This week, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer decided to embrace the tinfoil battery of the worst parts of the Internet and began agitating against the UN's Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration  a political document designed to highlight best practices when it comes to immigration and asylum at a time when we have more displaced people globally than at any point since the end of the Second World War.  And he's been forceful in his denunciation of the compact, spreading false concerns in QP, holding press conferences on it, trying to pass motions on the floor of the Commons to insist the government not sign it, and flooding his social media with shitposts that are blatantly lying about what the compact is and does.

If you believe Scheer, the compact will undermine sovereignty by turning over control of our immigration system to UN bureaucrats, and will somehow "erase" our borders.  The talking heads that Scheer is amplifying have also stated things like how it will somehow blur the distinction between immigrants and refugees, and that it will make it a "hate crime" to criticize immigration policy, and impact on the freedom of the press.  All of this is utter bunk, of course the compact is a political document with no legal force or weight and not a treaty.  It explicitly states that it does not impact on a nation's sovereignty (and explicitly reaffirms the rights of states to determine their national migration policies).  It creates clear distinctions between refugees and immigrants, and while it does encourage the elimination of discrimination against migrants, the language in the compact around hate crimes is to punish those who target migrants with violence.  And the "assault" on press freedom?  It's non-binding language promoting objective reporting on migrant-related issues by investing in training, ethical reporting standards, and suggesting public funds not be allocated to outlets who promote intolerance, racism, and xenophobia.

Of course, Scheer's modus operandi for months has been to lie about issues in the hopes of eroding the public discourse, and to make peoples more vulnerable to future lies, particularly during an election.  No matter how many times he gets called out for his lies, whether it's on economic data, tax reforms, or even this issue on the UN compact, he does it with impunity.  Add to that, his adherents, needing to be seen to be onside with what their leader says, will defend those lies and find justifications for them.  This has the effect of not only creating false narratives that he plans to campaign on, but it also sets up the expectation for his followers to repeat and believe  everything that gets said during the campaign.

What makes this particular incident more concerning than most is the fact that he's embracing a full-on conspiracy theory in order to try and score points.  While his treatment of the Statistics Canada banking information issue also delved into tinfoil hat territory Statistics Canada is bound by statute not to provide personal information to any agency that asks, and they have some of the most robust privacy safeguards imaginable, and no, they aren't the prime minister's personal spy agency this one is not simply pandering to paranoiacs.  It's shamelessly feeding the worst possible impulses of the Internet in order to try and move his depressed polling numbers.

But it goes beyond just that it's also part of this notion that Scheer seems to be embracing that he can use just enough extremist language to stir up anger in people, and that somehow it won't cross any lines and that he can keep from attracting the actual extremists.  It's not just the usual issue of dog-whistling in the hopes that only your target audience will hear it it's more like using the dog whistle and then wondering why all of the dogs in the neighbourhood come running.  It's like he's trying a more sophisticated version of Maxime Bernier's blowing on the xenophobia tuba and then looking bewildered as the white nationalists start attaching themselves to his party, but not actually succeeding at that either.

This is a dangerous game, not only because it's feeding the extremists in Canada, but because it's also providing all the fodder that the troll farms in Russia could hope for when it comes to trying to influence the next election.  It seems to have escaped Scheer and his merry band of advisors that what these troll farms are looking for are wedges and divisions that can be exploited to maximum effort, and using extremist language in order to stir up anger that he hopes to capitalize on is feeding them.  Using lies as a matter of course to build narratives makes it easier for these troll farms to sow actual disinformation onto social media platforms because nobody will think critically about what Scheer says, meaning they won't think critically about actual disinformation.  That should alarm everyone.

Add to that, Scheer has been doing his damnedest to delegitimize the press, especially when they call him out on any of his lies.  And by putting measures into the fall economic update designed to help the struggling media sector, Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau have played right into Scheer's hands and those of the Russian troll farms.  Any journalist that calls out Scheer's propensity for mistruth is denounced as the media being paid off (never mind that tax credits for digital subscriptions or newsroom hiring is pretty hard to qualify as a bribe or a reward for good behaviour), and already they're using Question Period to make it acceptable to deride the media and make it acceptable to tell people that the media can be bought.  And this not only benefits Scheer in denouncing anyone who calls him out, but it most especially benefits the Russian troll farms, whose disinformation campaigns will be aided by having any media reporting that calls out their propaganda similarly derided.  Whatever tactical advantage that Scheer thinks he's gaining by embracing the tinfoil hat, he's actively undermining our democracy along the way.  One hopes that he'll smarten up  before it's too late.