Well funded right-wing social media pages including Canada Proud have dominated the platforms this election by playing fast and loose with the facts, leading to a downward online spiral into division.

As Canadians endure one of the most divisive federal election campaigns in memory, the dominant media narrative from the right has been that most journalists are unable to cover it fairly because of the hundreds of millions in federal subsidies they have received from the ruling Liberals over the past seven years, which the Conservatives have threatened to cancel. According to the hyperbolic Peter Menzies over at The Hub, “the future of a free and independent press and the public’s trust in it is on the line [on] Monday. It will live. Or it will die.” A more overlooked side effect of the Liberal largesse toward news media owners is that Meta’s ban on posting links to news on its social networks Facebook and Instagram, which it imposed to comply with the Online News Act without paying publishers millions annually, has resulted in well funded right-wing influencers dominating the platforms by playing fast and loose with the facts. It’s a story that has been reported by independent media in Canada, including PressProgress, a publication of the Broadbent Institute, which noted even before the election was called that Canada Proud was running Facebook ads linking Prime Minister Mark Carney to the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The ads featured photos of Carney and his wife next to Ghislane Maxwell, the late Epstein’s girlfriend, at a British music festival when he was governor of the Bank of England in 2013. “He’s in politics to help his rich, creepy friends, not working Canadian families,” one ad claimed. The Toronto Star explained the photo by reporting that Maxwell went to high school with Carney’s sister-in-law, whose family owns the property on which the festival was held. PressProgress also noted that an AI-generated photo of Carney and actor Tom Hanks visiting “Epstein Island” went viral on X and quoted advocates claiming that such ads show a need for greater regulation of social media........

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