The Strathcona Standard

By Grant Warkentin

Canada’s state broadcaster crossed the line with attempts to trick people into participating in a fake documentary, says North Island – Powell River MP Aaron Gunn.

“What’s so shameful about this, is this is being bankrolled by the taxpayer-funded state broadcaster,” Gunn said. “I always thought that the role of the media was to pursue the unvarnished truth and to hold power accountable, but instead they seem to be using it in attempts to entrap and humiliate opposition members of parliament, and authors and activists that all seem to have a conservative point of view.”

Gunn says his office was contacted in late March by a film company which turned out to be fake, using fake companies, shell websites, and false names.

“They claimed this documentary was about bringing balance to the debate about Canada’s history, about defending the legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald, two things we now know are a lie,” Gunn said.

Before running for politics, Aaron Gunn was a filmmaker producing documentaries about social issues in Canada from a conservative perspective. Five years ago, after activists toppled and vandalized a statue of Macdonald in Montreal, Gunn went to the location to make a short film about Macdonald’s legacy and plead with his fellow Canadians to handle the nation’s history honestly, looking at the facts in context, rather than with a revisionist mindset.

Gunn said the groups behind the fake documentary were willing to spare no expense because it was all approved by CBC “presumably using taxpayers’ money.” They offered to interview him in Vancouver, and at one point offered to fly the entire production crew to Campbell River to accommodate his schedule as an MP and get him on camera.

Preying on good intentions

On the surface, their pitch sounded good.

“If the CBC actually wanted to talk about this important issue and discuss the nuances around it, I’m sure any of the individuals they reached out to using their fake company and fake journalists would have been happy to sit down and talk with them, but instead, they decided to engage in, their words, ‘pranks’ and social action,” he said.

After his office did some preliminary investigations into the fake companies and websites, they hit dead ends suggesting things were not as they seemed. Gunn decided not to participate.

Earlier this week Frances Widdowston, former professor at Mount Royal University, published a video she took of her experience with the film crew and producer, after she realized something wasn’t right. Lindsay Shepherd, former BC Conservative Party communications officer and Gunn’s co-host at the party’s leadership debate last month, said on Tuesday that she also had been targeted, and published a string of emails revealing the deception.

Widdowston has since published the details of how she and Shepherd were lured by the fake production company into a bait-and-switch “gotcha” moment.

The Strathcona Standard reported some of the details yesterday.

Borat wannabes behind fake film

The fake documentary turned out to be cover for a comedy series in production called “Northland Tales” and Chuck Thompson, a spokesperson for CBC, confirmed the show is in early production for CBC Entertainment and APTN, but that “CBC News and APTN News have no involvement in this production or prior knowledge of it.”

He justified the tactics used over months to try and trick Gunn and others into participating.

“Social experiments and satirical prank shows are a long-established television format used by broadcasters and streamers around the world, including many public broadcasters,” he said in an email to CBC News.

The Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) describes Northland Tales as an “unscripted, half-hour comedy series where an Indigenous activist trio uses pranks as a form of social action. With outrageous humor, they flip the script on modern and historical injustices against Indigenous peoples, offering a fresh, timely perspective on the prank genre, akin to shows like Borat and The Yes Men.”

It’s unknown how much taxpayer money was spent trying to lure Gunn and others into participating in the project, but Northland Tales was part of a group of Indigenous film projects funded last year with $6.4 million from federal coffers.

The federal government describes the ISO as “an independent, Indigenous-led organization that receives support from Canadian Heritage to amplify Indigenous voices, promote the work of Indigenous creators and advance narrative sovereignty.”

CBC called out by critic

Yesterday Rachel Thomas, MP for Lethbridge and the Shadow Minister for Canadian Identity and Culture, submitted a letter to Marie-Phillipe Bouchard, CBC’s president and CEO, asking for a full explanation.

“This is incredibly offensive and unethical,” she said. “At a time when Canadians should be reflecting on and taking pride in our shared history, the CBC chose to mislead interviewees under false pretences in pursuit of a program aimed at discrediting a foundational figure in Canadian history, all while using taxpayer dollars.

“If this is the standard the CBC has set for itself, it raises serious questions about the broadcaster’s legitimacy and credibility.”

UPDATE: Letter to Ombudsman

Today Gunn sent a letter to the CBC ombudsman about the stunt.

“Already, public trust in the media, and in the CBC specifically, is low. Using taxpayer dollars to set up a fictitious company to entrap public figures in fake interviews and demonize their views is completely unethical and undermines your organization’s credibility,” he says. “Canadians deserve ansswers and accountability when their tax dollars are used in this way, and I hope your investigation will help deliver.”