Across Alberta, municipalities are weighing the pros and cons of hosting AI data centres. I used @nationalobserver.com's Civic Searchlight tool to figure out which towns are looking at data centres and dig into how they are thinking about the costs & benefits www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/16/n...

This story is such a great example of one of the use cases for Civic Searchlight. By searching across municipalities, @natashabulowski.bsky.social was able to build a far more comprehensive picture of data centre debates than we could have done even a year ago.

Civic Searchlight just got more useful. We've added the ability to watch council videos in the tool so that you can see and search the transcript while watching the video, to make sure you don't miss a beat. Let us know how it works for you! civicsearchlight.nationalobserver.com

This is valuable but not at all surprising to me given the frequency with which @indicator.media finds that it is Chinese advertisers behind scam nudifiers and pornbait ads. see for ex: > indicator.media/p/meta-ran-t... > indicator.media/p/meta-ran-4...

We're hiring for a nine-month contract covering federal politics! Posting coming soon, but don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested — jimmy at nationalobserver dotcom

More evidence that chatbots can persuade voters. And most AI companies still let you create a custom chatbot to push your ideology. www.newscientist.com/article/2507...

Inside the AI-powered conspiracy machine selling ‘Truthwear’ to Canadians. More great investigative work by @rorywh.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/08/i...

"Petrakis remains a fan of Mutinni despite now knowing that it is an AI-powered business run by a Pakistani consultant on behalf of a Toronto rapper with the goal of convincing conspiracy theorists to buy T-shirts." What's stranger, truth or fiction? www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/08/i...

There’s an AI-powered conspiracy machine selling ‘Truthwear’ merch to Canadians, and my friends at the National Observer unmasked the person profiting from this account. The story shows what happens when people are given incentives to publish fake information, at scale, all with the help of AI:

Excellent original reporting that cuts through the conspiracies - yes, the truth is still out there but not at Mutinni: www.national-observer.com/2025/12/08/i...

Mutinni began directing users to a Shopify website, selling $50 T-shirts branded as “Truthwear.” “You’re not just buying clothes — you’re claiming a piece of the rebellion,” it told followers. The company has built followings in the hundreds of thousands using AI to pump conspiracy theories.

Amazing work here by @rorywh.bsky.social: an AI slop factory churning out thousands of videos and posts on everything from climate denial to lizard people is, essentially, just going where the money is now. Rory tracked down the Canadian rapper running the page.

Step 1. Use AI to generate glossy conspiracy videos about climate change and Health Canada at scale Step 2. Monetize in a Shopify store selling merch Read my latest investigation into why conspiracy-commerce businesses are the logical endpoint of attention economy.

This is an incredible tool built by @nationalobserver.com that will help foster enhanced transparency at the local level. All CAJ members can join Civic Searchlight....NOW! A big thanks to @jameswsthomson.com for this. Contact him ASAP! HT to @rorywh.bsky.social @davidmckie.bsky.social and team

Enbridge execs have been boasting to shareholders they plan to return $40-$45 billion to them over the next five years supported by gas expansions across the continent. Ontario in particular is a cash cow where they have an opportunity to "over earn." www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/09/a...

@nationalobserver.com launched a great resource to help journalists and citizens hold councils accountable! Kudos to @jameswsthomson.com @davidmckie.bsky.social @rorywh.bsky.social!!

This new tool is the sort of thing I would have loved to get my hands on when I was a community news reporter more than a decade ago. Kudos to @rorywh.bsky.social and the CNO team for their hard work on this asset, and to the publication for releasing it freely to journalists and researchers.

Disinformation about municipal policy and politics is increasing sharply. I see it literally every day. It's misdirecting people, and making them unhappy, angry, and disconnected from reality. #yyj #disinformation #misinformation

As the campaign continues to pop up in communities across the country, Canada’s National Observer has developed an unprecedented new tool that allows us to track the spread of campaigns like this: Civic Searchlight. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/i...

This is very cool and super valuable. Congrats to the team at @nationalobserver.com for launching this important new tool. Check it out folks 👇

This is excellent news and such important work: www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/n...

Canada’s National Observer unveils a powerful tool for fighting disinformation www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/n...

Today, @nationalobserver.com is launching a tool to search municipal meeting transcripts across Canada. The tool has already helped us unearth a climate denial network targeting towns and cities, report on AI data centers, measure our impact and more. Journalists and researchers, sign up for free!

Today we're launching a new, powerful tool for public accountability created by @rorywh.bsky.social. Civic Searchlight compiles hundreds of municipalities' public meetings and makes them searchable for the first time. It's free to use and we hope you journalists and researchers put it to work.

Today we launch Civic Searchlight, a tool for searching local government meeting transcripts across 550 municipalities in Canada. Access is open for researchers and journalists: civicsearchlight.nationalobserver.com

As climate disinformation groups move into the shadows, Canada’s National Observer has developed an unprecedented new tool: Civic Searchlight. To build it, we assembled a database of council meetings in more than 550 municipalities. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/i...

Just as adding a filter to a cigarette doesn’t promise cancer-free smoking, pairing oil production with carbon capture doesn’t actually decarbonize the fuel. Here's Catherine McKenna on the grand bargains being discussed and why she sees CCUS as a dead end.

Replaying the Trudeau-era strategy of influencing policy by lobbying high-level officials isn't working for climate groups, who are now pivoting to an outsider game to find leverage in the age of Carney. This past weekend's protests were just a start to shift the political calculus.

Obtained federal planning documents say its "critical" to incorporate climate risks like wildfires for major events like the G7 Summit. That's quite the contrast to the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter issued during the summit that did not include a single reference to climate change.

Imperial Oil’s marketing materials have for years promised that the plant would convert canola oil into diesel using “hydrogen produced with carbon capture and storage technology.” But that isn’t happening. Story from @rorywh.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/19/i...

My latest: Imperial Oil’s marketing materials have for years promised that the plant would convert canola oil into diesel using “hydrogen produced with carbon capture and storage technology.” But that isn’t happening. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/19/i...

The wildfire danger where homes meet forests is rising worldwide. Using new data, we built a detailed map of Halifax’s fire-prone forest edge — and explain what it says about the state of the wildland urban interface in Canada. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/16/n...

The wildfire danger where homes meet forests is rising worldwide. Using new data, @rorywh.bsky.social and @cloelogan.bsky.social built a detailed map of Halifax’s fire-prone forest edge — and explain what it says about the state of the wildland urban interface in Canada.

The perception that red tape is preventing Canada from building major projects doesn’t hold hold up. Hundreds of projects, worth hundreds of billions of dollars are planned under existing regulations. Yet Carney blames a bureaucratic maze for stifling growth to justify his deregulatory agenda.

Explosive hurricanes and searing wildfires are pushing U.S. insurers to the limit, upending housing markets, and even reshaping the makeup of some communities. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Gil Gaul reports:

a very credible group of people predicted 20 years ago that the insurance industry would push to solve climate change to hang onto their industry instead they, like every other corporation, decided the imperative to increase profits for shareholders in the stort term was the way forward.

LNG Canada Phase 2 is the largest project in Carney's first batch of major projects and would double export capacity at the site. I'd bet Ottawa forks over some cash to make it happen — Carney suggested the Major Projects Office would consider that. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/11/n...

In late June, Google quietly scrubbed its pledge to hit net zero by 2030 from its sustainability website as it goes full steam ahead on hyperscale data centers and generative AI.

“I don’t like the precedent this sets,” said the town’s mayor, Jeff Genung, at a council meeting Monday night. Genung was concerned that if Cochrane exited the program, it could be used as an example to reverse environmental policies elsewhere. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/11/n...

Carney hinted he’ll soon release a ‘climate competitiveness strategy’ that insiders expect will boost industrial carbon pricing while cutting other emission reduction policies, echoing previously failed attempts at striking a grand bargain. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/09/a...

Carney hinted he’ll soon release a ‘climate competitiveness strategy’ that insiders expect will boost industrial carbon pricing while cutting other emission reduction policies, echoing previously failed attempts at striking a grand bargain. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/09/a...

We traced back the history of Google's sustainability website and found that quietly deleted its net-zero priority area. In its place is a new area Energy, focused on building out AI. My latest article with @dariussnieckus.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/04/i...

With power demand spiking from AI data centres, in July Google quietly scrubbed its net zero pledge. Great work here from @rorywh.bsky.social and @dariussnieckus.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/04/i...

Important investigation here from @rorywh.bsky.social on The Epoch Times circumventing Meta's ad ban to pump out disinformation, and Meta's ongoing refusal to credibly enforce its own rules. It's one of the many ways Canadian democracy is being poisoned. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/08/21/i...

Some genuinely excellent investigative work by CNO's @rorywh.bsky.social — don't miss it!

New story out today. I traced three anonymous Facebook pages back to the Epoch Times, which is banned by Meta. The pages were branded as 'educational research centres' and advertised surveys to collect political opinions and contact data from Canadians. They were seen over 22 million times.

In the past 12 months, The Epoch Times has spent over $300,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads promoting political surveys to collect the emails of Canadians using a series of anonymous pages. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/08/21/i...

Excellent and very alarming story… On paper there is a mechanism for holding Canadian companies accountable for human rights abuses abroad. But as John Woodside discovered, that position has been empty for months.

It has been nearly 500 days since Canadian oil company ReconAfrica was accused of committing human rights abuses and environmental destruction in an ecologically sensitive region in Namibia — and the alleged victims still have no answers. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/08/07/n...