Senate committee fetes ex-parliamentarian behind discredited spy allegations against journalist
A year after submitting fraudulent documents that smeared reporter David Pugliese to a House committee, Chris Alexander faces no scrutiny over disinformation credentials.
Former Canadian MP Chris Alexander returned to parliament as an expert witness a year after he submitted fraudulent documents accusing Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese of being a paid Russian asset to a parliamentary hearing on disinformation.
You wouldn’t have known this from watching Monday’s Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs hearing on Russian disinformation, in which Alexander was feted by Liberal and Conservative-appointed senators alike as a leading authority on state-sponsored disinformation.
At an October 2024 House of Commons committee meeting, Alexander claimed through the shield of parliamentary privilege that Pugliese was implicated in a KGB plot “to talent spot, recruit, develop and run as an agent a Canadian citizen who has been a prominent journalist in this country for over three decades.”
Alexander submitted a set of seven documents dated from 1984 to 1990 that he claimed prove it.
In July, independent researcher Giuseppe Bianchin released a report that concluded these documents were forgeries based on analysis from leading experts in typology and graphology, including the font designer who developed the typeface used in a document dated 1990 that wasn’t available until three years later.
The Orchard first reported on the existence of Bianchin’s damning report, which was reprinted in The Maple and Esprit de Corps. Friend of the newsletter Taylor Noakes wrote his own story on the report for The Walrus.
“Based on the various experts’ conclusions in my report, Chris Alexander should have been seen as unfit to be called as a witness to a hearing on the effects of Russia’s disinformation on Canada,” Bianchin told this newsletter in an email.
“The alarming reality is that forged documents of unknown origin are now circulating within Canadian institutions because of his previous testimony.”
At the Oct. 27 Senate hearing, not one senator felt compelled to ask Alexander an obvious question: Given that you have engaged in disinformation by submitting forged documents to this committee to accuse a mainstream journalist of being a paid asset of a hostile foreign government, why should we trust anything you have to say about disinformation?
They might have also wanted to probe who gave the documents to Alexander — now a “distinguished fellow” at the neoconservative Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank — or whether their witness knew the documents were forgeries when he submitted them to the committee.
Instead, Alexander was given free rein to blame Russian disinformation for both of U.S. President Donald Trump’s election victories, Brexit, the success of the far-right Afd in Germany and National Rally in France, anti-vax and anti-immigrant sentiment, Alberta separatism and “pro-Hamas demonstrations.”
Fellow Substacker Justin Ling, who wrote a half-hearted hit piece on Pugliese after Alexander first made his accusation, was also invited to the Senate hearing as an expert witness, speaking before Alexander.
Here were some of the softballs senators lobbed at Alexander after his opening remarks Monday:
Sen. Gwen Boniface: How much confidence do you have in your former colleagues in the House of understanding the depth and breadth of this issue, and how do we ensure that they’re educated so that they actually can distinguish and then help come up with solutions?
Sen. Mohammad Al Zaibak: What lessons should Canada draw from the lack of early and unified global response in Syria and Crimea back in 2014 and 2015, and how can we ensure that our support, our current support for Ukraine does not repeat those mistakes?
Sen. Claude Carignan: Does Russia use the Russian diaspora in Canada to achieve its goals of disinformation? If so, how?
Sen. Stan Kutcher: What are the few couple of things that you think that we can do concretely to start to deal with the volume of this disinformation?
You get the picture.
In response to Zaibak’s question, which Alexander proclaimed “brilliant,” the witness suggested domestic anti-war sentiment was a product of “Russian propaganda and active measures.”
It was because of Russian interference, Alexander suggested, that Canada didn’t involve itself further in Libya’s affairs after participating in NATO’s bombing campaign that helped Islamist rebels brutally depost authoritarian president Muammar Gaddafi:
We don’t do nation building. We have to bring our troops home. We don’t want to get involved in these forever wars. These are the kinds of political messages that they used to get us not to ensure there was a stable regime in Libya after that military operation, and then to make sure we did nothing in Syria.
The care that went into Alexander’s presentation was reflected in him seeming to forget who was targeted in the Libya regime change operation, referring to “Saddam” being removed from power.
One wonders if Alexander also thinks that Russian subterfuge was the reason that protestors at a 2016 anti-carbon tax rally chanted Lock her up! in reference to then-Alberta premier Rachel Notley while he was on stage at the Alberta Legislature.
Alberta gov’t forces teachers back to work
Alberta’s UCP government has tabled legislation that uses the notwithstanding clause to force teachers back to work after a three-week strike.
This is the first time the Alberta government has invoked the clause, which enables governments to pass legislation that overrides certain Charter protections.
A few days ago, the Alberta Federation of Labour warned Smith that using the notwithstanding clause would “escalate the situation from a confrontation between your government and the teachers to a confrontation between you and the entire Canadian labour movement.”
Finance Minister Nate Horner has warned unions of “consequences” for engaging in wildcat strikes.
The government’s legislation would force teachers to accept the deal that 89.5% of them voted against in September, which would give teachers a 12% salary hike over four years and see the government hire 3,000 teachers and 1,500 educational assistants.
The teachers, however, want to see a maximum teacher-to-student ratio in a new collective agreement, as well as provisions for students with complex needs, including those related to behavioural, cognitive or social and emotional issues.
Read the full story at the Globe and Mail.
The whole idea of Russian disinformation causing anything at all in Canada is preposterous. However, it would be convenient to believe that every stupid action being taken in the beleagured western nations just now was a Russian plot....
That would surely let a few blockheads, including those who think the notwithstanding clause can solve the public educational crisis of crowded classrooms and little to no support for students with complex needs, off the hook. It isn't real teacher exhaustion or the ignored needs of our most vulnerable young people that are the problem.........it's all that Russian disinformation.
That Chris Alexander and his handlers are dumb enough to forge documents to prove Russia's perfidy is par for the course. By the time the scam is revealed the scammers are 'prestigious fellows' at some right wing shrink tank.......and the right wing base has moved on to other paranoid delusions.
What's going on in the USA now is pretty scary...bizaare and sometimes funny. But we've not achieved enough distance from the carnival quite yet.......in our staid and stalwartly conservative north.
Most of these parliamentary democracies have become houses of lies. So Chris Alexander should feel right at home. The bigger the lie the shinier the suit. Besides it wasn’t that long ago when all members of the House of Commons were a thunderous ovation to a Ukrainian ww2 Nazi collaborator. So don’t expect much.