A number of false claims are swirling around the ongoing Canadian protests against coronavirus safety measures.
Right-wing operatives are circulating a fake letter purportedly from Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau that claims he would meet for a short time with protesting truckers who can show proof of vaccination, but CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale said the phony document has a number of dead giveaways.
"In addition to its bizarre substance, the letter has other obvious signs of phoniness: grammatical errors, inconsistent formatting and a title ('Ottawa Convoy Protesters') oddly placed above the logo of the Prime Minister's office," Dale reported. "Some social media users suspected the document was intended as parody, but others took it as real. Trudeau told reporters in late January that he had no intention of meeting with the protesters."
Other right-wing social media influencers are falsely alleging that a court ordered Ottawa police to give back fuel they seized from protesters, but city officials have knocked down those claims as "a fabrication" and provincial officials have found no evidence of such an order.
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"A video that made the rounds on YouTube and Twitter, which had been captioned as if it showed police returning fuel to protesters, simply showed fuel containers that demonstrators had refilled and brought in themselves," Dale reported. "Nothing in the video suggested that police were returning fuel to demonstrators."
Social media users have also falsely claimed that Ottawa police officers are not required to be vaccinated against COVID-19, unlike Canadian truckers who cross the border into the U.S., but that hasn't been true since late October, when the police chief required officers to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 31.
"There is indeed a CTV News clip that talks about Ottawa officers being exempt, but it is outdated; it aired in October, days before the exemption was abandoned," Dale reported. "About 84 percent of Ottawa officers were fully vaccinated even before [police chief Peter] Sloly ditched the exemption on October 29, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper has reported. CTV and CBC reported last week that fewer than 10 Ottawa officers were on unpaid leave because they hadn't received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. There are about 1,480 officers on the force."
