Heritage minister accuses Musk of 'meddling' in Canadian election
https://www.westernstandard.news/news/heritage-minister-accuses-musk-of-meddling-in-canadian-election/61163
The billionaire has been rather critical of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on X, and supportive of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge has accused Elon Musk of "meddling" in Canadian politics ahead of the election.
The billionaire has been rather critical of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on X, and supportive of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
"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," St-Onge told CTV News, "and he's doing it in Canada."
She went on to argue that, "we know and all the experts know that with everything happening online on social media, … we cannot trust these platforms as sources of information."
St-Onge said she viewed policies such as X's "community notes" fact-checking apparatus, which will soon be rolled out at Meta, as "extremely dangerous," adding that, "communication and information is the heart of democracy and of the election process."
The heritage minister also accused Poilievre of "kissing up to Elon Musk."
"I'm worried that Poilievre is saying that he's for sale," she said, "and that he's willing to sell Canada to these tech geeks and willing to destroy our independent news ecosystem."
St-Onge took particular issue with the Conservative leader's promise to defund the CBC.
"It's about talking about killing one of the most important sources of information for Canadians at a time where we know that the information system is controlled by foreign billionaires," she said, "and to me it's very preoccupying to see that [Poilievre] doesn't understand that."
In December, Musk appeared to agree with Bill Ackman, who declared that Poilievre was "extremely impressive" and "should be Canada's next leader."
He has repeatedly talked down to Trudeau, both before and after the soon-to-be-former Liberal leader announced his resignation.