The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliament 2020 Report
Canada’s all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliament (NSICOP) released its 2020 report on current threats to Canada’s national security in April 2021. The committee said that its 2020 analysis is limited and simply an update to its 2019 report, due to limitations caused by COVID-19. The report does state that the Canadian government has failed to respond to previous reports delivered to the Prime Minister.
NSICOP concluded in its 2019 report that “Canada is the target of significant and sustained foreign interference activities” and that such activities pose a “significant risk to the rights and freedoms of Canadians and to the country’s sovereignty: they are a clear threat to the security of Canada.” The report was critical of the lack of government response and coordination of efforts to address foreign interference, stating that “government responses were piecemeal, responding to specific instances of foreign interference but leaving unaddressed the many other areas where Canadian institutions and fundamental rights and freedoms continue to be undermined by hostile states.” The committee’s blunt conclusion was that “the government must do better” and that if the threat of foreign interference, disinformation and influence operations is “not addressed in a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach, foreign interference will slowly erode the foundations of our fundamental institutions, including our system of democracy itself.”
The government’s efforts since then have focused primarily on passing Bill C-10, which aims to regulate social media giants, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms are indeed abused by malign foreign actors to pollute Canada’s information environment and undermine Canadian democracy, media and society. Yet the regulations introduced in Bill C-10 are limited to addressing Canadian content published on those platforms and does not address the immediate problem of how these platforms are abused by these actors. Instead of seeking accountability from the corporations that own these platforms for enabling foreign disinformation and influence operations, Bill C-10 may threaten to curb Canadian freedom of expression. Protecting free expression while securing our media environment from foreign manipulation should be the primary objective of the government’s response.
However, the 2020 NSICOP report clearly communicates the committee’s frustration with the government’s failure to address the issue of foreign interference, stating that “the government’s response to the Committee’s reports has been limited.” In its report, NSICOP pleads with the government “to consider formally responding to Committee reviews, as it does for organizations like the Office of the Auditor General and for parliamentary committees.”
In its 2020 report, the committee reiterates that foreign interference operations are “the most significant long-term threats to Canada’s sovereignty and prosperity. The pandemic, meanwhile, has provided a new impetus for foreign states to conduct espionage activities against the Canadian health sector and Canadian organizations working in science and technology.”
The 2020 NSICOP report warns that foreign actors are using the COVID pandemic to further undermine our democracy and that as early as February 2020, “U.S. officials accused Russia of spreading disinformation about COVlD-19 in a coordinated campaign.”
Despite repeated warnings published by NSICOP, a search of the 2021 Canadian Federal Budget reveals that neither mis/disinformation nor foreign interference are mentioned in the budget, demonstrating a worrying failure on the part of the federal government to acknowledge NSICOP’s warnings and recommendations.
While the Canadian government has committed to funding projects through the Heritage Department that are limited primarily to “helping Canadians understand online disinformation and its impact on Canadian society,” the broader issue of malign foreign influence operations remains unaddressed. It is unknown if or how any of these Heritage Department projects supports NSICOP’s recommendation of a whole-of-society approach to defending Canadian democracy and society against foreign interference.
The Canadian government needs to acknowledge the repeated warnings of NSICOP and start taking the threat of foreign interference seriously as a matter of national security and not one that simply affects our cultural media environment nor one that is limited to election cycles.
The Alignment of Conspiracy Theorists and COVID Profiteers
Over the past year, the global information environment has become polluted by a massive stream of mis/disinformation regarding COVID-19, its origins, the governments’ responses to it, vaccines and even its very existence.
In March 2020, the EU warned that foreign governments like Russia would use the pandemic to advance their interests and intensify its impact. Hucksters selling or promoting all forms of COVID cures – many of them dangerous – have tried to profit from the pandemic. Common to all COVID related mis/disinformation is that it taps into the raw emotions that the global pandemic has unleashed – fear, anger and loneliness among them. Combining the isolation we’ve endured with our increased use of social media, the conditions of our information environment have become favourable for those who seek to take advantage and manipulate us.
DisinfoWatch recently discovered a case where a foreign disinformation platform and deceptive COVID-related medical marketing converged, demonstrating the clear alignment of foreign disinformation with a lowly COVID huckster, both of which seek to take advantage of the fear and anger caused by the pandemic.
A report published on a Canadian conspiracy theory website Global Research, which has been identified by the US State Department as part of the Russian government’s “disinformation and propaganda ecosystem,” claims that people who have not received the COVID-19 vaccines “but have been exposed to those who have received them… have suffered what appear to be infections coming from these fully ‘vaccinated’ people.”
The post falsely claims that the vaccine can somehow migrate from person to person. This migration can cause problems with female menstruation and breast milk and induce miscarriages, so claim the conspiracy theorists.
Medical experts agree that migration of the vaccine from a vaccinated person to those near them is impossible.
In addition to including disinformation about vaccines, a group of medical doctors appear in a video accompanying the post, claiming that COVID vaccines are “bioweapons designed to kill human beings.”
There is no evidence to indicate that COVID-19, or the vaccines developed to protect human beings against it, are bioweapons.
The European Union’s EasternStratcom EUvsDisino platform warned in late April 2021 that both Russian and Chinese government media have been aggressively engaging in disinformation campaigns to undermine western vaccines and promote vaccine hesitancy.
When we look closer into the author of the Global Research piece, we notice that there is a link in the headline to a site titled “Health Impact News.” Following that link, we’re taken to what seems to be a news website, featuring the same story as the one on Global Research.
Ads for herbal medicines belonging to a single brand, “Healthy Traditions” seem to feature on every page of this news website. The About Us page indicates that the site is owned or operated by an organization named Sophia Media. Sophia Media’s website links to several other health related websites: “Medical Kidnap,” “Vaccine Impact,” “Coconut Health” and “CreatedforHealth.org.”
The ads on all of these websites lead to a website called “Healthy Traditions,” which features a wide variety of items, such as olive and coconut oil, as well as stainless steel bidets and grass fed beef liver.
The “Healthy Traditions” About Us page clearly states that the site’s owner is also the editor of “Health Impact News.”
The cross-sharing of anti-vaccination conspiracy theory narratives between fringe, profit driven anti-vaccination sites with conspiracy theory websites demonstrates tactical alignment that leads to outcomes that pollute and negatively impact Canadian and western information environments.
Russian Disinformation in Africa
The US Treasury Department’s latest round of sanctions in April 2021 targeted four Russian disinformation platforms (featured in our previous DisinfoDigest), and included new designations on Russian entities involved in disinformation and influence operations targeting African nations. At the top of the list is Yevgeni Prigozhin, who was recently placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for his role in leading Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 US elections.
Prigozhin, a former convict who runs a catering empire for the Russian government, is the founder of the notorious Internet Research Agency (commonly known as the St. Petersburg troll factory), which leads the Kremlin’s information warfare operations and has targeted countless organizations, elected officials and elections in many Western countries with disinformation. A recent DisinfoWatch investigation discovered that thousands of IRA tweets deleted by Twitter also targeted Canada.
Over the past years, Prigozhin has added a number of African nations to his organization’s list of targets – both with information warfare and a company of Russian mercenaries called The Wagner Group.
The new US sanctions target individuals and groups connected to Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg operations, including NGOs that have been developed to promote pro-Kremlin narratives and interfere in the democratic processes, including elections, in African nations.
One of the sanctioned individuals is Alexander Malkevich and his company, the Foundation for National Values Protection, which were designated for having “facilitated Prigozhin’s global influence operations since at least 2019.” Malkevich was previously designated in 2018 for directing the disinformation platforms, USAReally, which according to the Treasury Department is financed by Prigozhin.
Other entities on the sanctions list include the Association For Free Research And International Cooperation (AFRIC), International Anticrisis Center, and Russian citizens Petr Byschkov, Yulia Afanasyeva and Taras Pribyshin, who the Treasury Department identifies as facilitating Prigozhin’s malign operations in Africa and Europe.
AFRIC serves as the primary front company for Prigozhin’s influence operations in Africa and, according to the Treasury Department, has sponsored “phony election monitoring missions in Zimbabwe, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, and Mozambique.” Prigozhin has conducted disinformation and influence operations in each of those states, including efforts to manipulate the outcomes of elections.
AFRIC has been set up to seem like an African-led initiative but serves to disseminate Kremlin narratives in Africa. “AFRIC works in coordination with other elements of the Prigozhin network, including FZNC [Foundation for National Values Protection] and the International Anticrisis Center, a fraudulent think tank controlled by Prigozhin’s operatives” according to the Treasury Department statement. Byschkov manages Prigozhin’s “Africa Back Office,” a team of political consultants tasked with devising strategies for manipulating African politics in support of Prigozhin’s interests.
In Libya, Prigozhin’s information warfare trolls have worked together with the Wagner mercenary group to affect the outcome of the conflict in the North African nation. While primarily operating in support of rebel general Khalifa Haftar against the UN backed government, Prigozhin provided services to the other side, re-building Libya’s state television network in support of Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.
To read more about Prigozhin’s operations in Africa, see this Free Russia Foundation report authored by Michael Weiss: “The Company You Keep: Prigozhin’s Influence Operations in Africa.”
