Canadian Government on “High Alert” Against Russian Disinformation

Cana­di­an media is report­ing the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment is “on high alert” against Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion attempts against the coun­try. Accord­ing to the CBC arti­cle:

April 13th, 2022: Cana­da is on “high alert” for state-spon­sored Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns designed to con­fuse and deceive peo­ple, says Pub­lic Safe­ty Min­is­ter Mar­co Men­di­ci­no. In an inter­view, he said Rus­sia is a bel­liger­ent and hos­tile actor when it comes to spread­ing untruths in cyber­space, but he is con­fi­dent Cana­da is on top of the prob­lem. He warned that his gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing for Russ­ian retal­i­a­tion in cyber­space for Cana­da back­ing Ukraine’s strug­gle against aggres­sion by Vladimir Putin’s mil­i­tary forces. The sur­veil­lance agency, which mon­i­tors and decodes sig­nals intel­li­gence includ­ing online activ­i­ty, dis­closed that Rus­sia is spread­ing false­hoods about Canada’s involve­ment in the Ukraine con­flict using media it controls.The Krem­lin’s false nar­ra­tives include doc­tored images of mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Armed Forces in Ukraine and false claims that Cana­di­an sol­diers are com­mit­ting war crimes.

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle fur­ther reports that Cana­da has ear­marked $28 mil­lion in its bud­get to com­bat dis­in­for­ma­tion by for­eign actors, includ­ing Rus­sia, Chi­na, and Iran, and that Cana­da is work­ing with oth­er G7 coun­tries to com­bat dis­in­for­ma­tion. Men­do­ci­no also said that dis­in­for­ma­tion is intend­ed to under­mine trust in the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment and is some­times used by big­ot­ed groups to attack Jews, Mus­lims, and oth­er minor­i­ty groups.

GIOR has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment mon­i­tor­ing of Chi­nese attempts to influ­ence Cana­di­an politics.