The international attention being received by the angry truck convoy’s occupation of Ottawa’s streets is causing a wave of fake news on the web and flooding the Prime Minister’s office with fact-checking requests.
“Like a marmot, Justin Trudeau, whom many believe to be the son of Fidel Castro, has just emerged from his burrow. On the airwaves of the American cable network Fox News, the popular host Tucker Carlson repeated several times last week strange assertions about the paternity of the Canadian prime minister. Repeatedly denied, the theory remains very popular with some Internet users obsessed with the physical resemblance between the two men.
“Welcome to the great awakening, patriot! writes for example a French account, which enthusiastically shares the misleading excerpt on Twitter. In fact, Justin Trudeau is the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau, and the social network Twitter has even seen fit to remind its users, suggesting for a few days a fact-checking article on this subject.
In the midst of crisis management for the blocking of the capital and certain border points, Justin Trudeau’s office had to answer a question from Reuters on Wednesday about the prime minister’s parentage. It was far from an isolated request, as evidenced by a list of foreign media requests to the Prime Minister’s press office obtained by The duty.
From Justin Trudeau’s made-up quotes to his alleged flight from the country to misleading images of the ‘Freedom Convoy’, Canada-themed fake news has exploded across the web since the country has taken center stage. world for its demonstrations against sanitary measures.
Trudeau-inspired
Did Justin Trudeau and his wife fake getting the COVID-19 vaccine? This is what the American daily was trying to find out USA Today, Thursday, to verify some claims circulating online. The answer is no. The couple got vaccinated in public, in front of the cameras.
The Prime Minister himself, widely known outside our borders, single-handedly inspires most erroneous or misleading Canada-themed publications, according to requests for fact checks by foreign media .
Internet users, for example, have posted images of shocking remarks which seem to be taken from Justin Trudeau’s Facebook page, but which are in fact invented from scratch. For example, he is accused of advising “to avoid talking to friends and family members who are not vaccinated”, while the Prime Minister has never said any such thing.
The American network CNN for its part has striven to deny a false assertion circulated on the Web, and taken up by a Republican elected official from Texas, Chip Roy, according to which Justin Trudeau would have fled the country for the United States on arrival truck convoy in Ottawa on January 29. In fact, the Prime Minister did not leave the federal capital region during this period. Declared positive for COVID-19, Justin Trudeau isolated himself in his official residence at Mousseau Lake, in Chelsea, Outaouais, from where he held a press briefing the following Monday.
Convoy exaggeration
The information surrounding the convoy of angry truckers, which has been camping in front of parliament in Ottawa for two weeks, has also been particularly the victim of exaggeration or deception on social networks.
Images of large crowds were presented as the march to Ottawa to end sanitary measures in 2022, reports AFP; they were in fact the streets of Moscow, in 1991. Photos of trucks were presented as proof of solidarity from Italian farmers; it was more like a parade at a festival.
The Associated Press has tracked viral social media posts that report — erroneously — that half of Ottawa’s police have quit their jobs in the wake of the protests. In fact, none of the 2,000 policemen and civilians in the capital’s police department quit because of the protest, according to the union’s president.
The size of the convoy of trucks has been the subject of many, sometimes farcical, conjectures. Popular American podcaster Joe Rogan, controversial for promoting misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, has claimed that 50,000 trucks are taking part in the “freedom convoy”. Former Canadian hockey player Theo Fleury also exaggerated, saying on Fox News that 1.4 million demonstrators landed in Ottawa. Estimates of “‘80,000’ or ‘over 130,000’ trucks have been circulating on social media,” CNN reports.
According to the Ottawa police chief, there were “more than 3,000 trucks” at the height of the demonstration, on January 29, and a maximum of 15,000 people who came to support them. Less than 400 trucks remain immobile in downtown Ottawa.
It should be noted that the organizers of the “Freedom Convoy” refute the police estimates. In interview with The dutyon Tuesday, a Quebec organizer said there were protesters “in every corner of the city […], the city being full to bursting”, contrary to the testimonies of many direct witnesses. She also indicated that the media “lie”, saying herself to get information from alternative media, since “through these media we are able to seek the truth”.