Manufacturing consent: Government behavioural engineering of Canadians
Inside the Government of Canada’s covert effort to steer citizens’ beliefs, emotions and behaviours
The Justice Centre’s new report shows something Canadians were never meant to see: during COVID, the federal government wasn’t informing the public. It was running psychological operations on the public. In plain terms: brainwashing. A state-run effort to shape belief, mood, and behaviour—and it didn’t end when the pandemic did.
Inside the Privy Council Office sits a behavioural unit whose job is not to listen to Canadians, but to train them. The Impact and Innovation Unit was sold as a harmless “nudge” shop. In truth, it became a social-engineering arm of the federal government. Its work was not public health but compliance.
During the pandemic, this unit tested fake news stories about vaccine injuries, then observed which emotional cues pushed people away from fear and toward obedience. They mixed fear, reassurance, expert praise, and warm words about “community protection,” then measured which blend bent the public will the fastest. They called it the “kitchen sink” method.
This is better described as behavioural conditioning rather than “persuasion.”
And they launched it before they had solid safety data, while reports of myocarditis were already building. Instead of slowing down and telling the truth, Ottawa gave its behavioural team a new task: keep anxiety low, keep uptake high, and drown the public in cues that steer thought in the right direction.
This is how a government acts when it no longer sees citizens as thinking adults. It sees them as empty vessels waiting to be filled. It sees them as objects to be shaped.
We must recognize that this is the logic of a totalitarian regime.
A free country does not direct the inner life of its people. It does not hire psychologists to test which mood cues best override doubt. It does not treat its own citizens like subjects in a lab. But that is exactly what the federal government did.
Canadians were never given a chance to think for themselves because Ottawa had already decided their thoughts for them. And when a government believes it has the right to design the public mind, it has already left the democratic path.
The Justice Centre calls for oversight. That matters. But the deeper issue is this: a country cannot claim to be free when its leaders believe the people must be engineered. A country cannot claim to respect rights when it uses psy-ops against its own.
The government must stop treating the public as raw material.
LINK FOR REPORT ON FIRST LINE