In reaching out to Elon Musk, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre left the impression he’s trashing Canadian broadcasters while aligning himself with a billionaire who has turned the social media world upside down.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 24, 2023.

OTTAWA–BuzzFeed News is shutting down and Twitter users are fleeing the platform in droves. Fox News has been hit with a $787.5-million lawsuit for publishing false information about Dominion Voting Systems presidential election count in 2020. The media world—social and otherwise—is roiling.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre reached out to Elon Musk, the current owner of Twitter, to ensure the company identifies the CBC as a government-funded media outlet. Political parties are lining up on one side or the other of the media divide.

To fight back, CBC has joined the “Global Task Force for Public Media,” whose aim is to underscore the fact that editorial independence is protected by law. No government has any influence on what to cover. The task force is accusing Twitter of misrepresenting their editorial independence.

While the Fox saga was unfolding in the United States, it involved Dominion, a Canadian-founded company.

In Canada, last week’s media attention was largely focused on the Twitter fight between Poilievre and the CBC.

Poilievre went hard after the CBC in English, but was strangely silent in French. He has pledged to fully defund the CBC, but at the same time, he says the Radio-Canada arm of the organization should remain.

His call to defund the CBC cites the total annual $1.24-billion federal government subsidy. That promise has created a tidal wave of opposition in Quebec.

The Twitter attack succeeded in drawing attention to the Conservatives’ plan to cancel funding for the CBC, which may not have been in the party’s game plan.

Defunding the CBC is obviously very popular with Poilievre’s base. But the same cannot be said for the rest of the country.

In Quebec, Radio-Canada is untouchable, and Poilievre’s Twitter attack woke the province up to his plan, but not in a good way.

Both the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois attacked Poilievre. His decision to make a “government-funded” tagline plea to an American billionaire raised the ire of just about everyone.

That outreach also hurt him in the rest of the country, even with those who are not the strongest supporters of the CBC.

It left the impression that Poilievre was trashing his own country’s broadcasters while aligning himself with Musk, who has turned the social media world upside down with his Twitter changes.

While Poilievre’s popularity numbers remain competitive, he cannot win the election with a wipeout in Quebec.

And a campaign promise to cancel funding for Radio-Canada will certainly gain him no friends in La belle province.

In response to the “government-funded” tagline, the CBC announced it would no longer be using Twitter to cross-pollinate radio and television stories.

Other users have also been dropping off en masse, but it is unclear at this point which alternate social media site will fill in the gap left by the Twitter exodus.

South of the border, what could be the world’s largest defamation decision made waves in media outlets everywhere, except on the Fox News Channel.

The culpable channel only broadcast the Dominion payout three times, with a total of about six minutes of coverage.

While the financial outcome of the case was stunning, the agreement did not force Fox media personalities to apologize or acknowledge the lies. Instead, a statement issued by the corporation was the only recognition that multiple lies were repeated on the network in an effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

A Fox statement acknowledged “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Legal trouble in pursuit of the truth does not end there. Dominion is also following up on defamation cases against other news outlets and Trump lawyers and supporters, including Rudy Giuliani.

Meanwhile, Fox’s Tucker Carlson has just produced a documentary suggesting the United States should move in to take over Canada and liberate it from Justin Trudeau’s communist tyranny.

Carlson may not realize it, but Poilievre should know that a Fox attack on the Liberal leader will actually push more people into Trudeau’s corner.

By allying himself with Musk, the Tory leader runs the risk of alienating Canadians.

The media landscape is changing rapidly, in Canada and globally. The Dominion defamation suit reaffirms that the truth matters when it comes to broadcasting, but Twitter can hang a false handle on the CBC with impunity.

Musk’s rocket blew up last week. So may Twitter.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

I never was much of a tweeter until earlier this year, when another columnist accused me of taking my marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office. The attacks were in the Twittersphere, so I decided to fight fire with fire. Like everyone, I am anxiously awaiting the Monday’s election outcome. And on Monday evening, I am taking a break from that vicious medium, Twitter.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on October 21, 2019.

OTTAWA—Goodbye Twitter! I can’t wait until this election is over.

Like everyone, I am anxiously awaiting the outcome. And on Monday evening, I am taking a break from that vicious medium.

I never was much of a tweeter until earlier this year, when another columnist accused me of taking my marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office.

The attacks were in the Twittersphere, so I decided to fight fire with fire.

For weeks, the word war was abuzz with contradictory stories of SNC-Lavalin and former attorney general and justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. My question at the time, still unanswered, was “why does Wilson-Raybould want to deliver the election to Andrew Scheer?”

The Twitter response was brutal. I was deemed anti-women and anti-aboriginal. I was so discouraged at the vitriol emanating from that universe that I vowed to get out.

But a friend made me promise to hang in there until the election was over.

She believed that social media interventions would play a major role in the election outcome.

At her request, I agreed to stay active on Twitter until Oct. 21. It has been a debilitating and exhausting experience. It is impossible to influence anonymous participants who are so filled with hate.

I am a great believer that negativity breeds negativity. To be happy in life, you should surround yourself with positivity.

That isn’t possible on Twitter. I found myself getting more and more negative by the day. But people should vote on the positive program of a government.

Trudeau has made more than his share of mistakes. But as for his agenda, never in the history of the country has a prime minister embraced Indigenous reconciliation so wholeheartedly. Never has a prime minister taken the issue of climate change to heart, and developed a real plan to turn the situation around. Never has a prime minister aggressively tackled poverty and embraced minority sexual communities.

Trudeau’s vision is exemplary. He definitely deserves the second term that former U.S. president Barack Obama recommended.

Obama’s words speak for themselves. “I was proud to work with Justin Trudeau as president. He’s a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change. The world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbours to the North support him for another term.”

With that endorsement from such a respected world leader, Trudeau should be rewarded with re-election. Maybe the experience of the last four years will also strengthen his backbone.

One of his biggest mistakes was not dealing with the poison festering in his own cabinet.

Trudeau’s patience with two cabinet ministers who were attacking him publicly was, without a doubt, a reflection of his commitment to do politics differently.

On the surface, that vision inspired a whole generation of political agnostics to get involved.

But in the end, Trudeau learned what every prime minister has known since the beginning of Canada. There is only one way to do politics.

Governments need to lead, and if that means being tough from time to time, so be it.

The Liberals naively set up a committee to review the voting system, with the New Democrats in the chair.

But the failure to deliver on that voting promise is Trudeau’s and Trudeau’s alone.

He cannot waste precious election time explaining why there was no consensus in a Parliament where the Conservatives sought a referendum, and the New Democrats insisted on consideration of only one option, that of proportional representation.

Had a member of the government with political experience led the discussion, the voting system could have been changed.

Trudeau recruited fresh faces, including Canada’s first aboriginal attorney general. Wilson-Raybould had only three years experience working as a prosecutor.

He also named other newbies, talented people with incredible backgrounds, but zero political experience.

One of those was the minister responsible for delivering on Trudeau’s promise to change the voting system. Maryam Monsef went from Afghani refugee to a seat at the cabinet table with only eight months membership in a party.

To manage an electoral reform agenda, you need a broad and deep understanding of how elections work.

The “mantra” of doing politics differently has convinced former ministers Jane Philpott and Wilson-Raybould to run as Independents. They both believe Canada should be governed like a giant citizen’s assembly with members voting their constituents’ wishes.

In a country as diverse as ours, that would be chaos.

There is something to be said for a Westminster system that has functioned for more than 400 years.

Successful Parliaments are not about doing politics differently.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.