The Canadian Armed Forces are set to conduct special training in Huron and Bruce counties between Friday, May 3 and Sunday, May 5.
Residents in the town of Goderich are advised that wellness checks or “door knocks” will be performed in town on Saturday, May 4.
“Soldiers will be going door-to-door and speaking with residents to simulate what would happen if they were asked to check on the well-being of residents during an actual emergency,” a notice reads.
After the revelation that the Canadian military ran an “information campaign,” which resembled a psychological operation, aimed at “influencing the Canadian public during the COVID-19 pandemic,” and continued for months despite orders by the chief of defence staff to shut it down in the spring of 2020, this latest exercise has people alarmed.
By September of 2020, the military’s special propaganda unit had deployed loudspeakers in Nova Scotia to generate wolf noises to deceive Canadian soldiers into believing real wolves were in the area near their military bases.
It was supposed to test the use of loudspeakers during psyop training – giving Orwellian 1984 vibes – but the exercise accidentally spread to civilians when a forged Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry letter was released, warning residents that wolves were roaming the streets and posed a threat to pets and children.
It was a tale of incompetence and soldiers acting without authorization, again.
Now as the military prepares to go door to door to “check” on civilians, many are concerned about the lack of transparency with the government’s use of military resources for questionable purposes and how this not only infringes on privacy but also normalizes government intrusion into civilian life.
The military’s persistence to operate an otherwise terminated exercise, alongside conducting psyop testing on its own rank and file, suggests a troubling misuse of power and disregard for authority. Coupled with the erosion of civil liberties in recent years, there is a heightened awareness about government accountability, transparency, the normalization of military involvement in civilian affairs and respect for (or lack thereof) civil liberties.
