A blog claimed on July 27 that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured the Filipinos that President Rodrigo Duterte understood their country’s problems, regardless of what the world thinks.
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The article, bearing the title “Canada PM to Filipinos: The world may not but your president understands your problems,” has since been shared over 3,000 times as of writing.
It was also shared by some Facebook pages and individual users, such as Marcos Corner.
The story came from the blog called newsfoxchannel.com, which seems to be trying to imitate Fox News. Unlike what the title seemed to convey, that it was direct quote from Trudeau, we could not find a direct statement from the Canadian Prime Minister that was quoted in the article itself. However, it did claim that Trudeau acknowledged the different problems that besieged each country and how their solutions may vary from one leader to the next. It further claimed that Trudeau commented in an ambush interview how the Philippines’ problems can only be resolved if the government works with the citizens and how only President Duterte would be able to understand what these problems are.
We tried searching for what we thought was a direct quote from Trudeau but could not find any relevant result.
We also could not find reports about Trudeau making a similar comment about Duterte and the Filipinos.
What we found instead were reports about the Canadian PM visiting the Filipino community in Canada wearing a barong Tagalog and described multiculturalism as Canada’s “source of strength.”
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“We all understand that our differences are a source of strength, not a source of weakness. When we learn from our neighbors, when we get to know different cultures and different stories and different backgrounds, our communities get richer, our communities get stronger, and the future that we build for our kids gets better and better,” he told the crowd gathered.
He also posted a series of photos of his time with the Fil-Canadians.
Trudeau also visited the Filipino fastfood resto, Jollibee, in its first store in Canada in January.
Prime Minister #Trudeau visits the new @Jollibee outlet in #Winnipeg!
Photo from Canadian Press as published by @WinnipegNews pic.twitter.com/nWIOnRcQbq
— CanadaEmbPhilippines (@CanEmbPH) January 27, 2017
When Trudeau did talk to Duterte via phone call on May 24, it was to congratulate the Philippine president. Duterte described the conversation as a “civil” one, where Trudeau talked about the “universal declaration of human rights.” Duterte also apologized to the Canadian leader about the death of a Canadian citizen at the hands of the bandit group Abu Sayyaf.
Due to the lack of credible reports about this claim of Trudeau giving assurance to the Filipinos that Duterte knows the country’s problems, we set out to browse the set of published articles on newsfoxchannel.com. We found that it contains several fake articles, such as those about US Presidential son Donald Trump Jr. saying he sometimes felt as though Duterte is his president, Loida Lewis apologizing for being wrong about Duterte, British Prime Minister Theresa May calling those who call for Duterte’s ouster as ‘selfish’ and ‘greedy,’ British Queen Elizabeth II saying the Philippines needs support instead of condemnation. They also published fakes such as those claiming that US President Donald Trump told New York Times that Philippine matters are not their business, Australian Foreign Minister urged human rights groups to help in Duterte’s drug war, the US imposed travel sanctions against Vice President Leni Robredo, and US intel showed Senator Leila de Lima and Loida Lewis’ involvement in drug deals.
The claim about Trudeau assuring Filipinos that Duterte understands the Philippines’ problems despite the world’s lack of understanding is likely fake, given the source website’s fondness in publishing fake news and the lack of reports from more credible sources about this claim. If you encounter stories from newsfoxchannel.com, make sure to verify it several times before sharing it online and reacting to it.
Sources: ( rappler.com , inquirer.net , abs-cbn.com )
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