OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attacked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre Monday for urging Twitter to label CBC as “government-funded media,” the morning after the social media platform added the tag to CBC’s account.

“When they’re trying to attack a foundational Canadian institution, the fact that he has to run to American billionaires for support to attack Canadians says a lot about Mr. Poilievre and his values,” Trudeau said at a press conference. He said Conservatives are “always there to defend” tech giants.

“I think it says a lot about the Conservative Party of Canada. They’re choosing to constantly attack independent media organizations, journalists who are working hard to keep Canadians informed and support our democracy.”

Speaking in French, Trudeau also criticized Poilievre for “pretending” he can go after English-language CBC but not French-language Radio-Canada.

Last week, Poilievre wrote to Twitter and owner Elon Musk to ask the platform to “accurately” label CBC, after Twitter applied the tag to British public broadcaster BBC News and NPR in the U.S. The move led NPR to leave the platform while Twitter changed BBC’s tag to “publicly-funded” after the broadcaster objected.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh took a similar tack in an emailed statement, saying “this is a result of a personal obsession of Pierre Poilievre.”

He said the Conservatives “have an unhealthy adversarial relationship with the media,” where Poilievre has refused to “answer questions and to wrongfully accuse journalists of bias when he doesn’t like tough questions or fact checks.”

“Now he wants Elon Musk – an American billionaire – to help him dismantle the CBC/Radio Canada because he doesn’t like their reporting,” Singh said in the statement. “It is unfortunate that Elon Musk has decided to take his side and meddle into Canadian politics. That’s not what we should expect from leaders in a democracy.”

Twitter defines a “government-funded” media outlet as an outlet “where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”

CBC said on Twitter Sunday evening that is “clearly not the case with CBC/Radio-Canada.”

“CBC/Radio-Canada is publicly funded through a parliamentary appropriation that is voted upon by all Members of Parliament. Its editorial independence is protected in law in the Broadcasting Act,” CBC said. “In addition, our journalism is independent and subject to our Journalistic Standards and Practices, as well as an independent complaints process.”

Poilievre said in a tweet Sunday “now people know that (CBC) is Trudeau propaganda, not news.” He called on the Liberals to “defund the CBC” and “save $1 billion.”

CBC received $1.24 billion in 2021-2022 in federal government funding. In comparison, it reported $651 million in other revenue, the biggest proportion of which came from advertising.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.