Paragraph 1: It’s a strange kind of paradox that has been quietly unfolding on the international stage. Canada’s official foreign-interference monitoring unit—the very body created to help protect democratic institutions from digital manipulation—was listed as an organizer of a training workshop at a European conference that Ottawa, at the last minute, decided it could no longer officially support. The conference in question was the EU DisinfoLab’s annual gathering, held in Vilnius, Lithuania, and the official program for #Disinfo2026 clearly identified Global Affairs Canada’s Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) as a co-organizer of a three-hour workshop, alongside the research firm Graphika. That…

There is a rhythm to public anger that Europe has come to know all too well. It begins with a concrete, human problem—something ordinary people can name and feel. In France, in late September and early October, that problem was the slow strangulation of the public school system: not enough teachers, not enough support staff, buildings that were falling apart, and a daily reality that made it harder and harder for children to learn and for adults to hope. Parents looked at their children’s classrooms and saw overcrowding. Teachers looked at their schedules and saw chaos. Students looked at their…