OTTAWA — Elon Musk’s increasing “meddling” in politics and recent changes at Meta to eliminate fact-checking make Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s promise to defund the CBC even more consequential, said Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge.
She said the issue isn’t about left or right-wing politics, or “even if you like the CBC or not.”
“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,” St-Onge said in an interview. “And to me it’s very preoccupying to see that (Poilievre) doesn’t understand that.”
A supporter of incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, Musk has become an increasingly controversial and political figure in recent years, particularly since buying Twitter and rebranding it as X. Musk has also recently waded into Canadian politics, attacking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and praising 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, and he’s doing it in Canada,” St-Onge said.
“We know and all the experts know that with everything happening online on social media, we know that we cannot trust these platforms as sources of information.”
Meta, meanwhile, announced earlier this month that it’s replacing third-party fact-checking with “community notes” written by users, similar to the model used by Musk’s X.
The announced changes to content moderation on Facebook and Instagram were long sought by conservatives. The community notes model will launch in the U.S. before expanding to other countries.
Experts have warned the changes could lead to more misinformation.
Asked about moves by these platforms toward Trump-friendly policies or towards being openly right-wing, St-Onge said “it’s extremely dangerous. Communication and information is the heart of democracy and of the election process.”
The Liberal government has clashed with Meta over the company’s decision to block news content on its platforms, in response to Liberal legislation that would have forced Meta to compensate news outlets for displaying their content.
St-Onge’s comments come as the federal Liberals have launched a leadership race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and opposition parties are angling for an early election that could see Canadians head to the voting booth this spring.
Poilievre has pledged that if he’s elected to government, he’ll defund English-language CBC while preserving Francophone news. In response to a request for comment on St-Onge’s criticisms, a spokesperson for Poilievre pointed to the Conservative leader’s recent comments on Musk.
Poilievre didn’t directly answer when asked whether he accepts Musk’s endorsement, but said it would be “nice if we could convince Mr. Musk to open some of his factories here in Canada.”
St-Onge accused Poilievre of “kissing up to Elon Musk.”
“I’m worried that Poilievre is saying that he’s for sale, and that he’s willing to sell Canada to these tech geeks and willing to destroy our independent news ecosystem.”
St-Onge, who has promised a renewed mandate for the public broadcaster, said Poilievre’ plan would mean defunding a “Canadian institution that hires a third of Canadian journalists” and comes “at a time when president Trump is talking about annexing Canada to the United States.”
At a recent news conference, Trump threatened to use “economic force” to make Canada the 51 state. Musk has been tagged by Trump to co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency.”
St-Onge said that with Musk being a part of the Trump administration, X is “not an independent source of information.”
“It’s extremely preoccupying because a lot of people think that they are getting informed with these platforms and with Facebook and 1/8Meta CEO Mark3/8 Zuckerberg, we’ve seen that they don’t really care about that.”
Instead, St-Onge said, they care about the bottom line, “their billions” and “the power that their platform gives them.”
–With files from the Associated Press