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I don’t say this often, but I think the Trudeau government deserves some praise for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic this week. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, in particular, has been impressive in setting the record straight and providing a calm and intelligent line of reasoning behind each government decision.

There are, however, some glaring exceptions to this statement. I’m talking about Health Minister Patty Hajdu and her despicable parroting of Chinese Communist Party propaganda during Thursday afternoon’s media briefing.

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CTV’s Ian Brown asked the COVID-19 panel to respond to a Bloomberg news story about a classified U.S. intelligence report on China hiding the extent of the coronavirus outbreak by under-reporting the number of cases and deaths.

“China’s numbers are fake,” the report concludes.

“There’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way,” Hajdu said sternly.