The Liberal Minister of Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, has accused Elon Musk of “meddling” in foreign elections, and claimed that “all the experts” know that his X platform cannot be trusted as a news source.
“What we’ve been witnessing in the past few weeks is a guy, a billionaire that owns a very influential platform, meddling in other countries’ elections and politics, and he’s doing it in Canada,” St-Onge said in an interview.
Musk, who recently endorsed Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, has been openly critical of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him a “clown” and “insufferable tool” last year. Musk often posts about political issues and leaders from various countries, something that St. Onge said is “extremely dangerous.”
“Communication and information is the heart of democracy and of the election process,” she added.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg abolished the “fact checkers” from his Meta platform, a group that he recently acknowledged was politically biased towards the left. In their place, Zuckerberg adopted a system that resembles X’s “Community Notes.”
Instead of relying on a centralized group of “professional” fact-checkers, Community Notes empowers users to contribute to content moderation. Any user can sign up to become a contributor, although they must meet certain criteria like having an active phone number and no violations of platform rules.
Liberals paying up to 35% of legacy media journalists’ salaries
Last year, the Liberal government revealed that taxpayers will be doling out up to 35% of mainstream media journalists’ salaries for the next four years, which can be up to $30,000 per employee.
The budget update stated that they will be increasing the labour tax credit for newsrooms they consider a “qualifying journalism organization.”
In response, the University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist stated that it raises “enormous concerns about the independence of Canadian media.”
“While the government claims this is being done to ensure a ‘strong and independent’ press, it is not hard to see how the opposite may be true,” Geist wrote.
The Trudeau government first introduced the labour tax credit in 2019, which was part of their $600 million media bailout announced just months before the 2019 Canadian election.
