Photo by Can Pac Swire/Flickr

The recent national panic over alleged foreign influence on our elected officials has seen politicians and journalists alike issue calls to name the suspected “traitors,” but it turns out that the worst traitors of all may actually be in our own news media. “While allegations of interference involving elected officials have dominated public and media discourse, the reality is that misinformation and disinformation pose an even greater threat to democracy,” wrote Justice Marie-Josée Hogue in her long-awaited report on the subject that was released this past week in no fewer than seven volumes. “Some spread disinformation about candidates and elected officials who express views that diverge from their own interests. Their goal is to try and prevent these candidates from getting elected, and to affect policy choices and positions.”

Hogue was named in 2023 to head a public inquiry into allegations of foreign political interference which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had tried to address with a quick investigation by former Governor General David Johnson, an old family friend. Concern built last June when the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians released a report claiming that some MPs had been “semi-witting or witting” dupes of foreign powers attempting to interfere in Canadian politics. While heavily redacted, the NSICOP report pointed a finger directly at foreign-funded Canadian news media, most notably by China, and its earlier report on the subject named the “China Watch” inserts carried by some major world newspapers, including the Globe and Mail, which were bought and paid for by the Chinese government.

As if on cue and to prove Hogue’s point, our other national newspaper, the foreign-owned National Post, ran a scathing front-page screed the very next day by Jordan Peterson denigrating numerous core Canadian values. The

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