Less than two years ago, a federal government report warned that Canada needed to prepare for a future where artificial intelligence would make it “nearly impossible to know what is fake or real.”
Now, researchers are warning that moment may already have arrived, and a senior Ottawa official said this week that the government is “very concerned” that increasingly sophisticated AI-generated content like deepfakes will influence elections.
“We’re getting closer to that goal very quickly,” said Brian Mackin, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict at the University of Regina.
He added that the US could soon become the top source of such content. That threat could accelerate in a future war of independence in Quebec and especially in Alberta, which is already under the control of some U.S. government and media figures.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, we are 100 percent guaranteed that we are receiving deepfakes originating from the U.S. government and its agents,” McQueen said. “It already is, the only question is how much is coming.”
At a House of Commons committee hearing on foreign election interference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s national security and intelligence adviser Nathalie Drouin said Canada, like other foreign countries, expects the United States to stay out of domestic political matters.
This was in response to the only question from a member of Congress about the possibility that the United States poses a foreign interference threat on par with Russia, China, and India.
The remainder of the two-hour hearing focused on the last federal election and whether Ottawa is preparing for future threats, including AI and disinformation.
“We know the government is very concerned about AI and its potential negative effects,” said Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison, who, like Drouin, is a member of the Serious Election Incidents Committee tasked with warning Canadians about interference.
Asked if Canada should try to label AI-generated content online, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, “I don’t know if there’s a specific appetite for labeling,” noting that that’s for the platforms to decide.
“It’s not easy to be in a position to tell the government what’s true and what’s not,” he added.
The City of Ottawa is currently considering legislation to address online harms and privacy concerns related to AI, but it’s not yet clear whether the bill would be aimed at cracking down on misinformation.
“Canada is committed to ensuring the safety of its new technologies. We are developing standards for AI,” said Drouin, who is also deputy secretary of the Privy Council.
He noted that Justice Marie-Josée Hoag, who led the public inquiry into foreign interference, concluded in her final report last year that disinformation, in part due to the rise of generative AI, was the greatest threat to Canadian democracy.
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Addressing and combating that threat is a “never-ending, ongoing task,” Drouin said. “It never ends.”
The Privy Council Office told Global News it held an “initial briefing on deepfakes” for MPs on Wednesday, and will hold additional briefings for “all interested MPs and political parties” over the coming weeks.
Experts like McQueen say such briefings are outdated and that the government, academia and media also need to do more to educate already skeptical Canadians about how to distinguish truth from fiction.
“There should be annual training[for politicians and their staff]not just on deepfakes and disinformation, but on foreign interference in general,” said Marcus Kolga, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and founder of DisinfoWatch.
“This requires leadership. We don’t see that leadership right now, but we desperately need it because we can all see what’s coming.”
Korga also agreed that there was “no question” that official U.S. government channels and President Donald Trump himself were the primary sources of that content.
“The trajectory is pretty clear,” he said. “So I think we need to anticipate that it’s going to happen. Reacting after it happens isn’t very helpful. We need to be prepared at this point.”
Researchers say growing threat from U.S.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison pointed out on Tuesday that the Electoral Commission and Security Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) had not observed any significant use of AI to interfere in last year’s federal election.
But he added: “Our adversaries in this area are continually evolving their tactics, so it’s only a matter of time and we need to be extremely vigilant.”
The Communications Security Agency and the Canadian Cyber Security Center recently issued similar warnings about hostile foreign powers’ increased use of AI against “voters, politicians, public figures, and election institutions” over the next two years.
Researchers now say the United States is rapidly becoming part of that threat.
McQueen said part of the problem is that the online misinformation Canadians are seeing is primarily spread on U.S.-owned social media platforms like X and Facebook, and TikTok is now also under U.S. ownership.
This poses a challenge for foreign countries seeking to regulate content on these platforms, with European and British laws facing resistance and hostility from companies and the Trump administration, which has promised tough penalties, including tariffs and sanctions.
A digital services tax aimed at recapturing foreign business revenue has been identified as a trade stimulant by the United States, and Canada’s tax nearly derailed negotiations last year before being repealed.
Kolga noted that the spread of disinformation by American content creators and platforms, whether they originate in the United States or elsewhere in the world, is not new. Other countries, including Russia, India, and China, are also known to conduct disinformation campaigns and were identified in Canada’s security report as important sources of foreign interference activity.
Russia is also accused of secretly funding right-wing influencers in the United States and Canada to advance pro-Russian agendas and disrupt domestic politics.
What’s new, McQueen said, is President Trump and his administration’s involvement in promoting disinformation, including AI deepfakes.
While much of the content is clearly fake or intended to provoke an illegal response, such as images of the White House showing Trump and penguins walking through an arctic landscape that appears to be Greenland, or third-party AI content depicting Trump flying a feces-sprinkling fighter jet over protesters, there are more subtle examples.
Last month, the White House was accused of using AI to alter the photo of a protester arrested during a federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota to make it look like the woman was crying.
In response to criticism of the doctored image, White House Deputy Director of Communications Kaylan Dole wrote of X, “The meme will continue.” The image will remain online.
“The current U.S. government is the only Western country we know of that regularly publishes, shares, and promotes obvious fakes and deepfakes at a level never before seen by a Western government,” McQueen said.
He said the online strategies and actions are consistent with those of common state disinformation actors like Russia and China, as well as insurgent groups like the Taliban who have “zero respect” for the truth.
“If you don’t have[such respect]you will always have an asymmetrical advantage over any actor, state or non-state, who seeks to adhere to the truth in some way,” he said.
“(This) U.S. regime will always have an advantage over Canadian actors because they can no longer control or restrain them. Truth is no longer a factor in their communications.”
McQueen added that his research shows that 83 per cent of misinformation is passed on by average Canadians who don’t immediately realize that the content they’re sharing is fake.
“It’s not that they necessarily believe the disinformation,” he says. “When something looks catchy or matches their worldview, they just pass it on without reading in the second or third paragraph that the idea they bought into turns into something else.
“The good news is that Canadians are learning very quickly how to spot things like deepfakes,” he said, adding that this is creating “a degree of natural skepticism among the population.”
But researchers are growing concerned about President Trump’s repeated online sharing of AI content imagining U.S. domination of Canada (an homage to the “51st state”) and tacit support between U.S. government officials and the Alberta independence movement.
“What I’m really concerned about, in terms of Canadian unity, is that if President Donald Trump orders the U.S. government to start endorsing some of these narratives and actually start engaging in national disinformation, then we’re going to be in real trouble,” Korga said.
