Under the cover of the pandemic, the Canadian military has practiced forms of domestic surveillance and psychological manipulation typically reserved for wartime occupations. The Canadian military has honed the techniques it used to monitor political activists and spread disinformation during the thirteen years it spent assisting the US-led intervention in Afghanistan.

In a series of reports by David Pugliese for the Ottawa Citizen, the author has revealed that Canadian forces have attempted to establish a special department for operations targeting its own citizens. This initiative is not the first of its kind. Six years ago, the military planned to use fake social media accounts to propagandize on behalf of the Canadian state. Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance referred to this proposal, which the army abandoned before implementing it, as the “weaponization of public affairs.”

A Cambridge Analytica–linked firm has trained the military staff leading Canada’s most recent domestic surveillance operation. From this training, staff have learned to monitor the social media feeds of the public and spy on Black Lives Matter activists. Bizarrely, military personal have even forged letters from the Nova Scotian government claiming that wolves were on the loose.