reddit. The posts have since disappeared.

Kallioinen denies scrubbing his own social media profile – or at least most of it.

So, shortly after the column appeared and was shared on social media, Kallioinen spoke to Liberal Party officials and he was quickly dumped as a candidate.

The real lessons to be learned here are about social media and how posts can help or hinder an individual’s goals.

Sayers says she’s also been open and honest about her past – as a sex worker – and her extensive social media presence, some of which is critical of the federal Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It’s obvious some people don’t like seeing her honest and blatant truth in her posts.

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On the other hand, Kallioinen says he doesn’t have a large social media presence for someone in his demographics, yet that which is present and resulted in his candidacy dismissal, is not his. That’s a tough one to prove one way or the other.

On Friday, it was announced the Liberals fired another candidate in the Chatham-Kent-Leamington riding after the NDP pointed out the candidate used a slur on Facebook. It earlier fired Parry Sound-Muskoka candidate  Barry Stanley for his unproven theory on the cause of homosexuality.

The Progressive Conservatives haven’t gone unscathed. Stephen Lecce was forced to apologize after his fraternity ‘slave auction’ fundraising event from more than a decade ago came to light. He has apologized and no further action has been taken – yet.

These incidents just go to show you that someone is always watching and words and actions don’t go unnoticed.

The reality is social media is a part of our daily lives and studies show that the time individuals spend on social media platforms is increasing. In other words, we’re likely to see and hear about even more of similar faux pas in the future and the incidents, photographs, or posts, are never completely erased.

While social media allows people to stay ‘connected’ to others and to events, among other things, posts are there in black and white. It’s like writing a letter or taking a photograph. It’s permanent. It’s there for all to see and any attempts to erase the undesirable later in life may not happen in its entirety.

Social media is continuing to evolve and will continue to become a more integral part of our lives. Similarly, social media users also need to evolve – and in some cases, beware before they press that ‘send’ button, click that image or speak certain words in front of others.

It’s not the social media platforms that should be branded as good or bad. Instead, it’s what individuals post to them that can be helpful or detrimental.

These are lessons that will continue to be learned – or not.

Elaine Della-Mattia is The Sault Star’s political reporter.