OTTAWA — Two government-backed “disinformation experts” are once again branding legitimate Canadian regional anger as a Russian operation, this time painting Alberta’s independence movement as a foreign threat in a new report published today.
Marcus Kolga and Jennie Phillips, in their study “National Unity Under Threat: Foreign Interference, Cognitive Sovereignty and the Alberta Referendum,” claim Russia is amplifying Alberta separatism to fracture the country. They urge the governing Liberal Party — the very ones funding them — to fast-track “cognitive sovereignty” measures.
This is the same tired playbook used on the 2022 Freedom Convoy — a claim thoroughly debunked as baseless fearmongering.
In February 2022, as thousands of Canadian truckers and citizens protested vaccine mandates and lockdowns in Ottawa, Marcus Kolga declared to The Tyee: “The pandemic provided a huge opportunity for Russia propaganda… It is fuelling the movement we are now seeing in downtown Ottawa, and it is scary stuff.” He accused Russian state media of fanning “chaos and even sedition.”
On CBC’s Power & Politics, host Nil Koksal directly asked Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino if “Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows or perhaps even instigating it from the outside.” The CBC Ombudsman later ruled the segment breached journalistic standards, slamming the network for linking Russia to the convoy “without sufficient evidence” and forcing a correction.
Liberal politicians eagerly amplified the lie. In a March 17, 2022, House Finance Committee hearing, Liberal MP Sophie Chatel warned of “$1 trillion in Russian dark money” undermining democracy through the convoy: “They do have at their disposal… $1 trillion in Russian dark money that is circulating and dedicated to undermining our democracy.”
Reality crushed the narrative. CSIS Director David Vigneault explicitly told officials during the protests: “There are no foreign actors identified at this point supporting or financing this convoy.” FINTRAC and RCMP investigations confirmed the vast majority of funding was Canadian, with negligible Russian donations and zero evidence of state coordination. The convoy was homegrown.
Yet Kolga and Phillips operate deep inside the taxpayer-funded machine. Phillips directs projects at McGill’s Media Ecosystem Observatory under the federally funded Canadian Digital Media Research Network (millions from Canadian Heritage’s Digital Citizen Initiative). Kolga’s DisinfoWatch also taps into these networks. And their hoax is amplified by a largely state-funded media ecosystem in Canada, to the tune of nearly $2 billion per year of taxpayer funding, handouts and subsidies.
The optics are Orwellian: Government-funded researchers go on government-subsidized media to recommend that their government funders adopt a policy of “cognitive sovereignty” — which many have criticized as “government-approved narratives only.”
Russian disinformation campaigns do exist and sometimes exploit real grievances for geopolitical gain. But Alberta’s frustrations with equalization, energy policy, federal overreach and more are generations old — they don’t need Putin to exist. Repeatedly framing legitimate Canadian regional dissent as primarily a foreign-orchestrated threat risks undermining public trust and delegitimizing democratic discontent.
The real disinformation pattern is clear: Ottawa-funded experts and subsidized media crying “Russian plot” to delegitimize Western Canadian dissent. The “experts” cried wolf on the truckers. It remains to be seen if they can retain any credibility if they are wrong again.
