“Trust will return not when the world becomes impossible to deceive, but when we learn to demand truth, verify what matters, and give our trust only to those willing to earn it.” – MJ Martin
The Collapse of an Invisible Currency
Trust may be one of the most valuable things a society possesses, yet unlike money, roads, or buildings, we rarely notice it until it disappears. Trust is the invisible currency that allows strangers to conduct business, citizens to believe institutions, employees to follow leaders, and families to communicate without demanding evidence for every sentence.
Canada is experiencing a profound strain on that currency.
Statistics Canada reported in 2026 that 80 percent of Canadians encountered online information they suspected was misleading, false, or inaccurate at least monthly during 2025. (Statistics Canada) CIRA’s 2026 research found that 60 percent of Canadians had received suspicious or fraudulent online messages during the previous year, while 53 percent reported encountering deepfakes. (CIRA)
We have entered an era where seeing is no longer believing.
When Everything Can Be Fabricated
For most of human history, creating convincing evidence was difficult. Today, artificial intelligence can manufacture photographs, voices, documents, videos, websites, identities, and conversations within seconds.
The problem is not simply that AI can create something false. The deeper problem is that once people know convincing fabrications are possible, authentic information becomes easier to dismiss.
It is like discovering counterfeit currency so perfect that even bankers struggle to identify it. Eventually, people begin questioning every banknote.
Cybercrime compounds the problem. Canada’s Centre for Cyber Security describes fraud and scams as among the most common cybercrimes affecting Canadians and warns that AI is making phishing attacks increasingly convincing. Ransomware remains one of Canada’s most consequential organizational cyber threats. (Canadian Centre for Cyber Security)
Trust is therefore being attacked from both directions. False things increasingly look real, while real things can increasingly be accused of being false.
Privacy and the Digital Shadow
Privacy has suffered a similar transformation.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada found that 89 percent of Canadians are concerned about protecting their privacy. An extraordinary 92 percent expressed concern about personal information being sold or shared, while 88 percent were concerned about their information being used to train AI systems. (Office of the Privacy Commissioner)
Every search, purchase, location request, website visit, loyalty card, smartphone interaction, and social-media click can contribute another fragment to our digital shadow.
Yet it would be inaccurate to conclude that AI somehow possesses complete knowledge of us. AI systems know what data is available to them. The greater issue is that enormous quantities of personal information can be collected, correlated, inferred, and analyzed at a scale humans have never previously experienced.
Trust Must Become Verifiable
So, will trust ever return?
Yes, but perhaps not in its old form.
Tomorrow’s trust will increasingly be verified trust.
Businesses will have to prove how information is collected and protected. Governments will need transparency and accountability. Media organizations will need identifiable sourcing. Technology companies will need provenance systems capable of demonstrating where digital content originated. Individuals will increasingly verify unexpected requests through second channels rather than trusting an email, text message, photograph, voice recording, or video simply because it appears authentic.
Interestingly, Canadians have not abandoned trust altogether. The OECD reported that 50 percent of Canadians expressed high or moderately high trust in the federal government in 2025, while trust was considerably higher in institutions such as police and courts. (OECD) Trust survives where people perceive accountability, reliability, and recognizable standards.
Trust therefore has not died.
Blind trust has.
Perhaps that is not entirely a tragedy.
A bridge is trusted because engineers calculate its loads, inspectors examine it, standards govern its construction, and evidence demonstrates that it is safe. We do not trust the bridge because somebody tells us to.
The digital world must eventually operate the same way.
Questions We Now Must Ask
Perhaps the real question is not, “Who can I trust?” but, “What evidence would cause me to grant someone my trust?”
Should companies have to prove that our personal information has been deleted when we leave?
Should AI-generated photographs, audio, and video carry persistent authentication?
Should anonymity online remain virtually unlimited?
And perhaps most importantly, are we willing to surrender some convenience in exchange for greater privacy, authenticity, and security?
Trust can return.
But in the twenty-first century, it should no longer be freely given.
It must be earned, demonstrated, verified, and continuously protected.
The central distinction I will emphasize in this post is trust versus blind trust. The evidence does not suggest that Canadians have stopped trusting everything. It suggests that we are becoming much more selective about where trust is placed, which may ultimately produce a healthier digital society.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.