Why All Climate Misinformation Should Be Seen as Disinformation

“In the lead-up to Canada’s federal election, climate policy was one of the most hotly debated and deeply polarizing issues. Amid party platforms, campaign promises and heated debates, Canadians were also flooded with misleading narratives, questionable statistics and emotionally charged claims about everything from carbon pricing to oil and gas development.”

In this op-ed first published by Canada’s National Observer, Andrew Heffernan says that “while much of this may appear to be innocent misinformation — shared by well-meaning individuals who believe what they’re posting — it’s time we acknowledge a harder truth: almost all misinformation, especially about climate change, is the downstream product of coordinated disinformation campaigns.”

CIGI recently released the communiqué for Think7 Canada 2025. We are pleased to announce that the French translation is now available.

In preparing the communiqué, the chairs and co-chairs of the T7’s four task forces distilled a wealth of expert analysis from policy briefs submitted to this engagement group in early 2025 following a global call for submissions, as well as from subsequent discussions at the T7 Summit hosted by CIGI in early April. Through the communiqué’s recommendations, the T7 aims to help inform conversations at the upcoming G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, for the ministerial work to follow during Canada’s G7 presidency, and beyond.

You can find the English and French communiqués, as well as the submitted policy briefs, here, and watch recordings of the T7 Summit sessions compiled in the T7 2025 Playlist.

With Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada, the country is rethinking its planned purchase of US-manufactured F-35 fighter jets, considering replacing them with aircraft manufactured in Europe. The key issue, Natasha Tusikov writes, is that the US manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, controls aircraft software updates, so that equipment must be shipped back to them or authorized repair depots. Even the US military does not have the right to repair its equipment because of restrictive warranty provisions.

In this opinion, Tusikov argues that “with the United States quickly descending into authoritarianism under President Donald Trump, it should now be evident to policy makers that the right to repair — the freedom of buyers to choose who fixes their goods — is critical to national security and sovereignty.”