Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee. I'd like to speak to you today about the threat of Russian influence and information operations, known more broadly as cognitive warfare, and how Canada and our interests are targeted in the context of the crisi

Foreign Affairs committee  I believe you'd have to ask the Canadian government why it has decided against sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. As you mentioned, the United States and the U.K. have. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, which are very close to the border and on the front line with Russia,

Foreign Affairs committee  There are several different ways that Russian disinformation enters into Canada's information space. One of the primary methods is through RT, which is a Russian state-owned news channel that's been broadcasting since 2005. It broadcasts what you could call news, but the vast maj

Foreign Affairs committee  If you'll allow me to clarify, I don't believe Russian state media is behind the protests, but I do believe the Russian state media, and possibly other foreign media, are exploiting the situation. What Russian state media and the Kremlin try to do is identify very divisive issues

Foreign Affairs committee  I was also surprised to see that this Ontario MPP appeared on Russia Today. I think it's the first instance of an elected Canadian official appearing on Russian state media. The fact that the same MPP tweeted that Russian state media was more trustworthy than Canadian media was

Foreign Affairs committee  The Ukrainian Canadian community has collected significant evidence of hate-based messaging and disinformation that's been broadcast by RT. I think that information has been sent to the CRTC. I'm not sure whether the CRTC is actually considering revoking that licence. RT are in a

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for enlightening me on that fact. I did not know that this had happened. Quite frankly, I'm shocked. We see that just over the past two weeks, Germany has banned RT DE from German airwaves. They've also removed RT, the German service, from YouTube and banned it from You

Foreign Affairs committee  As a child of Estonian refugees who fled the Soviet occupation in September of 1944, I can tell you that my parents, who were infants at the time, would have been considered by the Soviet Union and by its propaganda machine as being—similar to the tweet you're referring to—fascis

Foreign Affairs committee  Clearly they have. I'm not sure about the intentions of the member of Parliament in repeating that Russian disinformation in her tweet, but the fact that a member of Parliament has tweeted that disinformation demonstrates that the Russian disinformation and propaganda is effectiv

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for dedicating your time to study the threat posed by disinformation to election integrity and, indeed, the cohesion of our entire democracy. My name is Marcus Kolga. I've been monitoring, analyzing and exposing Russian disinf

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will indeed.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Perfect. Thank you. According to Taiwan's leading disinformation analysis NGO, Doublethink, Chinese state actors often use low-level disinformation disseminated on chat platforms like WeChat and others as a method of attack. The method and content of the narratives spread about

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. It's incredibly hard to measure the impact of these sorts of operations on election outcomes. At the same time, we can't dismiss that they may have had an effect, but in this case it's certainly very difficult to measure. We can assume that these oper

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It cannot be ruled out.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, if we're talking about this anonymous WeChat campaign, what happened was a narrative about Mr. Chiu and his legislation, the private member's bill that would have enacted a foreign influence registry. As I said in my introductory remarks, this legislation would have requir