Canada’s government funds ‘independent’ network whose report smeared Russia supporting Conservatives
Written by: Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba & Aidan Jonah
Through a rare propaganda ‘study’ that targets the Conservative Party of Canada, right and left have been inverted by the political ignorance of the Canadian population at large, a state-funded network, and Nazi apologist Marcus Kolga.
Last March, the Canadian Digital Media Research Network (CDMRN) was created with a $5.5 million grant from Canada’s government. CDMRN’s role is to ‘independently’ spread NATO propaganda and find creative ways to ‘discourage’ the population from ‘accepting’ what’s categorised as a ‘Russian narrative’, among other pro-colonial propaganda projects.
DisinfoWatch, founded by Kolga, is a CDMRN member and a pet project of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a pro-colonial institute rooted in the same Conservative movement it now targets.
DisinfoWatch’s latest report, covered by the Globe and Mail, attacks Conservative aversion to the NATO narrative on Russia, in concert with academic Christopher Ross. They conducted their own survey and cited an Angus Reid study, which showed Conservative aversion to supporting Ukraine financially and military more than doubling, from 19 per cent to 43 per cent, and talked about ‘strategies’ to steer the Conservative Canadian psyche to the ‘truth’.
What is or isn’t a ‘Russian narrative’
Marcus Kolga - founder of DisinfoWatch and noted Estonian and Ukrainian Nazi apologist - a co-writer of the DisinfoWatch report, declared certain opinions in the report as a ‘Russian narrative’. This was because Russian officials declared some ‘narratives’ presented in the article as part of their regular statements on the Special Military Operation. In fairness to Kolga, there were some ‘rebuttals’ to the ‘Russian narratives’ in the report. However, they relied on omitting key facts.
As an example, Marcus Kolga pointed to the ‘squeaky clean’ Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian equivalent of the House of Commons, which is devoid of any elected ‘far-right’ parties like Pravi Sector. However, all of this presupposes that the state of Ukraine isn’t controlled exclusively by the military. The Nazi inspired national guard, the Azov Brigade, infamous for Banderist war crimes in the Donbass, is led by Denys Prokopenko, who was part of the far-right White Boys FootBall Club, infamously known for mass Nazi salutes. The DisinfoWatch report is saturated in such lies by omission.
The Conservatives: A rare target
Being the largest political party in Canada by membership, Kolga and Ross expressed concern for the Conservatives being the most likely among those surveyed to accept the ‘Russian narratives’. They stated in the report that it signaled the growing schisms in society caused by Russian propaganda that ‘exploits existing political divides to achieve its objectives’. In other words, a divide over colonial tactics is exposing the game to the public.
Marcus Kolga, a Nazi apologist, is concerned that the usual propaganda line is unravelling due to the unusually blunt nature of billionaire fascist capitalists like Donald Trump. Trump has been caught many times inadvertently, and sometimes intentionally, exposing the NATO alliance for what it is. The growing concern is that if the layman conservatives start disbelieving the narratives, they might also reject other pro-colonial narratives in the future. How realistic this is, should be held in doubt, given the general pro-Zionist Canadian Conservative reaction to the Palestinian resistance’s October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
Two of the remedies proposed by Ross and Kolga, incidentally, echo the need to actively suppress this opposition, lest it manifest into a notable threat:
Social Media Regulation:
Following Europe’s Digital Services Act, Canada should consider imposing strict regulations to improve the responsiveness of social media platforms to identify, react to and remove foreign disinformation and related narratives quickly. Platforms should be required to be transparent about their algorithms and moderation practices.
Political Leadership and Accountability:
Encourage political leaders to speak out against foreign disinformation and expose those who amplify FIMI. Make annual disinformation and influence operations awareness courses mandatory for all Canadian elected officials and their staff.
Their ‘solution’ is to engage in McCarthyite smear campaigns from leading politicians and shut off the offending content, especially ‘Russian Narratives’, on social media. Only the ‘truth’ will be allowed to air.
Shameless research bias
The total membership of all parties surveyed, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the NDP - at a total cumulative membership of just over one million - constitutes less than five per cent of Canada’s population, despite being the parties with the most political power in the country. Of these, only 2,127 people were surveyed. Of course, the ones surveyed were explicitly told what a ‘Russian narrative’ was before being asked whether they were exposed to it or believed it.
This automatically creates bias in the response, regardless of whether the surveyed individual believed the ‘narrative’ prior to being asked about it or not. Either the one surveyed will find themselves questioning a fact that they had already accepted after receiving enough supporting evidence, or they will lie about their opinion to avoid being targeted by Five Eyes surveillance and state repression.
Moreover, the incredibly small pool, with an already limited scope of ‘accepted’ political opinions in the survey, would normally be indicative of an incomplete survey that would be unreliable in determining the actual national trends. That would usually be the case, if any spectrum of opinion outside of ‘Conservative’, ‘Liberal’, or ‘NDP’ would even be allowed to govern Canada.
MLI’s origins and its informal merger with Canada’s government
Ironically, Brian Crowley, the founder of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in 2010, was a close friend of Stephen Harper. Crowley himself founded the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in 1995, which was meant to try to push the federal government into privatising healthcare. The MLI could be founded because of the Conservative Party of Canada, as Aidan Jonah explained for The Canada Files:
“In 2006, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appointed Crowley as the 2006-2007 Clifford Clark Visiting Economist of the department. Four months later, Crowley began to develop the MLI while giving policy advice to the Harper government. In 2009, Minister Flaherty hosted a private fundraising dinner at Toronto’s Albany Club for the MLI. In a letter, he urged Bay Street elites to come and support the fledging right-wing think tank stating that he was ‘giving it my personal backing’. Soon afterwards, the Aurea Foundation, funded by Peter Munk, gave $100,000 to assist in starting up the think-tank, as revealed on page 13 of their 2010 annual report.”
Thanks to Flaherty’s aid and Crowley’s history, Canada’s corporate elite would flock to back the MLI. Soon after, they’d push out a policy paper justifying Harper’s “tough-on-crime” policies, only months before an election which Harper’s Conservatives won. The MLI, for the longest time, would be a friend of Canada’s Conservatives, when in or out of power. But the MLI’s creation of DisinfoWatch in 2020 - led by Estonian Nazi apologist Marcus Kolga - in alliance with the US government’s Global Engagement Center, would see the roots of a shift planted.
The collapse of NATO’s unipolar project – driven by Russia’s SMO and China’s long-term push for multipolarity - has forced the shelving of the long-time alliance, not because the MLI shifted policy, but instead because the Liberal government has stripped off its own ‘democratic Liberal’ mask, while a faction of the Conservative party supporters has come to sympathize with Russia’s perspective. This sympathy is a threat to the NATO party line against Russia, and both the MLI and its’ DisinfoWatch project support the party line despite inter-capitalist disputes.
In March 2023, one year after Russia’s SMO began, Kolga’s DisinfoWatch organization would be supported by Canada’s government through the Canadian Digital Media Research Network, which enables them to develop their reputation and connections further.
In March 2024, Global Affairs Canada had Kolga on as a ‘disinformation’ expert, to tell Canadians “What is Disinfo?” Kolga, famously known for not spreading any disinformation, has worked to spread apologia for fascist OUN-B leader, Stepan Bandera, along with other Nazi collaborators such as the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), the Estonian Legion, and the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade.
Now, in July 2024, Kolga collaborated with the rest of the CDMRN, a Canadian government proxy, to smear Conservative Party supporters who either sympathize with Russia’s perspective, or support Russia in its fight against the NATO proxy war launched against it. And the MLI fully backs DisinfoWatch’s work against Conservative Party supporters, proudly sharing a report summary on its main website.
From a well-distanced friend of the former Conservative government to a full-on collaborator with the Liberal government, the MLI’s political shift is remarkable, and should be a lesson to Canadians: the NATO party line is what Canada’s ruling elite and bought off ‘thought leaders’ will protect at all costs.
Reality
Despite all the noise, Conservatives themselves are not a concern to the Canadian state. The state was founded by Conservative and white-supremacist ideologue John A. Macdonald, and the resulting ‘patriotism’ resonates even with the contemporary Conservative that believes in the ‘Russian narratives’. The MLI and CDMRN’s only real concern is ensuring that the Conservatives remain in lockstep with the white supremacist and colonial ambitions of NATO.
Any opposition from any direction to the NATO party line will have to be ‘corrected’, and this necessitates the unification of both the Liberal and Conservative wings of capitalism to protect the system.
The ‘truth’ that Conservatives are exposed to must be pro-NATO, rather than the objective facts of the current conflict, characterised as ‘Russian narratives' by DisinfoWatch, MLI, and their partner-in-colonial crime, Global Affairs Canada.
Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.
He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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