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

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.” 

Related Topics:#AnthonyMurdoch #Blacklock'sReporter #LifeSiteNews #SenatorDonaldPlett SenatorLucieMoncion

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Artificial Intelligence

Google denies scanning users’ email and attachments with its AI software

Published on November 25, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Charles Richards

Google claims that multiple media reports are misleading and that nothing has changed with its service.

Tech giant Google is claiming that reports earlier this week released by multiple major media outlets are false and that it is not using emails and attachments to emails for its new Gemini AI software.

Fox News, Breitbart, and other outlets published stories this week instructing readers on how to “stop Google AI from scanning your Gmail.”

“Google shared a new update on Nov. 5, confirming that Gemini Deep Research can now use context from your Gmail, Drive and Chat,” Fox reported. “This allows the AI to pull information from your messages, attachments and stored files to support your research.”

Breitbart likewise said that “Google has quietly started accessing Gmail users’ private emails and attachments to train its AI models, requiring manual opt-out to avoid participation.”

Breitbart pointed to a press release issued by Malwarebytes that said the company made the changed without users knowing.

After the backlash, Google issued a response.

“These reports are misleading – we have not changed anyone’s settings. Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model. Lastly, we are always transparent and clear if we make changes to our terms of service and policies,” a company spokesman told ZDNET reporter Lance Whitney.

Malwarebytes has since updated its blog post to now say they “contributed to a perfect storm of misunderstanding” in their initial reporting, adding that their claim “doesn’t appear to be” true.

But the blog has also admitted that Google “does scan email content to power its own ‘smart features,’ such as spam filtering, categorization, and writing suggestions. But this is part of how Gmail normally works and isn’t the same as training Google’s generative AI models.”

“I think the most alarming thing that we saw was the regular organized stream of communication between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the largest tech companies in the country,” journalist Matt Taibbi told the U.S. Congress in December 2023 during a hearing focused on how Twitter was working hand in glove with the agency to censor users and feed the government information.

If you use Google and would like to turn off your “smart features,” click here to visit the Malwarebytes blog to be guided through the process with images. Otherwise, you can follow these five steps courtesy of Unilad Tech.

Open Gmail on Desktop and press the cog icon in the top right to open the settings
Select the ‘Smart Features’ setting in the ‘General’ section
Turn off the ‘Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet’
Find the Google Workplace smart features section and opt to manage the smart feature settings
Switch off ‘Smart features in Google Workspace’ and ‘Smart features in other Google products’

On November 11, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case alleges that Google violated the state’s Invasion of Privacy Act by discreetly activating Gemini AI to scan Gmail, Google Chat, and Google Meet messages in October 2025 without notifying users or seeking their consent.

Censorship Industrial Complex

UK Government “Resist” Program Monitors Citizens’ Online Posts

Published on November 24, 2025

Todayville

By Cam Wakefield

Bureaucrats once hired to spin the news are now tasked with scanning neighborhood Facebook pages for wrongthink.

Let’s begin with a simple question. What do you get when you cross a bloated PR department with a clipboard-wielding surveillance unit?

The answer, apparently, is the British Government Communications Service (GCS). Once a benign squad of slogan-crafting, policy-promoting clipboard enthusiasts, they’ve now evolved (or perhaps mutated) into what can only be described as a cross between MI5 and a neighborhood Reddit moderator with delusions of grandeur.

Yes, your friendly local bureaucrat is now scrolling through Facebook groups, lurking in comment sections, and watching your aunt’s status update about the “new hotel down the road filling up with strangers” like it’s a scene from Homeland. All in the name of “societal cohesion,” of course.

Once upon a time, the GCS churned out posters with perky slogans like Stay Alert or Get Boosted Now, like a government-powered BuzzFeed.

But now, under the updated “Resist” framework (yes, it’s actually called that), the GCS has been reprogrammed to patrol the internet for what they’re calling “high-risk narratives.”

Not terrorism. Not hacking. No, according to The Telegraph, the new public enemy is your neighbor questioning things like whether the council’s sudden housing development has anything to do with the 200 migrants housed in the local hotel.

It’s all in the manual: if your neighbor posts that “certain communities are getting priority housing while local families wait years,” this, apparently, is a red flag. An ideological IED. The sort of thing that could “deepen community divisions” and “create new tensions.”

This isn’t surveillance, we’re told. It’s “risk assessment.” Just a casual read-through of what that lady from your yoga class posted about a planning application. The framework warns of “local parental associations” and “concerned citizens” forming forums.

And why the sudden urgency? The new guidance came hot on the heels of a real incident, protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers, following the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl by Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian migrant.

Now, instead of looking at how that tragedy happened or what policies allowed it, the government’s solution is to scan the reaction to it.

What we are witnessing is the rhetorical equivalent of chucking all dissent into a bin labelled “disinformation” and slamming the lid shut.

The original Resist framework was cooked up in 2019 as a European-funded toolkit to fight actual lies. Now, it equates perfectly rational community concerns about planning, safety, and who gets housed where with Russian bots and deepfakes. If you squint hard enough, everyone starts to look like a threat.

Local councils have even been drafted into the charade. New guidance urges them to follow online chatter about asylum seekers in hotels or the sudden closure of local businesses.

One case study even panics over a town hall meeting where residents clapped. That’s right. Four hundred people clapped in support of someone they hadn’t properly Googled first. This, we’re told, is dangerous.

So now councils are setting up “cohesion forums” and “prebunking” schemes to manage public anger. Prebunking. Like bunking, but done in advance, before you’ve even heard the thing you’re not meant to believe.

It’s the equivalent of a teacher telling you not to laugh before the joke’s even landed.

Naturally, this is all being wrapped in the cosy language of protecting democracy. A government spokesman insisted, with a straight face: “We are committed to protecting people online while upholding freedom of expression.”

Because let’s be real, this isn’t about illegal content or safeguarding children. It’s about managing perception. When you start labeling ordinary gripes and suspicions as “narratives” that need “countering,” what you’re really saying is: we don’t trust the public to think for themselves.