TORONTO — U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is employing disinformation to further its goals, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told business leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday, according to leaked audio obtained by The Logic. Trudeau also said that protecting democracy doesn’t seem to be a top priority for the new U.S. administration. 

The current U.S. administration are “prolific users of the tools of misinformation and disinformation for political purposes,” Trudeau said during a question and answer session at the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto, noting “all the tech bros were sitting in the front row of the inauguration.”

The Logic obtained a recording of the private portion of the event, which brought together executives, labour representatives and policymakers to discuss U.S. tariff threats and share ideas for how to get through a developing trade war. Trudeau was responding to a question about how Ottawa is countering “information warfare” as part of the Canada-U.S. economic conflict. 

The comments about the Trump administration came towards the end of a five-minute response, in which Trudeau also spoke more generally about the challenge that AI and digital platforms can create. “We’re seeing the idea in a large number of people, who get fed by social media in such an aggressive way, that opinions have now become the level of identity,” he said, adding that makes it difficult to change minds with facts.

The comments came at the same meeting where Trudeau warned behind closed doors that Trump was serious about making Canada the 51st U.S. state, motivated by the critical minerals deposits in the country, which made global headlines. As The Logic first reported, Trudeau also expressed support for new large-scale nuclear reactors and said Canada needs to soothe ties with Mexico.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to The Logic’s request for comment on Trudeau’s comments on the Trump administration’s use of disinformation and misinformation.

The outgoing prime minister also spoke about how AI could be used to promote more misinformation and disinformation and said world leaders need to ensure the technology is used responsibly to empower citizens rather than promoting falsehoods.

The prime minister reiterated those concerns in a speech Monday at the AI Action Summit in Paris. “We cannot let AI pollute social media with empty slop and cunning disinformation,” he said. “We cannot let it grow even more the rifts within us.” He called for governments to work with companies and developers on regulation, to ensure AI laws are not overly restrictive or immediately outdated. 

The Liberal government has failed to pass its proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, which would have set rules for some uses of the technology, and the bill expired when Trudeau announced his resignation and prorogued Parliament in January.

Elon Musk, CEO of X, is playing a prominent role in the new U.S. administration and has repeatedly criticized Trudeau. He was among the tech leaders seated close to Trump at the president’s second inauguration, which also included Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai.

The Liberals have long raised the spectre of misinformation and disinformation as a serious challenge to democracy and the international order. The federal government has funded research to analyze content on social media and educate citizens on what they read and watch on the internet. 

Ottawa cited the rise of disinformation as a justification for the Online News Act. But despite the urging of some experts, the Liberals notably left misinformation and disinformation out of the proposed Online Harms Act, a law that has yet to pass requiring digital platforms to remove certain kinds of content.

Canadian authorities and researchers have found that groups linked to hostile states like Russian and Chinese states have spread falsehoods to undermine this country and some of its prominent political figures. Last month, Marie-Josée Hogue, commissioner of the federal inquiry into foreign interference, said disinformation “threatens the very existence of our democracy.” 

In his comments at Friday’s event, Trudeau also cited the Conservative proposal to defund the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as Meta’s move to effectively ban news from its platforms in Canada in response to the Online News Act. The law requires tech firms to pay news publishers whose content is posted or linked to their digital platforms.

Those are “symptoms of a world that is looking to fragment people,” Trudeau said on the leaked recording, claiming the division is designed to sow chaos and destabilization, and make the world’s richest people and companies “even richer and more profitable at the cost of vibrant, resilient communities.”

The world faces a “real challenge” to navigate all those hurdles “in ways to protect democracy, because that doesn’t seem to be a top priority for the incoming administration,” Trudeau said.