Practical AI Governance Strategies for Canada’s Democratic Future

As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms society, democratic institutions face new threats that demand urgent attention. The 2025 Canadian election laid these dangers bare, showing how AI-generated content undermines democratic foundations through convincing deepfakes, concentrated power in tech giants, and increasingly fractured public discourse.

Yet these challenges bring opportunity. Canada’s technical know-how combined with its forward-thinking regulatory approach gives it a unique edge in crafting ethical AI governance. By implementing practical safeguards around verification, transparency, and power distribution, Canada can protect its democratic processes while creating a blueprint for other nations.

Navigating Democratic Risks in the AI Era

The risks posed by AI are immediate and tangible. During the 2025 Federal election, a video posted by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was circulated widely on social media, prompting debate about its authenticity. Viewers questioned his unnaturally perfect French and flawless appearance, but the ensuing discussion revealed something more troubling than potential deepfakes — people’s increasing inability to determine what is real online.

The issue is not merely about detecting fakery. Nina Schick documents in Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse how rising uncertainty corrodes democratic foundations more effectively than confirmed fakes. When citizens cannot trust their judgment about reality, they withdraw from civic participation. This ‘reality skepticism’ drives voter apathy as people abandon the shared factual ground necessary for democratic discourse.

Simulations conducted at Concordia University demonstrated this phenomenon. Their research revealed how easily-available AI tools overwhelm fact-checking efforts through sheer volume, while detection technologies proved inconsistent. The line between authentic and artificial content blurs not through perfect fakes, but through the pervasive atmosphere of doubt that cheaper, less sophisticated content creates at scale.

Meanwhile, a dangerous concentration of AI power shapes our information landscape. Building advanced systems requires computational and data power available only to large technology companies and well-funded research institutions. When organizations like OpenAI abandon open-source approaches for proprietary systems, they consolidate control over the tools that shape political understanding — search algorithms and recommender systems that determine which narratives citizens encounter. These systems embed their creator’s biases while operating as black boxes beyond democratic scrutiny. This transforms AI infrastructure into a geopolitical battleground where democratic oversight struggles to maintain relevance.

Perhaps most insidiously, AI exacerbates social inequalities. While wealthy institutions can invest in sophisticated AI tools to enhance their productivity, organizations serving marginalized communities struggle to access basic AI capabilities. This digital divide manifests through unequal access to infrastructure and a lack of representation in the underlying datasets that drive AI development. The result is a society where biased AI systems often fail to serve diverse community needs, particularly among Indigenous and rural populations.

This social fragmentation directly accelerates political polarization through what Wendy Chun identifies as “angry clusters.” AI-powered recommendation systems and sentiment analysis tools segment citizens around micro-divisions, then connect these clusters into larger coalitions driven by shared outrage. Rather than bridging partisan gaps, the Political Uses of AI in Canada report highlights how AI systems exploit tensions by clustering Canadians around divisive issues, reinforcing grievances and transforming disagreements into entrenched divisions.

This erosion of shared reality creates fertile ground for foreign interference. From WeChat campaigns targeting Conservative voters in the Chinese diaspora to Russia’s “Doppelganger” operation undermining support for Ukraine, these AI-accelerated disinformation efforts do not need to swing national elections to successfully degrade democratic discourse and public trust.

Unique Strengths for Democratic Governance

Canada stands uniquely positioned to lead in AI governance, with distinct advantages that directly counter these democratic threats. The country’s technical expertise, regulatory foresight, and collaborative approach create a practical foundation for solutions with global impact.

Canada’s world-class AI research ecosystem provides technical leadership few nations can match. Mila Quebec and Toronto’s Vector Institute have established themselves as centers of technical innovation and ethical leadership in generative AI. These institutions are already tackling the verification challenges highlighted by the Poilievre video incident, developing authentication protocols and watermarking technologies that could restore trust in digital content while addressing the uneven distribution of AI’s benefits across society.

Concordia University’s SmoothDetector model exemplifies Canadian innovation in addressing disinformation. Unlike conventional tools, it employs a multimodal approach that simultaneously analyzes text and images to detect inconsistencies between visual content and accompanying messaging. By combining probabilistic modeling with deep learning, it provides nuanced assessments with confidence levels rather than simplistic “fake or not” verdicts, creating a foundation for restoring trust in an increasingly synthetic media environment.

This research leadership is complemented by early regulatory initiatives. The federal Directive on Automated Decision-Making represents one of the world’s first comprehensive frameworks governing algorithmic systems in the public sector. Unlike the unaccountable power seen in private AI development, this approach mandates impact assessments and transparency requirements — principles that could extend to generative AI systems creating political content.

Canada’s approach to digital governance has attempted multi-stakeholder engagement through initiatives like the Digital Charter Implementation Act consultations. While this process brought together industry and civil society, it ultimately excluded Indigenous voices, failing to integrate principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty like OCAP (Ownership, Control, Access and Possession). Future frameworks can address these gaps by drawing from regional models like BC’s Anti-Racism Data Act, which mandates collaboration with First Nations in data governance.

Moving forward, Canada should pursue three parallel tracks to secure its democratic future against AI threats:

1. Technical Infrastructure (2025-2026): Establish a national Content Authentication Network using Canadian-developed tools like SmoothDetector, which leverage machine learning to verify multimedia content. This public resource would prioritize accessibility for rural and Indigenous communities lacking broadband infrastructure.
2. Regulatory Framework (2025-2027): Legislate transparency mandates for AI-generated political content, requiring platforms to disclose synthetic media origins. Impact assessments must include Indigenous consent mechanisms for data sharing, addressing gaps in Bill C-27 by embedding OCAP principles into algorithmic accountability.
3. International Leadership (2026-2028): Champion global standards at the Global Partnership on AI that link AI ethics with digital equity, advocating for investments in datasets reflecting linguistic and cultural diversity. Position Canada as a mediator between tech giants and marginalized groups calling for more inclusive AI governance.

Conclusion

The intersections of AI and democracy demand more than reactive safeguards — they call for a proactive reimagining of technology as a foundation for collective trust. Rather than treating ethical, inclusive AI governance as a constraint on innovation, regulations can be a competitive advantage. By embedding domestic verification systems and establishing clear platform accountability, we can use technology to strengthen public discourse. Success must be measured not by regulatory complexity but by whether Canadians across all communities regain confidence in the shared information ecosystem necessary for democratic life.