Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to speak to you this morning.
The Ukrainian-Canadian community has been the target of Soviet and now Russian disinformation for many decades. What many Canadians have difficulty understanding is that this is not a case of homeland against diaspora. Our Ukrainian government is not targeting us. It's a foreign government, the Russian government, that has made us the object of its disinformation.
As my friends have alluded to, CSIS has identified Russia as a foreign actor and player in disinformation. To quote from their report, “Russia also continues to attempt to discredit Canada’s Ukrainian community, falsely claiming that it is composed of neo-fascists who control Canada’s foreign policy.” There's more that they say, but I'm sure you've read the report.
When our intelligence service comes to these conclusions, why is Canada still a safe haven for Russian operatives? One of the reasons is that some Canadian politicians, foreign policy advisers and staff in Global Affairs hold a naive view of Russia and the threat it poses to Canada and our democratic institutions.
For over a decade, our community advocated for the ban on RT, Russian television. That didn't happen until a full year after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. RT was finally sanctioned by Canada—along with other Russian institutions, such as Putin's think tank, the Valdai club—but no action has been taken by the government with regard to those in Canada who collaborate with these institutions. Many Canadian contributors to RT are allowed to operate with impunity. Indeed, some of them are invited to appear before Canadian parliamentary committees. Others are given grants from Canadian taxpayer money to produce Russian propaganda films.
We also know that Canada is a preferred destination for Russian sleeper agents. There doesn't appear to be any detection or prevention of foreign espionage in Canada. They come here because we make it easy for them to establish their identities, all the while carrying on their spycraft. They then move to other allied countries, posing as citizens of a reliable allied partner: They're now Canadians.
You know the story of the Vavilov family and of course Mikhail Mikushin, who was recently exchanged in the Evan Gershkovich exchange. He was a colonel in Russian military intelligence, a valued asset of Putin's.
Russia co-opts authoritative, influential and persuasive individuals, such as academics, journalists and social media influencers, whom Stalin called “useful idiots”, to repeat and amplify its narratives. When these narratives are word for word what the Russian embassy and Putin are saying, why does no one ask why?
We know that we're here to discuss the RT-run Tenet or Doppelganger operation, involving a Canadian company owned by two Canadians using Canadian social influencers. They produce Canadian-themed videos on hot-button divisive issues. Once they have the ear of a frightened and disaffected audience, they blame the economy and everything else that is wrong in the world on Canadian support for Ukraine—who are all Nazis, by the way. The government has failed to do anything. This creates a culture of impunity that normalizes this behaviour of referring to Ukrainians as Nazis. This has also posed a threat to our community, unfortunately. We surveyed our community and saw a substantial increase in the number of anti-Ukrainian hate-motivated incidents. We have asked two successive ministers of public safety to speak out and condemn this behaviour, but they remain silent.
We know that for decades the Soviet Union engaged in “active measures”, or operations to discredit our post World War II diaspora, who were very critical of the Soviet regime. We posed a threat to them. One of these operations, unfortunately, was the Deschênes commission. Evidence in Operation Payback shows a campaign to inflame the Canadian public by falsely claiming that the infamous Dr. Mengele was hiding in Canada. This campaign was started by a Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Sol Littman, who deliberately planted false stories. Once the Canadian public was sufficiently inflamed, the Mulroney government convened a commission of inquiry that cleared all but 29 individuals.
However, today we hear repeated calls for the disclosure of the names of these people, over 800 of them, who have several generations of descendants.