What academics are calling a Russia-backed propaganda campaign targeted last month’s Canadian election, focusing on divisive topics including an Alberta secession movement.

Sputnik, a news agency sponsored by the Russian government and cited by the New York Times of engaging in sharing disinformation , sent a correspondent to Canada to cover some aspects of the country’s 43rd general election.

Distroscale

One such article, released the day before the Oct. 21 election that saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau retain office via a minority Parliament, highlighted a separatist movement led by Albertan Peter Downing dubbed Wexit

Marcus Kolga, a Canadian expert in Russia and disinformation, said it was an article likely commissioned by the Russian government.

“These are agencies that are directly linked to the Kremlin — and if they’re linked to the Kremlin, they’re directly linked to Vladimir Putin and the president’s office in Russia,” said Kolga.

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“(It’s) to break us apart, to divide us … to push the left and right further apart from each other, so that the divide becomes bigger and bigger.

“And it’s not just Canada where they try to do that.”

Kolga said this is just another example of what Russia does by targeting foreign countries, citing similar efforts to disrupt the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, as well as the Brexit process in the U.K., among others.

Photo by Ian Kucerak / Postmedia

Downing, the founder of the Wexit movement, said he was contacted by Sputnik reporter Denis Bolotsky about a month before their interview.

“He was easy to talk to … He’s obviously knowledgeable about geopolitical issues,” said Downing, who added he’s also spoken with journalists from Spain, the U.K. and elsewhere. “We have had quite a bit of a reach and obviously people take quite a bit of interest.

“I knew that Sputnik was a Russian news outlet. Everybody knows the reputation that Russia has — I didn’t fall down dead poisoned, I’m still here. I’m not doing business with Russia, I just took an interview.

“I knew a little bit about Russian culture, so I dropped the phrase ‘the birth of the western republic being the heart cry of Albertans and Western Canadians’ just for their readers back home to realize we are people, too.”

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On election night, Wexit rocketed into the spotlight after the term began trending on Twitter — but public relations company H+K Strategies told CTV News Edmonton the push was partially generated by bots. Roughly 72 per cent of real users were tweeting about it, H+K Strategies told the outlet, but that while not all of the accounts were new, they all at one point pushed other conservative messages in the past.

When contacted by Postmedia for comment and clarification on the bots’ origins, H+K Strategies spokesperson Jillena Oberparleiter said the firm was “unable to share data at this time” and did not give a reason for it.

The timing of the Wexit article, published the day before the election, was likely no coincidence, said Benjamin Decker, lead analyst at the Global Disinformation Index

“What the Russians will often do via RT and Sputnik is to highlight and amplify fringe voices that are not accepted by either mainstream research, or mainstream politics,” he said. “And by amplifying them, it in turn creates a perception that something is more popular than it actually is.”

The ultimate goal isn’t just to influence an election, Kolga said, but rather to undermine democratic processes and free speech in Western society.

“That’s the deal with all of this, which is far more terrifying than just affecting a few votes in the election,” he said. “Vladimir Putin himself has shut down all free speech, all free democratic processes within his own country.

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“Russian state media — because all media in Russia is state-controlled — take the images of the chaos and make it worse, and they feed it to the Russian people.”

Ahead of the 2019 election, a protocol overseen by five senior civil servants was established to inform Canadians about potential incidents that could threaten the country’s ability to have a free and fair election.

“The Panel did not observe any activities that met the threshold for public announcement or affected Canada’s ability to have a free and fair election,” Government of Canada Privy Council Office spokesperson Stephane Shank said in a statement.

When asked if this meant there was some activity that occurred, Shank said further information could not be provided.

Sergey Sukhankin, a University of Alberta lecturer on Russian foreign and security policies, said he sees Russia trying to gather information on divisive topics in Canada to disrupt the country in future years.

“Russian disinformation isn’t as homogeneous, as universal, as one may think,” said Sukhankin, who wrote a policy paper in September warning of potential political interference from Russia in the recent election. “I think that the potential information confrontation between Russia and Canada might drop in 10 to 15 years, when interests of two countries cross in the Arctic region.”

Sputnik’s Denis Bolotsky has yet to respond to a request for comment.