This timeline includes entries on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. This includes investigations into the origin of COVID-19, and the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 which is caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. Social media apps and platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube, have contributed to the spread of misinformation. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) reported that conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 began on "day one". CAHN reported on March 16, 2020, that far-right groups in Canada were taking advantage of the climate of anxiety and fear surrounding COVID, to recycle variations of conspiracies from the 1990s, that people had shared over shortwave radio. COVID-19 disinformation is intentional and seeks to create uncertainty and confusion. But most of the misinformation is shared online unintentionally by enthusiastic participants who are politically active.
Overview The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum and the 2016 United States presidential election highlighted the way in which digital technologies, such as "social media and microblogging platforms" had changed the way in which people consumed and responded to the news,"Social media heavily changed the way we get informed and shape our opinions. Users' polarization seems to dominate news consumption on Facebook. Through a massive analysis on 920 news outlets and 376 million users, we explore the anatomy of news consumption on Facebook on a global scale. We show that users tend to confine their attention on a limited set of pages, thus determining a sharp community structure among news outlets." bringing in the period of post-truth.
Six Canadian researchers who undertook a large-scale detailed case study of Canada based on a "massive data set of Canadian Twitter users" found that most COVID-19 misinformation shared by Canadian Twitter accounts, was retweeted from accounts in the United States. They found that the infodemic of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories, which includes medical advice from unreliable sources, and claims that the severity and spread of COVID-19 had been exaggerated, did not stop at national borders. Canadians who had more exposure to United States-based Twitter accounts, were more likely to post COVID-19 misinformation and misperceptions. COVID-19 disinformation is intentional and seeks to create uncertainty and confusion. But most of the misinformation is shared online unintentionally by enthusiastic participants who are politically active, in what is called the "paradox of participation". Recycled conspiracy theories One the early conspiracy theories was that COVID-19 was a United Nations' plan to eliminate about 90% of the global population, which is a variation on the UN Agenda 21 conspiracy theories spread by the John Birch Society, Glenn Beck, Ted Cruz in the 2010s. On his TV and radio broadcasts, Beck cautioned that the 1992 United Nations Agenda 21 sustainability plan was a disguised conspiracy to cut the world population by 85%, and a move towards totalitarian "government control on a global level".
2019 The Digital Citizen Initiative was launched by Canadian Heritage to combat online disinformation by encouraging critical thinking. In September 2019, CBC/Radio-Canada joined the Trusted News Initiative, intended to develop tools to assist news industry partners in "moving quickly and collectively to undermine disinformation before it can take hold."
2020 In the early months of the pandemic, 96% of Canadians viewed content that they thought was either "misleading, false or inaccurate". January: One of the first and most "pervasive" conspiracy theories linked 5G telecommunications technology to the coronavirus, according to Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents Global News obtained under the Access to Information Act. The CSIS documents focused on national security specifically investigating authoritarian states and extremist groups that were spreading COVID-19 disinformation. FullFact fact checker had already been writing about 5G conspiracies long before COVID, but they started to see stories linking coronavirus to 5G in early January in a 5G Facebook group page, falsely claiming that 5G was first installed in Wuhan where it caused a modification in the virus. A January 2020 article, since deleted, in an "obscure Belgian newspaper" linked 5G to the coronavirus. A March 28, 2020 YouTube video since-deleted by a preacher, falsely claimed that he was a Vodafone whistle-blower with insider knowledge on links between 5G and the coronavirus. The video went viral and continues to be shared on other platforms. According to the fact-checker, the success of this video, which made the false claims all the more dangerous, was attributed to the pastor's eloquence, his claim that God had blessed him with a gift, and his claim to insider knowledge that could not be verified. The webpage of "Action 4 Canada", an Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy group which is associated with the 2022 Canada convoy protest, includes misinformation related to health consequences of 5G technology. January: The COVID-19 lab leak theory on the origins of virus SARS-CoV-2, which often referenced the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source, was considered to be a "conspiracy theory built on misinformation and fear", from the pandemic's earliest days. When Yuri Deigin, a Russian-born Canadian scientist and biotech entrepreneur, first read about the hypothesis in January, he too believed it was a conspiracy theory. As he set out to prove it was wrong using "cold, hard scientific facts," he compiled an original body of research that left him more open to the hypothesis. He published his 16,000-word essay in April in English on Medium and it was either "ignored" or "disparaged". Geopolitics combined with conspiracy theories entangled COVID's origin story. The lab leak theory was used by politicians to shift the blame away from their own "catastrophic" pandemic management. In March, US President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state said that the virus originated in Wuhan lab and referred to it as the China virus. In her August 2021 book Elaine Dewar connected some of the "geopolitical interests to the spin" behind the theories on the virus' origins. January 25: Kyle Bass, a manager of a hedge fund in Texas, and a critic of China, falsely claimed in a Twitter post that two married Chinese spies had sent stolen pathogens to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology from a high security infectious disease Canadian lab. As misinformation spread online based on a distortion of a CBC report, Fuyuki Kurasawa who is the director of York University's Global Digital Citizenship Lab said that coronavirus disinformation is "creating a 'social panic' online". January 27: By Monday, January 27, the "baseless" "Stolen from Canadian lab" claim had been shared 6,000 times on one Facebook conspiracy theory page, and had over 350,000 views on the social media app TikTok, which is Chinese-owned. CBC reported that the claim Bass made had "no factual basis". January 30: False health advice on preventing and treating COVID-19 was widely circulated on WhatsApp and Facebook in Canada, as well as in Pakistan and India. March: According to Anatoliy Gruzd, Canada Research Chair in Privacy Preserving Digital Technologies, there was a significant uptake in the use of social media starting in March, when the pandemic officially started and lockdowns began to be implemented. People used social media as a way of responding to social isolation by connecting with family, friends, and coworkers, and to keep informed on COVID. March 16: Peter Downing, head of the western separatist movement Wexit Canada, now known as the Maverick Party, who was also one of the organizers of the February 20, anti-lockdown "Walk for Freedom Alberta" rally at the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton, Alberta, posted on Twitter that school and daycare shutdowns are a "ploy" to shut down the economy. The federal government had failed to do this through its "climate change scare". "Don't fall for the scare." In January, Downing's Wexit party purchased anti-Trudeau billboards in Alberta accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of "ISIS terrorist reintegration", "tax theft", "economic sabotage", "foreign interference" and "ethics violations. The signs were removed because of concerns of violating the Charter"s anti-incitement clause in regards to "hate speech" and "offensive ads." March 18: At a press conference, US President Donald Trump defended his reference to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus", a term that has been associated with anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. April 3: A preprint by Caly et al. about ivermectin as a possible treatment for COVID-19 was published. Experts questioned the methodological methods used. In response, the FDA issued a warning and the authors published an advisory saying, "Finally, it is critically important to remember that ivermectin as an antiviral is in a very early phase – under no circumstances should self-medication be considered without the guidance of a qualified physician, and especially not using therapeutics designed for veterinary purposes!" A pre-print does not have the same validity as a peer-reviewed paper published in a scholarly journal. Barcelona Institute for Global Health scientists said that the decision by governments in Latin America to use invermectin was based on the analysis in this pre-print. Both invermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which have not been proven by clinical trials, are "widely available and relatively cheap" in most countries. April 7: Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Canadian Heritage, announced the Digital Citizen Initiative's $3 million dollar Digital Citizen Contribution Program to help combat COVID-19 misinformation. April 14: The origins of the conspiracy theory claiming falsely that Bill Gates would use microchips in a future COVID-19 vaccine to track people, can be traced to an April 6 question posed by a conservative White House news correspondent that was amplified by Fox News Laura Ingraham on April 8, according to Annenberg Public Policy Center's nonprofit FactCheck.org. April 29: An unsolicited April 29 8-page article, "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", by the anti-Chinese Communist Party newspaper The Epoch Times, containing misinformation about the origin of the virus, was distributed to some Canadian, American and Australian customers. April: Statistics Canada launched the Canadian Perspectives Survey Series (CPSS), to track the experiences of Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic. May 11: A Canada-wide online survey of 1,500 adults focused on "digital hygiene" and asked how often respondents had encountered misinformation related to COVID-19. May 2: During the first months of the pandemic, misinformation superspreaders like anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Roger Stone, and Fox News' Laura Ingraham contributed to replacing George Soros with Bill Gates as the prime "bogeyman" of the right. By May 2, 2020, COVID-19-related misinformation about Gates shared by conspiracy theorists, including anti-vaxxers and "science deniers", was "among the most widespread of all coronavirus falsehoods". June 23: Reuters fact checkers said that Judy Mikovits widely-shared 2-minute video clip on social media in which she made the claim that the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine would kill 50 million Americans if there was a vaccine-mandate, was unfounded. Mikovits presented COVID-19 pandemic-related conspiracy theories half-hour long in a May video, Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19, that was widely circulated before being removed from YouTube and other social media sites. July: