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Thursday, March 28, 2019

Google cuts anti-Trudeau site from newsfeed

At Trudeau’s behest, Gould instructed Google News to limit Canadian access to foreign press – The Buffalo Chronicle:

March 16, 2019 - "In the days approaching former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould‘s testimony to the House of Commons’ Justice Committee on February 27, at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s behest, Karina Gould, the Minister of Democratic Institutions, reached out to social media giant Google to pressure the firm to curtail political criticism of the Trudeau government on its platform.

"Gould placed a call to a senior government relations executive at Google, during which she complained about ‘hate speech’ and ‘toxic rhetoric’, referring multiple times to specific criticisms of the Trudeau government that she found objectionable. She then threatened sweeping regulations that would require unprecedented disclosures of advertising sponsors.... In response, the firm announced that it will not accept political advertising through the October elections....

"In the days following Wilson-Raybould’s testimony, and just two weeks after Gould told a House committee that there was 'more she was planning to do' to 'limit foreign influence' in the election, The Chronicle noticed that articles published on our digital platform relating to the ongoing SNC Lavalin scandal stopped appearing in Google News search results in Canada.  (Our coverage continues to appear in regular Google search results, and in Google News results in the United States.)

"On the same day as Wilson-Raybould’s testimony, Gould turned to iPolitics to publicly disparage a recent Chronicle report, with defamatory comments from Gould and a PMO spokesman. The author of the piece, Charlie Pinkerton, used a Twitter comment made by an obscure reporter who formerly wrote for Vice, to broadly characterize this publication as ‘fake’ news.

"iPolitics is a subsidiary of Torstar, the publishing giant managed by Frank Iacobucci (in his capacity as a current board member and former Chairman).... Iacobucci is a retired Supreme Court Justice and is at the center of the scandal that is engulfing the Trudeau government.  Iacobucci has been working as SNC Lavalin’s in-house attorney in their effort to secure a deferred prosecution agreement.  He was also appointed by Trudeau to manage the government’s consultations with indigenous people in order to secure approvals for the Trans Mountain Pipeline in British Columbia.

"Michael Wernick, the Clerk of the Privy Council, was the subject of the report that Gould was quick to go to the press in an attempt to discredit.... Wernick also sits as one of five government officials who comprise the newly formed ‘election protection unit’, who have been tasked by the Cabinet to monitor and neutralize ‘critical election incidents’.

"Less than two weeks after the bum iPolitics story, Gould announced that the Trudeau government will include $7 million in this year’s federal budget to monitor and actively discredit political content on social media platforms.... At the same time, the Trudeau government plans to offer Canada’s media giants $600 million in operating subsidies, which has unnerved free speech advocates across all party affiliations."

Read more: https://buffalochronicle.com/2019/03/16/at-trudeaus-behest-gould-instructed-google-news-to-limit-canadian-access-to-foreign-press/
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