A warning for Canada’s democracy: Act now to protect future elections. Canada’s 2025 federal election upheld its integrity but exposed a digital ecosystem under mounting strain.

With high confidence, it appears that though the Kremlin has exploited Kirk’s death as part of its information warfare strategy, employing tactics outlined in the FBI’s Doppelgänger affidavit.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has been followed by a massive amount of polarized online discussions in the Canadian information ecosystem, fuelling disinformation, partisan conflict, and mobilization exposing the risk of targeted and/or large scale unrest and physical harm.

The sources and response to scams using AI and fake news websites during Canada’s 2025 federal election

Social media platforms host and profit  from scams using AI and fake news websites during Canada’s 2025 federal election

• Canada post strike, tied for the most talked about story of the year

• Canadians place little trust in celebrity and well-known political influencer endorsements

• Concern about US foreign influence jumps 7%

• Persistent misinformation in the Canadian information ecosystem

• The US Election was closely followed and discussed in Canada.

• Canadians think the Trump presidency will be terrible for Canada.

• Huge spike in Canadians attributing foreign influence to India.

• Widespread awareness of calls for Trudeau to step down.

• TikTok increasingly dominates news engagement.

• Elected officials lose trust. 

• Podcasts playing an increasingly important role in Canada, particularly for the politically interested.

• CBC surges in popularity, BlogTO enters the Top 5 and appetite for local news increases.

Key findings:

• Canadians want the government to get involved in the fight against bots

• The ecosystem has become slightly more polarized

• Engagement with misinformation and concern about fake content increases

This minor incident was likely caused by a single entity or actor using a set of newly created bot accounts with posts composed by either a low-quality (cheap) or poorly prompted generative Large Language Models (often described generically as AI) [Incident Update (IU) 6]. This network of bots consistently posts about recent news topics and are only incidentally interested in Canada or Canadian politics content [IU6].