A handful of social media content creators were paid by the federal department of health to promote the government’s Covid-19 pandemic messaging.

The content creators were told that it was not necessary for them to disclose the fact that they were being funded by the government to avoid any embarrassment that receiving government funds would bring them.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the department of health quietly signed a contract beginning on May 3, 2021 to pay influencers $682,000 of taxpayer dollars to promote Health Canada’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The contract says that the government was advancing a secretive influencer campaign to push Canadians towards making “informed decisions” concerning the Covid-19 vaccines.

The content creators funded include fitness creators, travel creators, family creators, drag queens, and more. One of these content creators, ohkairyn, self-identifies as a “two spirit shapeshifter.”

While the specifics of what these content creators were paid to do is not clear, one creator, iamsukhmangill, posted a picture of himself posing in a shirt promoting the Covid-19 vaccine after the start of the contract with Health Canada. 

A two spirit drag queen funded by the government posted a picture of her Saskatchewan receipt of vaccination against Covid-19.

Another creator posted a video promoting a Saskatchewanian “Covid intubation team.”

These creators did not disclose whether or not these posts were made to satisfy their contract with Health Canada, however these posts are generally beyond the type of content these creators normally post.