TRUDEAU'S MILITARY STRATEGY: OPERATION PHOTO OPPORTUNITY

   Terry Glavin:  A clearer picture of Canada’s war-fighting strategy emerged this week during the dramatic eastward advance of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Operation Photo Opportunity. In the rumble of the hit-and-run media-availability event across Europe, word came at last from the tip of the spear aimed at Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, in Latvia.

   During his stopover in London, where he was pleased to meet Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Trudeau and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Canada and the United Kingdom would rededicate themselves to the Group of Seven’s efforts to counter Russian propaganda and disinformation. “We will continue to use the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism for joint assessment and collective action, including ramping up our collective engagement with media, tech platforms and civil society to tackle Russia’s unprecedented information war,” according to the Johnson-Trudeau joint statement.

   Canada will be coming up with an extra $3 million. “We need to stand up for truth and be vigilant against disinformation that tries to mislead us, and more, tries to divide us,” Trudeau said. This is heartening. Perhaps it will go some way to offset the grant money the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces’ brass have been doling out to the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI) — a peculiar Ottawa think-tank with an overweening interest in telling the other side of the story, as these things are often described — the “side” of the story that Beijing, Tehran and Moscow want you to believe.