Climate Misinformation Emerges as National Security Threat; Canada Unprepared

When climate misinformation becomes a national security threat, people’s lives hang in the balance.

During recent Canadian wildfires, social media was flooded with false claims that fires were deliberately set, evacuation orders represented government overreach, and smoke maps were being manipulated. These weren’t harmless rumors—they directly influenced how people responded to life-threatening dangers, with some residents delaying evacuation because they were uncertain which information to trust.

The consequences of this dynamic extend far beyond mere communication problems. When misinformation delays evacuations, fragments compliance with safety directives, or undermines confidence in official warnings, it fundamentally reduces the government’s ability to protect lives and critical infrastructure. At this point, misinformation transforms from an annoyance into a genuine national security risk.

Emergency response systems are built on public trust. When that trust erodes, response capacity weakens and preventable harm increases. Canada is now entering an era where climate misinformation is becoming a significant public safety threat. As extreme weather events like wildfires, floods, and droughts become more frequent, emergency systems rely on one increasingly fragile assumption: that people believe the information they receive.

The problem extends beyond immediate disasters. It also undermines long-term climate policy and adaptation efforts. When trust in institutions deteriorates and misinformation becomes easier to absorb than scientific evidence, public support for proactive climate action weakens substantially.

Recent research shows that public perception of climate events like droughts often relies more on lived experiences, memories, identity, and social cues than on official information. These cognitive dynamics create predictable vulnerabilities that bad actors can exploit. Evidence from Canada and abroad clearly documents how false narratives during climate emergencies reduce protective behavior, amplify confusion, and weaken institutional authority.

Canada has invested billions in physical resilience measures, including firefighting capacity, flood mitigation, and energy reliability. The government has also joined the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change to investigate false narratives and strengthen response capacity. While these are steps in the right direction, Canada still treats misinformation as a secondary issue rather than a key component of climate-risk management.

This approach leaves responsibility for effective messaging fragmented across various departments—public safety, environment, emergency management, and digital policy—with no single entity accountable for monitoring, anticipating, or responding to information threats during crises. The cost of this fragmentation is measurable: slower response times, weaker coordination, and greater risk to public safety.

Another challenge is that government communications still rely heavily on traditional media like radio, TV, and static websites, while climate misinformation is optimized for social media environments. False content often circulates rapidly online with emotional resonance, giving it a significant advantage over verified information. Research shows how platforms systematically amplify sensational claims and how false information can travel farther and faster than official updates.

Governments typically attempt to correct misinformation during emergencies when emotions are running high, timelines are compressed, and false narratives are already circulating. By then, correction becomes reactive and often ineffective. Trust cannot be built in the middle of a crisis—it is long-term public infrastructure that must be maintained through transparency, consistency, and modern communication systems before disasters occur.

Canada needs to shift from reactive correction to proactive preparedness. With wildfire season only months away, this is a critical window when preparation matters most. Waiting for the next crisis to expose the same weaknesses is not resilience, but repetition.

This shift requires systematic planning on multiple fronts. Federal and provincial emergency agencies should treat public understanding of alerts, evacuation systems, and climate risks as a standing responsibility rather than an emergency add-on. Information must be communicated well before disaster strikes through platforms people actually use, with clear expectations about authoritative information sources.

Institutional coordination must improve. A federal-provincial coordination mechanism linked to emergency management rather than political communications would allow early detection of misinformation patterns and faster response, similar to how meteorological or hydrological risks are monitored today.

Partnerships with trusted community messengers are also vital. During recent wildfires, community-run pages and volunteers were among the most effective at countering false claims. These relationships should be formalized in emergency planning rather than improvised under pressure.

While eliminating every rumor or piece of misinformation is impossible, strengthening public trust and information integrity must become core components of climate infrastructure. Without this foundation, emergencies will become increasingly difficult to manage and more dangerous for communities. Climate resilience isn’t just about physical systems—it’s fundamentally about whether people believe the warnings meant to protect them. Canada’s long-term security depends on taking this reality seriously.