Group looking to sue Canadian media insists federal minister shares their concerns

A campaign raising money to sue a Canadian media promoted on a federal minister’s social media account is insisting that the minister shares their concerns.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced tough questions last week about why Digital Government Minister Joyce Murray’s WeChat account contained a post promoting the crowdfunding campaign that seeks to silence award-winning reporter Sam Cooper and Global News^[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/joyce-murray-we-chat-law-suit-china-1.5585854.

The threatened action follows an article by Cooper on Global News that revealed how groups linked to the Communist Party of China bought up vast quantities of personal protective equipment from Canada to export to China^[2]https://globalnews.ca/news/6858818/coronavirus-china-united-front-canada-protective-equipment-shortage/.

The move resulted in severe shortage of PPEs in Canada while China started price gouging PPEs five-fold^[3]https://thinkpol.ca/2020/04/29/canada-donated-masks-china-now-chinese-mask-makers-now-price-gouging-canada/.

Two Vancouver realtors and a People Party of Canada candidate registered the Maple Leafs Anti-Racism Actions Association (MLARA) as a not-for-profit society two weeks later to raise money to take legal action against Cooper and Global News.

Independent news outlet theBreaker.news broke the news last week that Minister Joyce’s WeChat group contained a link to MLARA’s crowdfunding campaign.

Minister Joyce put out a statement on Tuesday distancing herself from the posthttps://jmurray.liberal.ca/news-nouvelles/statement-on-wechat/.

“We value the important work of media across the country,” the statement read. “Attacking the integrity of hard-working journalists is not acceptable.”

“A recent post to Minister Murray’s WeChat group advertising a fundraising event for another organization was unwelcome and unacceptable,” the statement read. “It in no way reflects the Minister’s views.”

But MLARA released a statement on Wednesday saying the exact opposite^[4]https://mlara.org/.

“We offer our apologies to Minister Joyce Murray for the inadvertent action of one of our overly enthusiastic members who posted a funding appeal in a WeChat group of Ms. Murray’s supporters,” the statement read. “But her actions demonstrated her deep concern about Mr. Cooper’s unbalanced article and her feeling is shared by all of us at MLARA.”