This Viral Story About Canada’s New Government Is Hilariously Wrong

    No, Hells Angels did not protest on Parliament Hill against legalizing weed.

    Craig Silverman
    by Craig Silverman

    BuzzFeed Founding Editor, Canada

    Our British cousins at the large and manly website Unilad have taken notice of Canada! A story published Wednesday gave their audience a primer on Canada under Justin Trudeau, where we're "Set To Legalise Weed, Renounce Religion And Reduce Guns." Yay us!?

    unilad.co.uk

    The story starts off well enough. It correctly reports that a mandate letter from Trudeau to his justice minister directs her to begin the process of legalizing cannabis in Canada.

    But things pretty much go off the rails from there.

    Unilad reports that the "move to legalise weed comes despite protests from Hells Angels members outside parliament who ... oppose the position as it may cost organised crime hundreds of thousands of jobs."

    A biker gang protested on Parliament Hill because legal weed would eat into their illegal profits? WTF in a crumpet is Unilad talking about?

    It turns out Unilad's false Hells Angels anecdote comes courtesy of a website called WorldNewsDailyReport. It looks like a real news website, but every story on it is fake. Like this one one right here:

    worldnewsdailyreport.com

    That hoax story has been shared more than 23,000 times on Facebook. the Unilad story has been shared over 4,000 times.

    Just to be completely clear: Hells Angels did not protest the fact that legal weed would eat into their illicit cannabis business. See how crazy it is when you write it out?

    But Unilad, like many others, was fooled into thinking the story was real.

    Oh and one more thing: the Trudeau government isn't "renouncing religion."

    It's true that more than half of the new ministers in cabinet chose not to say "so help me God" when taking their oath of office.

    But the option to swear or "affirm" the oath has been in place for a while. The new government has no new policy or platform that could be interpreted as "renouncing religion."

    So, in conclusion, Canada should remove itself from the Commonwealth.

    Like and follow BuzzFeed Canada