Exercise that caused panic in N.S. blamed on incompetence
Forces red-faced after phoney warning about roving wolves set off panic in N.S.
A Canadian Forces propaganda exercise that panicked Nova Scotia residents with tales of wolves on the loose was the result of incompetence and soldiers acting without authorization, a newly released military investigation has revealed.
The September 2020 exercise, which was supposed to test the use of loudspeakers during propaganda training, descended into a comedy of errors.
Most of the members of the propaganda unit involved in the exercise were untrained in how to conduct what the military calls influence activities, the investigation determined. Still, they developed a scenario to test the loudspeakers by generating wolf noises, although the reason for selecting those types of sounds wasn't clear.
Then at the last minute, an officer in the influence-activities unit came up with the idea of forging a document using the letterhead of the Wildlife Division of Nova Scotia's Department of Lands and Forestry. The letter was a warning to local residents, claiming wolves had been reintroduced into the area by the provincial and federal governments and were now roaming the Annapolis Valley.
The unit had no authorization to produce the letter and did so without approval of either the Canadian Forces leadership or the Nova Scotia government, according to the summary investigation into the incident. Originally, the plan was to have the document only for use during the training.
But unknown to the unit, a military member not involved in the training exercise took a photo of the letter and, thinking it was real, sent it to his wife. The military spouse then distributed the letter to neighbours to warn them about the wolves, according to the investigation.
As a result, the Nova Scotia government started receiving phone calls from concerned residents.
“Planning, co-ordination and control before and during the (training) lacked oversight,” concluded the investigation, which was released through the Access to Information law. “Junior staff were employed for roles they were either not qualified for or experienced in.”
This resulted “in uninformed judgments and quick decision-making which led to arguably potentially unsound tactical/ planning lessons and unintended consequences,” the investigation added.
Nova Scotia government officials, who didn't know the military was behind the deception, had to conduct a social media campaign to brand the letter as “fake” and reassure residents there was no danger.
The Canadian Army upon realizing their personnel were behind the controversy immediately contacted the Nova Scotia government and local media, accepted full responsibility and apologized.
The army has temporarily paused most of its specialist propaganda training, except for staff going on overseas missions. It is also improving oversight to monitor such exercises and training. Administrative action was also taken against the officer in charge of the exercise.
While the wolf training scenario became a high-profile news story, some inside National Defence Headquarters say more concerning are a series of initiatives by Canadian Forces over the last year to expand its capabilities in propaganda techniques and the monitoring of the Canadian public.
Last year, the Citizen reported that a team assigned to a Canadian military intelligence unit monitored and collected information from people's social media accounts in Ontario, claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the military's Canadian Joint Operations Command planned a propaganda campaign aimed at heading off civil disobedience by the public during the pandemic. The plan called for using propaganda tactics similar to those employed against the Afghan population during the war in Afghanistan.
Last year Emma Briant, a research associate at Bard College in the U.S. who specializes in examining military propaganda, revealed the Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million in training its public affairs officers on behaviour-modification techniques. Those techniques were of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, the company implicated in a 2016 data-mining scandal to help Donald Trump's election campaign.
Another controversial plan would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians, as well as collect and analyze information from the public's social media accounts.
It also called for harnessing the social media accounts of select Canadian Forces staff to push out pre-approved government and military messages to the public. Although the social media activity would be seen to be coming from the personal accounts of military personnel, it would actually be Canadian Forces public affairs officers behind the scenes crafting the messages. Military-friendly academics and retired generals would also be used to push out approved Canadian Forces messages either on social media or in their interactions with journalists.
The plan, revealed by the Citizen, was shut down after it was determined to have violated federal government policies.