Ten days before the election, as advance polls opened, the CBC was projecting 197 seats on the red side, and 122 on the blue. A Liberal majority. 

Full disclosure: I want the Liberals to win. I want Mark Carney to win. In our riding, I want Chris Malette to win. 

It looks like I might get my way. 

But wait. I can’t help but remember, that’s how things looked in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost the election. 

So, while I am heartened to see the Liberals with a strong lead, I note the Conservatives are still close. They are much closer in the popular vote than in the seat map projections. In the popular vote, things stand about 42 percent Liberal to 37 percent PC. Anything can still happen. Our own riding is a much closer contest. The Liberals have pulled ahead now, but only just. 

As we have learned, there are forces out there that swing voters, and elections, to very bad places. I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to see posts from Rebel News and Canada Proud on my Facebook feed. My page is a silo, a warm bubble bath of sanity and thoughtful reflection. I see posts from extended family, a few friends, Robert Reich, and Heather Cox Richardson. Over and over again. 

Those legendary algorithms, which seem to lay the world at our feet, endlessly, are, in fact, designed not to do that. They only give us what they think we want, and not very much of that. 

To other people’s pages, Meta sends fake news posts from illegitimate influencer organizations — I say illegitimate because they post disinformation. That is information the poster knows to be false, as opposed to misinformation, which someone may share not knowing it to be false. 

The person I want to be PM, Mark Carney, recently called out American online platforms as a threat to Canadian sovereignty. 

“Tariffs aren’t the only American policy threatening our economy and society,” he said, in a speech on April 10. “They’re also threatening the safety of our communities. Criminals are taking advantage of irresponsible American gun laws and their weak border enforcement to bring their illegal guns into Canada. Large American online platforms have become seas of racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hate. My government will act.”

Mr. Carney is an excellent speaker. His words have force. Here, he links the failure to regulate hate speech and disinformation on its digital media platforms to America’s notoriously lax, and dangerous, gun laws. 

His words were timely. In the last few months, President Trump’s administration has clarified, if you will, the links between fascism, disinformation, and the destruction of a free and accountable press. 

Meta, you need to be aware, does not allow actual journalism on its sites in Canada. Fake news, yes. Legitimate journalism from established news organizations, no. 

A 2023 public inquiry into foreign interference into our elections, headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, concluded with this observation: “In my view it is no exaggeration to say that at this juncture, information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy.” 

“It is an existential threat.” 

Over the last few weeks, Meta’s platforms in Canada, Facebook and Instagram, have been flooded with disinformation about Mark Carney. Canada Proud, a right-wing propaganda organization, started to target the new Prime Minister the day he was elected. A series of attack ads linked him with Jeffrey Epstein’s “global child sex trafficking ring.” Ten separate Facebook ads linked Mr. Carney to Epstein in a campaign whose posts were viewed two million times. Meta’s Facebook ad library shows it cost US $15,000.

Jeff Ballingall, the founder of Canada Proud, was retained by the Poilievre Conservative Leadership campaign in 2022 and he is now working for the Conservative Party. In February, he announced a budget of $200,000 for the campaign against Mr. Carney, according to Press Progress. Throughout the election campaign period, Canada Proud has been running ads on Facebook and Instagram like this one: 

There is a WOKE REVOLUTION happening in our classrooms. Teachers are more focused on indoctrinating our children than educating them. We need to protect our children before it is too late. Step up now.

Underneath a large picture of a woman in a gag, another ad reads:

The Liberals are obsessed with silencing YOUR voice and stripping away free speech.  Canadians cannot let this happen. Stand up for freedom and take action now. 

Seven versions of this ad ran from January through March, targeting 4 million accounts nationwide. The total campaign cost about $800. Economical, no? Running a social media campaign based on lies and disinformation has never been easier or less expensive. Another ad reads: 

Mark Carney is working with the Century Initiative to flood Canada with 60 MILLION PEOPLE — breaking our housing and healthcare systems. The worst part? Their strategy is working. Polls show the Liberals SURGING. That’s why we’ve launched a MASSIVE campaign to expose Carney before it’s too late.

While these posts might once have seemed laughable, we now know they are not. They legitimize hate-filled, lie-strewn narratives. They instill fear, and they win people over. They echo the lies about immigrants we’ve seen south of the border, who eat pets, kidnap women and children, and are staging a takeover of the country.

We know who is staging the real takeover. And it started with fake news. 

A cornerstone of the Poilievre campaign is to legitimate this sort of thing as “free speech.” 

Meta’s ad library shows Canada Proud spent over US$1 million on attack ads on its platforms in Canada between June 2019 and April 2025. At the same time as Mark Zuckerberg collects millions from organizations spreading disinformation to distort election outcomes, all legitimate news, from The Guardian to the CBC, is blocked on its platforms in this country. 

If this is not large-scale interference in our internal democratic processes, I don’t know what is. 

As Mr. Carney underscores, the U.S., by enabling a flood of disinformation in its own country, is spreading lies, distortions, and evil. 

Mark Carney is calling it out. Chris Malette, our Liberal candidate, worked as a journalist and newspaper editor for 36 years. He, too, calls it out. 

These are the people I want leading the country. 

Pierre Poilievre, well, we all know his antagonism to journalism. What is more hidden is his active spreading of disinformation as part of his election campaign. 

Not only is it appallingly unethical, it also means we can take nothing for granted. 

Please vote.