Foreign agents interfering in separatist talk: report

Posted on July 16, 2026 by admin

By Zoe Mason
Southern Alberta Newspapers

A new report warns Canadians that foreign agents are meddling in the Alberta separatist debate through a variety of channels.

The study released in June by the Global Centre for Democratic Resilience outlines three categories of interference being deployed in overlapping ways to shape discourse around the separation referendum expected to proceed this fall.

According to the report, foreign interference activities can include overt action like the public statements issued by Trump administration officials, covert social media campaigns like those conducted by Russia and content generation that serves little political agenda apart from stoking discord to spur engagement.

“Canada’s cognitive sovereignty – the ability of Canadians to make political decisions freely, without foreign coercion or manipulation – is not simply under threat; it is being actively contested by foreign actors seeking to shape Canada’s democratic future,” reads the report.

Dr. Brian McQuinn, co-director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict at the University of Regina, is one of the report’s authors. He says this research is intended to help shape Canadians’ understandings of the misinformation tactics that might be used against them.

“So that you are ‘pre-bunking’, you are shaping people’s understandings so that when these things do come, they just will not have the same impact.”

In the past, McQuinn’s research has focused on Russian interference. But now the sources of foreign meddling are more varied, with overt misinformation coming most frequently from the U.S.

McQuinn points to U.S. political pundits like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon as sources of overt misinformation.

In one example, Carlson argued in an April 2 broadcast that the U.S. should consider regime change in Canada, referencing a state-sponsored “killing program” before stating that “you could make a human rights case to invade Canada.”

“He’s basically making a claim that our sovereignty is not real, that Canada as a country is not real and basically advocating for the overthrow of our country,” said McQuinn. “This is already happening, and this is going to millions of people. These are not fringe networks.”

The video in question has around 1.7 million views. Carlson has a following of more than 17.5 million on X.

Covert efforts to spread misinformation and profit-driven, AI-generated content come from other culprits. Some are expected and some are surprising.

In addition to more sophisticated networks of false information run out of Russia, a CBC investigation in April traced the origins of a network of so-called “slopaganda” videos promoting Alberta separation on YouTube to three creators in the Netherlands.

And Canadians play an important part, too. McQuinn says 83 per cent of the disinformation his organization has tracked is passed on by average Canadians.

The goal, McQuinn says, is to divide.

With trade negotiations with the U.S., disinformation originating from Canada’s southern neighbour in particular can be used as a tactic to weaken Canada’s position at the bargaining table, McQuinn says.

But misinformation campaigns tend to be driving at longer-term results. While it’s hard to measure the direct impact of interference like this, McQuinn points to polling about trust published in the Washington Post.

Those figures showed that 53 per cent of U.S. adults would describe their fellow citizens as “bad” people, the highest rate among countries polled. Canada appears at the opposite end of that spectrum, with 92 per cent of people considering their fellow Canadians as “good.”

Those results can’t be directly attributed to foreign interference, but experts do believe they are an outcome of extreme political polarization. McQuinn worries foreign interference exacerbates those trends.

“This is not about just the referendum, it’s not about an election. This is a long-term project where they are fundamentally attacking the cohesion of our country by polarizing it.”

McQuinn says foreign agents target areas where real discord exists and warrants real debate, and exploits those pressure points.

“What does Western alienation mean? How do we deal with it? All of that is legitimate democratic discourse, and we are trying to support it with this report by saying, ‘Let’s make sure that it’s Canadians talking to Canadians, and not outsiders amplifying both sides.’”

The report was released at a launch event in Toronto that featured a keynote address from former Premier Jason Kenney.

“To me, it’s really important that we have leaders of his level engaged on this discussion,” McQuinn said. “Where we overlap [with Kenney] is that he also wants us to be a democratic discussion among Canadians. But I think he’s going to be having a more political conversation.”