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Liberal-appointed senator brags about getting media to censor political opponent’s op-ed

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Ontario Senator Lucie Moncion, who was appointed by Trudeau in 2016, told the Senate she was able to get a August 21 piece published by Senator Donald Plett, who serves as the Opposition Senate leader, edited from its original form.

A Canadian Senator who was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasted to her colleagues that she was able to successfully get edits made to a commentary piece published by her political rival in a well-read newspaper. 

Ontario Senator Lucie Moncion, who was appointed by Trudeau in 2016 and is a former banker, recently told the Senate that she was able to get a August 21 piece published by Senator Donald Plett, who serves as the Opposition Senate leader, edited from its original form.  

The incident prompted Plett to state that Canada now has a “Senate communications police.” 

Plett, who is a Conservative Senator, wrote a piece in the Ottawa weekly newspaper the Hill Times titled, “Trudeau’s Experimental Senate Changes Are Turning Out To Be A Dud.” 

As per Blacklock’s Reporter, Moncion took issue with what was written in Plett’s piece, telling Senators, “Inaccurate information was presented,” and that they had to “remain vigilant.”  

According to Moncion, who serves as chair of the Senate committee on internal economy, she was able to get edits made to Plett’s piece. She had members of her staff make the revisions to Plett’s commentary, which included complaints about overspending in the Senate. 

Moncion claimed that “[o]nce a newspaper has the facts it is free to change an article, remove it or leave it as is,” adding, “I repeat: The newspaper is free to make corrections.” 

“In a democracy, it is essential to ensure information that is disseminated about our institutions is true in order to avoid contributing even passively to the spread of misinformation and disinformation that characterize our media landscape,” she said. 

Senators were told that the corrections made to Plett’s piece were not due to libel, or misstatement, but rather because of a technical aspect, according to Moncion. 

Censored Senator blasts edits, says Canada now has a ‘Senate communications police’ 

Plett was not too pleased with the changes made to his commentary, telling his fellow Senators that the Liberals wanted to “minimize” the actual cost increases made in the Senate since Trudeau took power in 2015.

“They wanted to change the meaning of the text, trying to minimize the increase in Senate expenses since Justin Trudeau took power,” he said. 

“This is outrageous. We now have a Senate communications police that will not only ‘fact-check’ what senators say or write outside the chamber, but they will also, in secret, change how you present your thoughts.” 

According to Plett, the Liberal government has a pattern of “doing anything to silence dissent and opposition.”  

Other Conservative Senators expressed their disgust with the fact Plett’s piece was seemingly force-edited by a Liberal-appointed Senator. 

“This should concern each and every one of us,” said Senator Leo Housakos. 

Housakos observed that there can be disagreement on public opinion as well as what is written in op-eds, but Senators “don’t have the right to instruct my staff to call any news outlet in the country to edit anything you say.” 

This is not the first time the Hill Times has been caught editing its news pieces. In 2020, it admitted that it had deleted a column critical of then Governor General Julie Payette, at the request of an unnamed official.  

When it comes to government officials trying to influence people’s opinions via the media, LifeSiteNews recently reported on how disclosed records revealed that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) spent over a quarter of a million dollars tasking employees to create “news” reports, some of which were published by Canadian media.   

Trudeau has pumped billions into propping up the mostly state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as well as large payouts for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 federal election. In total, the subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years. 

Despite the interplay of the state in media, Trudeau has claimed that Canadians must continue subsidizing the CBC and others to “protect our democracy.”  

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Senate Grills Meta and Google Over Biden Administration’s Role in COVID-Era Content Censorship

Published on November 2, 2025

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By Cindy Harper

Lawmakers pressed Meta and Google to explain how far White House outreach went in shaping their censorship decisions.

A Senate hearing this week discussed government influence on online speech, as senior executives from Meta and Google faced questions about the Biden administration’s communications with their companies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The session, titled “Part II of Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans,” highlighted the growing concern in Washington over what lawmakers describe as government-driven pressure to suppress lawful expression.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the hearing, began by declaring that “the right to speak out is the foundation of a free society” and warning that “censorship around the world is growing.”
He accused the Biden administration of pushing technology companies to restrict Americans’ speech during the pandemic, and he faulted both the companies and Democrats for failing to resist that pressure.
“Today, we pick off where the story left off,” Cruz said, pointing to Meta and Google as examples of firms that “were pressured by the Biden administration to censor the American people.”
He pledged to introduce the Jawbone Act, which he said would “provide a robust right to redress when Americans are targeted by their own government.”
Markham Erickson, Google’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy, defended the company’s approach, emphasizing that its moderation decisions are guided by long-standing internal policies, not by government direction.
“While we are a company dedicated to the goal of making the world’s information universally accessible, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have certain rules,” Erickson said, citing restrictions on “terrorist content, child sexual abuse material, hate speech, and other harmful content.”
He acknowledged that officials in the Biden administration had contacted Google during the pandemic to urge the removal of certain COVID-19 content from YouTube.
But Erickson maintained that the company “develop[ed] and enforce[d] our policies independently” and “rejected suggestions that did not align with those policies.”
Erickson also alleged that Google has a record of resisting censorship demands from foreign governments, citing its refusal to remove politically sensitive videos in Russia despite threats of imprisonment against employees and fines “that exceed more than the world’s GDP.”
Neil Potts, Meta’s Vice President of Public Policy, took a more reflective stance.
He reiterated that Meta has a “foundational commitment to free expression” and acknowledged that the company had yielded to “repeated pressure” from the Biden White House to restrict COVID-related posts, including satire and humor.
“We believe that government pressure was wrong and wish we had been more outspoken about it,” Potts said. He added that Meta “should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.”
Potts pointed to policy changes the company has made since then, such as ending its third-party fact-checking program, reducing restrictions on political topics, and adopting what he described as “a more personalized approach to political content.”
These steps, he said, were intended to “return to our ideals about free expression” and “allow for more speech.”
Senator Cruz pressed both executives on whether their companies regretted complying with government demands.
Potts responded that Meta “do[es] regret our actions for not speaking out more forcefully.”
Erickson, however, declined to use similar language, saying Google regularly receives “outreach from a lot of actors” and evaluates flagged material independently.
The exchange grew more pointed as Cruz questioned Google’s removal of a YouTube video that compiled election-fraud claims made by both major parties. Erickson conceded, “Yes, that is news,” when Cruz asked whether statements by presidential candidates about election integrity should be considered newsworthy.
But Erickson defended YouTube’s policies during the 2020 election, saying that after states had certified results, the company acted against “claims of widespread fraud” due to potential “real-world harm.”
Cruz accused Google of ideological bias and suggested the company was “unwilling to express regret for anything at all.”
He contrasted that with Meta’s statement of remorse and concluded that Google’s position reflected “a level of contempt for free speech that does not reflect well.”
Where Erickson had insisted that Google “continued to develop and enforce our policies independently,” the company’s letter to Congress acknowledged that “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach” urging the removal of COVID-19 content that did not violate platform rules.
This was somewhat of a departure from the defensive posture Google maintained before the Senate.
You read Reclaim The Net because you believe in something deeper than headlines; you believe in the enduring values of free speech, individual liberty, and the right to privacy.
Every issue we publish is part of a larger fight: preserving the principles that built this country and protecting them from erosion in the digital age.
With your help, we can do more than simply hold the line: we can push back. We can shine a light on censorship, expose growing surveillance overreach, and give a voice to those being silenced.
If you’ve found any value in our work, please consider becoming a supporter.
Your support helps us expand our reach, educate more people, and continue this work.
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Alberta

How one major media torqued its coverage – in the take no prisoners words of a former Alberta premier

Published on October 30, 2025

By

Frame grab from CTV News website

The Rewrite

(Editor’s note: I was going to write on the media’s handling of the Alberta government’s decision to order striking teachers back to work and invoke Section 33 of the Charter in doing so. But former Alberta premier Jason Kenney provided such a fulsome dissection of an absence of balance and its consequences in terms of public trust on X that I asked him if The Rewrite could publish it. He said yes and here it is – Peter Menzies.)

By Jason Kenney

This👇”story” is an object lesson for why trust in legacy media has plummeted, and alt right media audiences have grown.

Here CTV “digital news producer” @AngeMAmato (she/her) writes a story about “experts” calling the use of Sec. 33 “a threat to democracy.”

Who are the experts?

A left wing academic, and a left wing activist. The latter, Howard Sapers, is a former Liberal MLA (which the article does not mention) for a party that is so marginal, it has not elected an MLA in over a decade.

For good measure CTV goes on to quote two left wing union bosses, who of course are predictably outraged.

A more accurate headline would be “Four people on the left angry about use of Notwithstanding Clause.” Which is the opposite of news. It’s the ultimate “Dog Bites Man” non-story.

Did the CTV producer make any effort to post a balanced story by asking for comment from academics / lawyers / think tanks who support use of Sec. 33? Did she call the @CDNConstFound or the @MLInstitute’s Judicial Power Project? Did she attempt to reach any of these four scholars, who just published their views in a @nationalpost op-ed last week?

Did she have an editor who asked why her story lacked any attempt at balance?

And did anyone at CTV pause for a moment to ponder how tendentious it is to accuse a democratically elected legislature of acting “undemocratically” by invoking a power whose entire purpose is to ensure democratic accountability?

She provides some historical context about prior use of Sec. 33. Why does that context not include the fact that most democratically elected provincial governments (including Alberta under Premier Lougheed, and Saskatchewan under NDP Premier Blakeney) agreed to adopt the Charter *only if* it included the Notwithstanding Clause to allow democratically elected Legislatures to ensure a democratic check and balance against the abuse of undemocratic, unaccountable judicial power?

Why does she not mention that for the first 33 years of the Charter era, the Canadian Courts ruled that there was no constitutionally protected right to strike?

Why doesn’t she quote an expert pointing out that Allan Blakeney defended the Saskatchewan Legislature’s 1986 use of Sec. 33 to end a strike as “a legitimate use of the Clause?” Or refer to Peter Lougheed’s 1987 commitment to use Sec. 33 if the courts invented a right to strike?

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Many thoughtful criticisms can be levelled against Section 33. Being undemocratic is not one of them.

So why do we see so much agitprop like this masquerading as news from so many legacy media outlets?

IMO, there are two possible answers:

1) They are blind to their own biases; and / or

2) People like @AngeMAmato believe that they have a moral imperative to be “progressive journalists” which trumps the boringly old fashioned professional imperative to be objective and balanced.

Whatever the reason, “journalists” like this have no one to blame but themselves for growing distrust of legacy media, and the consequent emergence of non traditional media platforms.

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Jason Kenney

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