Trudeau’s Department of Health paid Twitter ‘influencers’ over $680k to promote federal programs

‘I was paid by Health Canada to talk about my COVID experience and why I chose to take the vaccine’

Canada’s Department of Health has paid social media influencers over $680,000 to voice support for federal programs, reportedly including the experimental COVID shot, since 2021.

According to information published December 14 by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Department of Health admitted that they hired X (formerly known as Twitter) “influencers” beginning in 2021 to publicly support federal programs on their large platforms.

“Expenditures relate to work by an agency including planning, material development, influencer outreach and liaison, updates, content monitoring, evaluation and management of payments to influencers,” the cabinet wrote in an Inquiry of Ministry.

Under the Influencer Marketing Program, influencers were paid a total of $682,166 since 2021, the same year Canada released the experimental COVID vaccines. The influencers were expected to support the federal programs but not to tell the public that they had been paid to do so.

The government-funded X handles include: AlanisDesilets, ArcticMakeup, BreCarpeRuns, CaleonTwins, CassandraBouchard, CharlotteB123, ChelazonLeroux, ChKairyn, ChristineKissickHome, DanielleIsAnxious, DashingDad_YYC, DoTheDaniel, EveMartel, FleurMaison, IAmSukhManGill, Indigenous_Baddie, ItsChrisRobins, JahJahBanks, JemmyEchd and JoselyneEffa.

Others were: Life_With_Benjamin, MomRdy2Go, OhKairyn, PascaleDeblois, PlayingWithApparelMen, RafaelLeroy, Riddjyy, ShaneWhalley, ShoshanaRose, SidAfz, ThatWarriorPrincess, TheDadCode, TheDiyMommy, TheLoistGirlsGuide, TheTinaSingh, ThreeLittleSeedlings, TresDuchelle, TychonCarter, UrduMom, VahineLefebvre, VardaEtienne and YoutheCEO.

While many of the accounts have since been deleted, one of the influencers, going by the handle “Chelazon Leroux,” admitted that he had received payment for promoting the COVID shot but claimed it did not amount to propaganda.

“Long story short,” Leroux, who works as a “drag queen,” posted on X. “I was paid by Health Canada to talk about my COVID experience and why I chose to take the vaccine, not to force anyone else.”

“This is no different than people getting paid to promote any other government program, education, healthcare, economics,” he claimed. “And you’d do it to for a bag.”

https://twitter.com/ChelazonLeroux/status/1735514996346343447

Health Canada’s plan to hire influencers was disclosed in a March 24, 2021 notice, which failed to outline the cost of the project. According to the program, influencers were expected to “build the department’s credibility” and must not “tarnish Health Canada’s or the Government of Canada’s reputation.”

“Digital influencers are defined as people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic,” the notice said. “They make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic, engaged people who pay close attention to their views.”

Despite Health Canada’s attempts to justify the program, it was roundly blasted as propaganda by many Canadians.

“Health Canada has hired social media influencers and minor celebrities to tout the great work it’s doing on Canada’s response to the pandemic,” then-Senator Linda Frum said.

“These government-paid influencers are not required to reveal they are government-paid influencers because that, of course, would be very embarrassing,” said Senator Frum, adding that the program is a tax-funded attempt to “spread disinformation about Health Canada’s response to the pandemic.”

Similarly, many Canadians who just learned about the program thanks to the recent report took to X to voice their concern.

“The Govt of Canada paid big money to influencers to advance the governments narrative,” former intelligence officer and RCMP officer Tom Quiggin wrote.

The Govt of Canada paid big money to influencers to advance the governments narrative.

When @JustinTrudeau talks about disinformation – he is correct. But he is the problem.

(BTW, this is just one dept. No idea on how widespread this practice is in other depts) https://t.co/jMM2wZgaWK

— Tom Quiggin (@TomTSEC) December 14, 2023

“When @JustinTrudeau talks about disinformation – he is correct. But he is the problem,” he added. “(BTW, this is just one dept. No idea on how widespread this practice is in other depts).”

In 2021, Trudeau said Canadians “vehemently opposed to vaccination” do “not believe in science,” are “often misogynists, often racists,” and questioned whether Canada should continue to “tolerate these people.” 

A recent study done by researchers at the Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest found that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots and boosters.  

In November, LifeSiteNews reported about an internal memo from the nation’s health department that shows that officials have refused to release data concerning internal audits related to the COVID crisis that indicate “critical weaknesses and gaps” in its response to the so-called pandemic. 

Later the same month, Statistics Canada found that deaths from both COVID-19 and “unspecified causes” surged following the release of the so-called “safe and effective” vaccines.

LifeSiteNews has published comprehensive research on the dangers of receiving the experimental vaccine, including heart damage and blood clots.  

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NIH Quietly Altered Definition For Gain-Of-Function Research On Its Website, Former Fauci Aide Confirms

Published on May 16, 2024

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JASON COHEN

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak confirmed on Thursday that his agency’s communications department altered NIH’s definition for gain-of-function research, with the change being “vetted” by “experts.”

The NIH until Oct. 20, 2021 defined this research as “modif[ying] a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent,” while “some scientists use the term broadly to refer to any such modification,” according to the House Oversight Committee. Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York questioned Tabak, a former aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci, about the agency changing its definition of the research on its website, asking him who authorized the alteration.

WATCH:

The current website does not define gain-of-function research, but asserts this research is usually uninvolved with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.

“The change was made by our communications department because of the confusion that people have about the generic term of gain-of-function and the specific term gain-of-function,” Tabak testified.

Malliotakis responded by suggesting the communications department would not be qualified to make a change like this and must have had other input.

“The content was vetted,” Tabak testified. “By individuals who are subject-matter experts.”

Fauci firmly denied that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded gain-of-function research on bat-based coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) before the COVID-19 pandemic during a Senate hearing in May 2021.

“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said.

Tabak testified on Thursday that the NIH did fund this research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but it “depends on [the] definition.”

The NIAID, which Fauci previously led, funded the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study bat-based coronaviruses in China that consisted of the transfer of $600,000 to the WIV, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.

COVID-19

COVID Lab Leak: Over four later, EcoHealth Alliance funding is finally suspended

Published on May 16, 2024

Todayville

From Heartland Daily News

Thursday, May 16, 2024

Federal Funding Stripped From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy

Today, the Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This morning, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds.

“The immediate suspension of [EcoHealth Alliance] is necessary to protect the public interest and due to a cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects EHA’s present responsibility,” wrote HHS Deputy Secretary for Acquisitions Henrietta Brisbon in a memorandum signed this morning.

For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.

In a memo justifying its funding suspension, HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells.

Congressional Republicans leading an investigation into EcoHealth’s research in Wuhan, and the role it may have played in starting the pandemic via a lab leak, cheered HHS’s decision.

“EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health [NIH] grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R–Ohio), chair of the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a statement. “These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.”

Beginning in 2014, EcoHealth received a grant from NIH’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study bat coronavirus in China. Its initial scope of work involved collecting and cataloging viruses in the wild and studying them in the lab to spot which ones might be primed to “spillover” into humans and cause a pandemic.

Soon enough, EcoHealth used some of the viruses they’d collected to create “chimeric” or hybrid viruses that might be better able to infect human lung cells in genetically engineered (humanized) mice.

This so-called “gain-of-function” research has long been controversial for its potential to create deadly pandemic pathogens. In 2014, the Obama administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that might turn SARS, MERS, or flu viruses into more transmissible respiratory diseases in mammals.

In 2016, NIH flagged EcoHealth’s work as likely violating the 2014 pause.

EcoHealth President Peter Daszak argued to NIH at the time that the viruses his outfit was creating had not been proven to infect human cells and were genetically different enough from past pandemic viruses that they didn’t fall under the Obama administration pause.

Wuhan Institute of Virology and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance

NIH accepted this argument under the condition that EcoHealth immediately stop its work and notify the agency if any of its hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in humanized mice.

But when these hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in mice, EcoHealth did not immediately stop work or notify NIH. It instead waited until it submitted an annual progress report in 2018 to disclose the results of its experiments.

A second progress report that EcoHealth submitted in 2021, two years after its due date, also showed its hybrid viruses were demonstrating increased viral growth and enhanced lethality in humanized mice.

In testimony to the House’s coronavirus subcommittee earlier this month, Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIH’s reporting system.

The HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIH’s reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there and the lab’s biosafety conditions.

These all amount to violations of EcoHealth’s grant agreement and NIH grant policy, thus warranting debarment from future federal funds, reads the HHS memo.

That EcoHealth would be stripped of its federal funding shouldn’t come as too great a shock to anyone who watched Daszak’s congressional testimony from earlier this month. Even Democrats on the committee openly accused Daszak of being misleading about EcoHealth’s work and manipulating facts.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D–Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House’s coronavirus subcommittee, welcomed EcoHealth’s suspension, saying in a press release that the nonprofit failed its “obligation to meet the utmost standards of transparency and accountability to the American public.”

An HHS Office of the Inspector General report from last year had already found that EcoHealth had failed to submit progress reports on time or effectively monitor its subgrantee, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

When grilling Daszak, Democrats on the Coronavirus Subcommittee went to great lengths to not criticize NIH’s oversight of EcoHealth’s work. The HHS debarment memo likewise focuses only on EcoHealth’s failures to abide by NIH policy and its grant conditions.

Nevertheless, it seems pretty obvious that NIH was failing to abide by the 2014 pause on gain-of-function funding when it allowed EcoHealth to go ahead with creating hybrid coronaviruses under the condition that they stop if the viruses did prove more virulent.

NIH compounded that oversight failure by not stopping EcoHealth’s funding when the nonprofit did, in fact, create more virulent viruses, and not following up on a never-submitted progress report detailing more gain-of-function research until two years later.

The House Subcommittee’s investigation into NIH’s role in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab is ongoing. Tomorrow it will interview NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawerence Tabak. In June, it will interview former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.

Originally published by Reason Foundation. Republished with permission.