The Missing Link Between Foreign Policy and Information Integrity

Foreign interference has become a fixture of Canada’s national security debate for several years, especially since the 2023 Foreign Interference Commission (PIFI), which examined allegations that foreign states sought to influence Canadian elections, political processes and democratic institutions. Policymakers, CSIS, journalists, and organizations such as the Montreal Institute for Global Security, the Citizen Lab and Disinfo Watch, have paid increasing attention on foreign actors seeking to shape Canadian politics, public discourse and democracy. Canada now hosts the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism Secretariat, which was created to coordinate democratic responses to foreign disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference. Since PIFI, the government has also taken new steps to put up guardrails, including through Bill C-70, also known as the Countering Foreign Interference Act.

Yet despite growing awareness and new policy measures, Canada’s response remains fragmented. Foreign influence is rightly treated as a national security issue, but information integrity continues to be discussed separately as a challenge for technology platforms, media organizations, and democratic institutions. 

Information integrity refers to the health and trustworthiness of the information ecosystem through which citizens access news, engage in public debate, and make democratic decisions. A resilient information ensures that citizens have access to credible information, transparency about sources, and institutions capable of maintaining public trust.

Foreign influence operations are instruments of statecraft used by foreign governments to advance strategic objectives. These operations succeed when they can exploit existing social tensions, political polarization, and vulnerabilities in the information ecosystem. Canada therefore needs a more integrated approach, one that combines foreign policy, national security, and information integrity into a coherent strategy for democratic resilience.

Any contentious political debate, from immigration to international conflicts, can become a target for influence operations if it offers opportunities to weaken social cohesion or undermine confidence in democratic institutions. These operations may involve amplifying divisive narratives online, coordinating inauthentic social media activity, promoting misleading or false information through state-linked networks, or leveraging proxy actors to shape public debate in ways that advance foreign strategic interests. They exist alongside economic coercion, diplomatic pressure, cyber operations and strategic communications.

The challenge is particularly urgent as geopolitical competition intensifies. From Russia’s information operations in Europe, Africa, and North America to China’s efforts to shape narratives abroad through the United Front Work System, foreign actors have demonstrated a clear willingness to use influence activities as tools of foreign policy and national security. China’s United Front Work System, which coordinates influence activities through party-linked organizations, business networks, academic partnerships and diaspora engagement efforts, is designed to advance Beijing’s political objectives and shape perceptions abroad.

Alberta: When Domestic Debates Become Foreign Policy Vulnerabilities

The debate surrounding Alberta’s place within Canada illustrates why foreign interference and information integrity cannot be treated as separate policy challenges. Most Albertans engaged in these debates are participating in legitimate democratic discussions. The concern is not the existence of these debates, but the ways foreign actors can amplify and exploit them. Questions surrounding federal-provincial relations, energy policy, and regional representation have long generated passionate disagreement among Canadians. Such debates are a normal and healthy feature of a democratic society. However, when these issues become highly polarized, they can also create opportunities for foreign actors seeking to amplify existing grievances, deepen divisions and weaken public confidence in democratic institutions.

Foreign influence operations rarely create social tensions from scratch. Rather, they seek to exploit existing political, economic and cultural fault lines, elevating divisive narratives and encouraging distrust in governments, media and other public institutions. The Alberta case demonstrates how a domestic political debate can become entangled with broader geopolitical objectives when foreign actors perceive an opportunity to weaken national cohesion or democratic resilience.

A new report titled “Decision Making and National Unity Under Threat” by Global Centre for Democratic Resilience, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict, and DisinfoWatch, published in May, highlights growing concerns that foreign actors, particularly Russia and elements of the American political ecosystem, are amplifying Alberta separatist narratives online. 

The scale of foreign attention to Alberta is striking. According to a 2026 DisinfoWatch analysis of the Kremlin-aligned Pravda News Network, between December 2025 and April 2026, the terms “Alberta,” “Albertans,” and “51st state” appeared in 67 articles in Pravda’s Canada section, nearly five times more often than Ontario, which was mentioned only 14 times during the same period. Researchers found that these articles consistently portrayed Alberta as economically exploited by Ottawa, separatism as increasingly popular, and foreign recognition of an independent Alberta as plausible. Foreign actors are not simply observing Canadian political debates but actively amplifying narratives that may deepen regional divisions and weaken national cohesion.

The report identifies several key Canadian vulnerabilities that are exploited by foreign actors to amplify existing grievances, undermine trust in governments, media, and democratic institutions, and weaken social cohesion and national unity: deepening political and regional polarization, low public awareness of foreign information manipulation, growing exposure to AI-generated disinformation, and dependence on foreign digital platforms and information ecosystems. 

These concerns are increasingly reflected in Canada’s new AI strategy, which identifies information integrity, democratic resilience and trustworthy AI systems as important national priorities. As generative AI tools become more capable of producing persuasive text, images, audio and video at scale, the challenge of protecting democratic discourse can no longer be separated from broader discussions about AI governance and digital resilience.

Why Information Integrity Matters

The Alberta case illustrates how foreign interference and information integrity are increasingly intertwined challenges. Protecting Canada’s democratic resilience will require not only identifying foreign and domestic actors, but also strengthening the country’s ability to detect, understand, and respond to coordinated information campaigns that seek to exploit domestic tensions for geopolitical purposes.

As Canada develops approaches to attribution, information sharing, deterrence, and resilience strategies with G7 and democratic partners, it should also be clear that even the strongest foreign policy strategy will be insufficient if Canada’s domestic information environment remains vulnerable. 

This is where information integrity becomes essential. A resilient information environment ensures that citizens have access to credible information, transparency about sources, and institutions capable of maintaining public trust.

Unfortunately, many of the factors that enable foreign influence also undermine information integrity. The economics of online platforms reward outrage and sensationalism while artificial intelligence is making it easier to generate persuasive content at scale. Declining trust in institutions creates fertile ground for manipulation. The result is an environment in which foreign influence can blend seamlessly with domestic political discourse, making attribution increasingly difficult and reducing the effectiveness of reactive responses.

Recent cases demonstrate how foreign influence increasingly operates through digital ecosystems. The 2024 U.S. indictment involving Tenet Media alleged that Russian state actors covertly funnelled nearly US$10 million through a media company linked to prominent North American influencers, showing how foreign governments can leverage trusted online personalities to amplify divisive narratives while obscuring their involvement. 

Investigations have also highlighted the emergence of AI-generated personas and separatist-themed accounts designed to farm engagement and inflame regional grievances, including around debates on Alberta sovereignty. Whether such campaigns succeed is less a function of the sophistication of foreign actors than of the vulnerabilities within domestic information ecosystems. 

In an era where authentic political discourse can be amplified, manipulated, or imitated by foreign networks, the distinction between domestic debate and foreign influence is becoming increasingly blurred. 

What Canada Can Learn from Allies on Information Integrity

Foreign actors exploit weaknesses in the information environment. Strengthening that environment reduces their ability to succeed. As Canadian analyst Marcus Kolga already argued in 2021, Canada needs to treat information warfare as a national resilience challenge, not just a security issue, a message that Kolga and his co-authors reiterate in “Decision Making and National Unity Under Threat.” 

A Canadian strategy should include greater transparency around online influence campaigns, stronger support for independent journalism, improved access to platform data for researchers, investments in digital literacy, and policies that address emerging risks associated with generative AI and synthetic media. It should also recognize the important role played by civil society organizations, academic institutions, and local communities in strengthening democratic resilience. 

In 2025, the EU launched European Democracy Shield, a new EU-wide initiative aimed at strengthening democratic resilience by protecting the information environment from disinformation, foreign interference, and the misuse of AI, while safeguarding electoral integrity and independent media. It also aims to enhance societal resilience through media literacy and civic engagement to improve coordination, information sharing, and responses to emerging threats. The EU is thereby moving beyond a narrow focus on foreign interference and developing a comprehensive framework to protect democratic institutions, the information environment, and public trust. 

Such approaches adopt a “whole-of-society” approach, recognizing that defending democracy requires cooperation among governments, civil society, researchers, journalists, technology companies, and citizens. This reflects a growing international trend of treating foreign interference, disinformation, and information integrity as national security issues, rather than solely communications or electoral concerns. Indeed, when it comes to both physical and information integrity, Taiwan has long adopted a “whole-of-society resilience” that brings together government, civil society, journalists, fact-checkers, technology companies, and ordinary citizens. 

Canada should create a permanent information integrity office that brings together Global Affairs Canada, Public Safety, CSIS, Elections Canada, researchers and civil society organizations. Such a body could improve information sharing, coordinate responses to foreign influence campaigns, and ensure that information integrity is treated as a cross-government resilience challenge rather than a series of isolated policy issues.

Canada has spent years asking how to counter foreign interference. The more urgent question may be how to build an information environment resilient enough that interference struggles to take root at all. That requires treating information integrity not as a communications issue, but as a core component of national resilience. Foreign influence begins abroad but succeeds at home, and Canada’s approach to democratic resilience should reflect that reality.