Conservatives Question CBC-Funded Prank Program Targeting Tory MP, Others for Hoax Interviews

Conservative MP Aaron Gunn speaks at the 2026 Conservative Party convention at the BMO Centre in Calgary on Jan. 29, 2026. Omid Ghoreishi/The Epoch Times

The Conservatives say the taxpayer-funded CBC shouldn’t be backing a prank program that attempted to target a Tory MP and individual citizens in disguise as part of a show featuring hoax interviews on controversial topics.

Among the figures targeted by the program are Conservative MP Aaron Gunn, author Lindsay Shepherd, and academic Frances Widdowson.

“This CBC show tried (unsuccessfully) to manipulate and deceive a sitting Member of Parliament,” Gunn posted May 12 on X, adding that it had done so as part of a “crusade to further attack Canada’s history and smear the reputation of Canada’s first Prime Minister.”

Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre posted support for Gunn doing “what’s right” by holding CBC to account, while MP Michelle Rempel Garner accused the public broadcaster of “paying fraudsters with tax dollars.”

A spokesperson with the CBC confirmed that the program is in part funded by the public broadcaster along with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), and defended CBC’s decision to financially support the program.

“Social experiments and satirical prank shows are a long-established television format used by broadcasters and streamers around the world, including many public broadcasters,” CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson wrote in a May 13 statement to The Epoch Times.

Thompson said the interviews are being shot for an indigenous-led comedy show that is in early production and has the working title of “Northland Tales.”

Author Lindsay Shepherd in a file photo. Courtesy of Lindsay Shepherd

Prank Interviews

The comments about CBC’s involvement with the program stem from three incidents that have been reported by Widdowson, Shepherd, and Gunn.

Widdowson is a former professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary who has faced arrest at universities on charges of trespassing for attempting to hold conversations refuting claims of unmarked graves of children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

She said she agreed to an in-person interview about Canadian history and free speech issues from a company calling itself Forge Media, which she said also paid her an honorarium as well as for her hotel and flight from Calgary to Vancouver and back to Calgary following the shoot this week.

After traveling to a Vancouver studio and engaging in an interview, Widdowson says children’s shoes were dumped on a table in front of her by two men and she discovered that the interview had been a “setup” apparently meant to portray her as “racist.”

After being surprised by the interruption of the interview, Widdowson shot footage of American activist Igor Vamos who had been involved in the production, with Vamos saying the incident had been a “social experiment” and declining to say where or how much of the footage would be used. Widdowson says the website for Forge Media, which had formerly been up and appeared to show legitimate documentaries made by them, no longer exists online.

Academic Frances Widdowson speaks at an award ceremony held by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) in Toronto on June 13, 2025. Omid Ghoreishi/The Epoch Times

Separately, Shepherd, author of a children’s book about Canada’s first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, said on May 12 that she had been the subject of an “elaborate scheme” from the same people who had posed the prank interview with Widdowson.

“A production group with what I now know has a fake name and fake identities gave me a friendly interview about my book A Day with Sir John A, and about Sir John A Macdonald, back in Feb. They connected me with a fake company called Heritage Figures Canada with a fake website and ‘hired’ me to perform consulting work for them,” Shepherd said on social media.

“We had what I now know were fake meetings, fake documents, fake commercial shoot, fake prototype of a Sir John A collectible,” she added, noting that the emails from Vamos (going by “Michael Smith”) and an associate had suggested filming content in Shepherd’s home and asking about any special care Shepherd might need for her baby.

Shepherd said that in a second interview shot last week, the production group “turned on” her and “revealed to have all been a setup in order to demonize Sir John A and smear me.”

In recent years, statues of Macdonald have been taken down in different cities, including in his hometown of Kingston, Ont., with activists citing his role in residential schools. Meanwhile, groups such as the Canadian Institute for Historical Education say Canada’s first prime minister had many achievements in building the country and that his record on indigenous issues is being misrepresented in many cases.

Gunn, a sitting MP and former Canadian Armed Forces member and documentary maker, said the same group had unsuccessfully tried to deceive him into an interview.

“Will taxpayers also need to cover the legal bills for CBC in the inevitable lawsuits they are about to face? I interviewed more than 300 Canadians for my documentaries (and didn’t receive any taxpayer money). Not once did I engage in garbage like this,” Gunn wrote in a May 12 statement.

The cover of the children's book “A Day with Sir John A” by Lindsay Shepherd, published by True North.

He added that the public broadcaster is engaging in behaviour that “you would expect from a university fraternity.”

“Why is the taxpayer-funded broadcaster contacting Canadians and a Member of Parliament in disguise and trying to trick us into participating in a twisted social experiment, in partnership with American leftists like Igor Vamos?”

Conservative MP Billy Morin, who is a Cree First Nations leader, said in reaction to Gunn’s comment that spending “public money in an attempt to blatantly embarrass any public official like this is wrong.”

The Epoch Times contacted Vamos for comment but didn’t hear back.

CBC’s Thompson said the program is meant to help in indigenous reconciliation efforts.

“A form of comedy is being deployed to increase better understanding of historical injustices against Indigenous peoples and support truth and reconciliation in Canada,” he said.

People walk toward the CBC building in Toronto in a file photo. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press

“For clarity, CBC News and APTN News have no involvement in this production or prior knowledge of it. The project was first pitched at the Indigenous Screen Summit - part of the Banff World Media Festival in 2024,” Thompson said, adding that CBC had joined APTN on the project shortly after that time.

Thompson did not mention how much funding CBC has committed to the project.

“It is important for us in the execution that this entertainment series does not negatively impact our news brand,” Thompson said. “As the show is still in production, it’s premature for us to comment on the creative.”