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North America Regional Hub: Foreign Information Manipulations and Interference

Publication Date:

02/03/2026

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Event Reports

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Canada Webinar SeriesDisinformationElection IntegrityForeign Information ManipulationsForeign InterferenceNorth America Regional Hub

— 11 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the webinar and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Summary

On 17 February 2026, the Strong Cities Network North America Regional Hub hosted the third instalment of its Canada Webinar Series, which examined how foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) is targeting Canadian cities and communities and what municipal governments can do to prepare for and respond to the threat. This series provides Canadian municipalities and community-based partners with evidence-based insights, emerging research and practical tools to strengthen local prevention and response ecosystems.

Experts from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which hosts Strong Cities, outlined the tactics foreign state actors from countries such as Russia and China use to exploit local issues, target diaspora communities and erode trust in democratic institutions in Canada, before offering practical recommendations for municipalities.

Speakers:

• Bret Schafer, Senior Director of Research and Policy, Information Operations, Institute for Strategic Dialogue
• David Salvo, Managing Director for Transatlantic Policy and Programming, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Key Takeaways

1. Foreign information operations are not just a federal concern as they directly target Canadian municipalities, local elections, and community cohesion. Countries such as Russia and China, and other foreign threat actors are actively exploiting local debates, targeting diaspora communities across Canada, and attempting to influence municipal elections to advance their strategic interests. As Canada’s Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference concluded, information manipulation poses a fundamental threat to democracy and that threat extends to municipal officials and residents who are increasingly on the receiving end of these campaigns.
2. Foreign actors target local issues and communities for four primary reasons: to advance political or economic interests at the local level; to map broader geopolitical agendas onto local debates; to target opponents or support sympathetic voices, and to launder information through local channels into domestic discourse. To achieve these ends, foreign actors routinely exploit Canadian crises, disasters and divisive social issues to deepen polarisation, erode trust in democratic institutions and create separation between residents and their local representatives. Understanding these distinct but interconnected drivers is essential for municipal leaders seeking to recognise when local debates are being exploited and to distinguish between genuine community concerns and externally manufactured or amplified narratives.
3. Municipalities should prepare for threats by pre-bunking recurring disinformation narratives and building cross-sector resilience outside election periods. Municipal governments can get ahead of known information operation tactics, many of which follow established patterns, by proactively communicating accurate information and building partnerships across public health, election administration and emergency management. Establishing these relationships outside election periods avoids the politicisation that makes countering foreign interference more difficult, a lesson that is particularly relevant as Canada approaches municipal elections in several provinces.
4. Municipal governments should monitor their own digital presence, build peer networks with other municipalities and draw clear distinctions between countering foreign interference and censorship. Practical steps include auditing dormant or inactive social media accounts that could be hijacked, requesting platform takedowns of spoofed government accounts and establishing regular information-sharing mechanisms with civil society organisations and federal and provincial authorities.

An Overview of Information Manipulation and Interference

David Salvo, ISD’s Managing Director for Transatlantic Policy and Programming, opened the session by framing FIMI as a broad set of threats that extends well beyond online disinformation. These threats include cyber operations, illicit money flows, the subversion of civil society and politics, and kinetic operations such as targeted assassinations. In Canada, this has manifested across recent federal election cycles, with foreign actors targeting specific ridings and candidates, and allegations of interference reaching into municipal elections as well. The primary threat actors in the Canadian context include China, India and Russia, each of which has distinct but overlapping interests in exploiting Canadian communities. Salvo noted that classic foreign interference typically operates through covert and deceptive channels rather than through overt ones. The distinction matters because understanding the nature of the threat shapes how municipalities can most effectively respond.

At the local level, Salvo explained, foreign state actors target diaspora communities and other vulnerable groups both as conduits toward favourable election outcomes and as a means of increasing distrust in local institutions. The overriding objective is to create separation between communities and their local elected officials, because weakening democracy at the municipal level serves the broader interests of authoritarian regimes that seek to discredit democratic governance. Fostering real-world polarisation, distrust and, in some cases, violence at the community level is not incidental to these campaigns but central to them. Salvo explained that if democracy is seen to be faltering in countries like Canada, it gives authoritarian governments an easier case to make to their own populations that the democratic model does not work.

Information Manipulation and Interference Tactics

Bret Schafer, ISD’s Senior Director of Research and Policy for Information Operations, then walked participants through the specific tactics and techniques that foreign state actors use to target local communities. He organised these into four broad categories, noting that each represents a distinct motivation but that in practice they often overlap and reinforce one another.

The first category involves the advancement of direct political or economic interests at the local level. Schafer highlighted cases in which Chinese state-linked accounts posed as local environmental activists in Texas and Oklahoma (United States) to undermine a rare earth mining company that competed with Chinese interests. Schafer noted this dynamic is particularly relevant for Canada given its significant energy sector interests and pointed to multiple allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian municipal elections, particularly efforts to undermine local candidates who have been critical of the People’s Republic of China.

The second category covers cases where foreign actors map broader geopolitical agendas onto local debates, exploiting community-level issues not because they have a stake in the outcome but because doing so serves their wider objective of dividing and polarising target societies. Schafer described this as collateral damage for the communities affected: the foreign actor may be indifferent to the local policy question, but the resulting polarisation and erosion of trust are very real for those trying to govern at the municipal level. Russian state media has consistently amplified debates around gender and LGBTQ rights in Canada as part of a broader narrative about Western decline, and in the days following the recent school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, actively sought to amplify narratives around the gender identity of the perpetrator. Other examples included the weaponisation of migration, the exploitation of natural disasters and public health crises to erode trust in government, and the amplification of separatist movements, including Wexit in Canada and Calexit in the United States.

The third category concerns efforts to target opponents and silence critics through transnational repression, smear campaigns and the recruitment of what Schafer called “disposable agents.” He cited a pro-China disinformation network known as Spamouflage that has targeted critics of the People’s Republic of China living in Canada with coordinated harassment and highlighted the case of a Chinese YouTuber in Quebec who had sexually explicit deepfakes of her created and circulated by Chinese government agents. He noted that these operations are increasingly moving offline, with a recent ISD report documenting hybrid operations connected to foreign governments in all 27 European Union member states, many involving the online recruitment of young people and low-level criminals to carry out acts of vandalism and sabotage.

The fourth category Schafer covered was information laundering: the process by which foreign actors channel propaganda through sources that appear local and credible to reach domestic audiences. Schafer explained that while technology companies have become better at detecting purely fictitious accounts, foreign actors have adapted by turning to real individuals, including paid influencers and hijacked accounts. He cited the case of Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based company with Canadian ties that received more than $10 million in funding from Russian state media and employed prominent political influencers who were unaware of the source of their funding. Schafer also highlighted the creation of entirely fictitious online outlets, including the Alberta Separatist, which is part of a Russian-linked network known as CopyCop, and a network of more than 150 fabricated local news websites that republish Russian and Chinese state media content under the guise of local journalism. These outlets also function as a gateway as audiences drawn in by content on local issues they care about, such as public health or migration, are then exposed to a wider range of state-aligned geopolitical messaging. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian state media outlet RT Deutsch became the most engaged-with German language media page on Facebook by leading with anti-public health content before steering audiences toward narratives on Ukraine and Syria. He warned that while individual sites in these networks attract limited audiences, in aggregate, they are beginning to contaminate the training data of artificial intelligence tools, meaning that foreign propaganda is increasingly shaping the outputs of widely used AI chatbots.

Prevention and Response to FIMI

Schafer concluded the presentation with a series of practical recommendations for municipal governments in Canada to employ to prevent and respond to the tactics outlined above. He began by emphasising that many of the threats facing Canadian communities are predictable, with the same narratives recurring across different crises and election cycles. He urged municipalities to pre-bunk the information space by getting ahead of divisive narratives before they take hold, and to identify vulnerable groups within their communities and build alliances with trusted messengers who can communicate more credibly than government sources. He recommended building shared capacity across sectors that may appear unrelated, such as public health, election administration and emergency management, and doing so outside of election periods. Too often, he noted, this work becomes tied to elections, which are the most polarised moments in public life and the point at which foreign interference is most likely to become a partisan issue. He also stressed the importance of learning from existing work on countering violent extremism, hate and radicalisation, noting that the recruitment tactics used by foreign intelligence services increasingly mirror those used by groups like ISIS.

Schafer recommended that municipalities audit their own digital presence to ensure dormant or inactive social media accounts are not left vulnerable to hijacking. Technology companies, he said, are generally responsive to requests to remove accounts that impersonate official government pages, even as they remain reluctant to act on broader concerns about inauthentic activity in comment sections. He encouraged municipalities to establish peer networks with other municipalities to identify emerging threats, and to create regular information-sharing mechanisms with civil society organisations, the federal government and technology platforms. Drawing on lessons from the United States, Schafer encouraged municipalities to engage sceptics early and draw a clear distinction between countering foreign information manipulation and censorship.

He cautioned against delegitimising grassroots movements by associating them with foreign interference, even when there is evidence of foreign amplification. Schafer pointed to the example of the Yellow Vest movement in France, which was amplified by Russian operations but remained a legitimate social movement. Salvo emphasised the importance of building relationships with community leaders, so that when credible evidence of foreign manipulation does emerge, trusted local voices can communicate it to affected groups rather than the government. The ideal outcome, Schafer added, is to empower the targeted group itself to push back against foreign co-optation. On the subject of major events, both speakers confirmed that the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will include matches in Canadian host cities Toronto and Vancouver, follows a well-established pattern of foreign exploitation that extends beyond online operations to include offline activities such as low-level vandalism and efforts to discourage attendance, as was seen ahead of the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.

Potential Action Items

• Identify vulnerable communities, including diaspora groups, that may be targeted by foreign actors and develop relationships with trusted messengers within those communities who can communicate credibly when threats emerge
• Conduct an audit of all municipal social media accounts to identify dormant or inactive profiles that could be vulnerable to hijacking, and either reactivate or decommission them
• Develop pre-bunking communications plans for predictable disinformation narratives, particularly around recurring local issues such as migration, public health and infrastructure projects
• Establish regular information-sharing mechanisms with civil society organisations, federal authorities and technology platforms, ensuring that intelligence flows in both directions
• Partner with organisations such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue to access threat briefings, open-source intelligence expertise, and training on identifying and responding to foreign information operations

Next Steps

The Canada Webinar Series will return on 20 March for a session on Nihilistic Violence presented by experts from ISD and partner organisations. RSVP for the event here.

Additional Resources and Previous Canada Webinars

• North America Regional Hub: Enhancing Local Efforts to Address Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and Misogyny as Drivers of Social Polarisation and Violence, Strong Cities Network (January 2026)
• North America Regional Hub: Practical Recommendations for Canadian Municipalities Facing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network (January 2026)
• Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (updated February 2026)
• No time to lose: Liberal democracies can win the cognitive and hybrid war against authoritarians, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (February 2026)
• A Ten-Step Roadmap for Enhancing City-Led Support for Community-Based Programmes to Address Hate and Extremism, Strong Cities Network (February 2025)
• Countering Hate Speech in Times of Crisis: Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network (December 2024) 

Contact Information 

For more information on this event or Strong Cities North America programming, please contact the North America Regional Hub at [email protected].

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