Chris Alexander, a former federal Immigration Minister under the Stephen Harper government between July 2013 to November 2015, testifies during a Canadian Senate committee hearing on October 27, 2025. Source: SenVu

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Written by: Aidan Jonah

Last October, an ex-Conservative Cabinet Minister baselessly smeared an Ottawa Citizen journalist as a supposed KGB agent in a Parliament committee hearing. Despite that committee’s members later criticizing Alexander’s accusations, he was rewarded with a Senate committee appearance, on the same topic, with zero demands for accountability made by committee members.

Ex-Conservative Cabinet Minister attacks journalist in Parliament committee hearing

Chris Alexander, a former federal Immigration Minister under the Stephen Harper government, known for his role in the dropped ‘Barbaric Cultural Practices tipline’, had been invited to testify during a meeting of Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security focused on supposed Russian disinformation and interference, held on October 24, 2024.

Speech in Canada’s Parliament is protected by Parliamentary Immunity. Using this immunity, Alexander stunningly claimed that Ottawa Citizen defence reporter David Pugliese was a long-time KGB agent. His source?

“photocopies of documents….[that] originated in the ‘pre-1991 archives of the Ukrainian KGB.’… and were in the hands of Canadian ‘national security officials’… [which] had been authenticated by ‘several of the world’s leading experts on KGB documents.’”

The problem? Even the Ukrainian archives, under a country that has spent the years since 2014 knocking down Soviet statues and persecuting communists, were unable to verify Alexander’s supposed bombshell files. This revelation was contained within a forensic review conducted by independent researcher Giuseppe Bianchin, which stated “these pages alleging David Pugliese's recruitment by the KGB are beyond reasonable doubt modern forgeries, crafted with deliberate intent to deceive.”

But what work has Pugliese done that ruffled Alexander’s feathers? He exposed the Freeland family secret, of former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather being a Nazi collaborator, reported on “Ukraine's Nazi links or Nazis in Canada” and had “provocative takes on procurement and other issues at the Department of National Defence and in the Canadian Forces”, among other topics.

And those “provocative takes” already have seen Pugliese targeted for retaliation, as he explained to the same committee on November 5, 2024:

“Over the last four decades, I've exposed financial wrongdoing at National Defence, sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces and bungled military procurements that put our troops at risk. My award-winning articles have helped countless Canadian veterans and military personnel, and I've pushed for accountability, transparency and truthfulness…

Military public affairs officers have acknowledged that during my time at the Ottawa Citizen, there have been no fewer than three attempts by senior DND officials to convince my employer to remove me from the defence beat.

In 2013, the National Post reported that I was put under military police investigation after a senior official in the defence minister's office falsely claimed I published classified information. After a two-month investigation, military police concluded that the data I had published was actually taken from a U.S. Navy press release.”

Alexander’s targeting, this time for fascism and Ukraine-related reporting, was yet another chapter in the targeting of a journalist who has a history of upsetting those in power in Canada. He has not dared to repeat his accusations outside Canada’s parliament, which could open the door to a slander lawsuit against him. Yet, Alexander’s attack failed to destabilize Pugliese, who continued on with the Ottawa Citizen, and instead triggered waves of criticism for Alexander. Yet, Alexander carried on his Distinguished Fellow role with the hardcore pro-NATO MacDonald-Laurier Institute without any resistance, a role he holds to this day.

Who testified yesterday?

Justin Ling is a McCarthyite who, while putting up weak resistance to brazen elements of foreign interference paranoia, peddles a fiercely pro-Ukraine narrative. Ling has said New Democratic Party federal leadership candidate Yves Engler “is chummy with Russian propagandists” simply for doing interviews on Russia Today, and complained of “Russian stooges like Ivan Katchanovski” (Katchanovski is opposed to Russia’s Special Military Operation) and hinted that Russia may have influenced Katchanovski. Ling is set to be a speaker at a Ukranian Canadian Congress workshop titled: “Navigating Disinformation: How to identify and respond” on November 15, 2025 [Archived]. Of course, this is the same Nazi-apologist UCC that federally honoured a Nazi SS division in 2010 and saw its Toronto branch do the same in 2021.

Ling also promotes the warnings of Canada’s intelligence agencies about the Chinese ‘interference’ supposedly roiling Canada for decades. Unsurprisingly, he thinks Taiwan is a country and China committed a ‘genocide’ in its Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Ling testified at the same hearing as Alexander, who slandered Pugliese. Yet, earlier in his article addressing the hearing - only five days later - said (bold added) “the idea that he is a paid agent of the Russian government is probably false”, days after appearing on the same committee meeting Pugliese was attacked during. Ling continued, stating (bold added) “The allegation that David Pugliese is a Russian asset has floated around Ottawa for about a decade — often with various degrees of evidence behind it.” Furthermore, Ling had claimed stories Pugliese pursued or shared in recent years “map well onto Russian talking points.”

Yet, Ling ended his article by stating:

“I’m inclined to believe Pugliese on that [not being a KGB agent]. At most, the evidence suggests that Pugliese was the target of a KGB recruitment operation.”

In his testimony to the Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, Ling went on to call for Canada to restart Radio Canada International to provide “objective and unbiased journalism abroad” after complaining about Russian media efforts in Africa (16:07:35-16:07:57). But when Canada had its international state media institution, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s International Service, it - in 1951, according to then-Liberal Foreign Minister and ex-Prime Minister Lester Pearson - was "doing valuable work for Canada and playing a useful part in the psychological war against communism."

Aengus Brigdman became Director of Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO) in March 2023, the same month the Canadian government announced $5.5 million CAD to MEO to create and administer the Canadian Digital Media Research Network (CDMRN). The CDMRN has DisinfoWatch, backed by the Neo-Conservative MacDonald-Laurier Institute and known for spreading smears against Russia and China, as one of its members. DisinfoWatch is run Marcus Kolga, who thought Lenin was alive during the 1940s, and “has worked to spread apologia for fascist OUN-B leader, Stepan Bandera, along with other Nazi collaborators such as the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), the Estonian Legion, and the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade.”

CDMRN released a report in co-operation with DisinfoWatch in July 2024, which smeared Russia-supporting Conservatives in Canada. In the report, they demanded the creation of “strict regulations” for social media platforms (bold added) “to identify, react to and remove foreign disinformation and related narratives quickly.”

Alexander, in his opening statement to the Canadian Senate committee, claimed that:

“Russian influence is a make or break factor, as I mentioned, for many candidates and parties in almost every NATO democracy, I’ve experienced this, you’ve seen it. It’s very hard to win an election in any democratic jurisdiction if the Russian bot-armies are against you online. And so, a lot of people make their Faustian bargains, their deals with the devil. They get onside with one issue or not, ‘I [am] going to oppose support for Ukraine’, and they get that support and it helps them.” (17:15:00 -17:15:40)

Did Alexander have any substantive evidence? Of course not.

He proceeded to blame the return of slave markets in Libya after the brutal NATO war on the formerly most prosperous country in Africa on Russian ‘active measures’ and ‘propaganda’ (17:31:00 - 17:31:30).

Alexander, then claimed that Russia is “exploiting its diaspora throughout the world” (17:34:00 - 17:34:10). He claimed Russian intelligence gets Russian Canadians to try to “influence their MP” in ways such as getting them to attend a protest, and threatens to target their family members in Russia, if they don’t do what Russian intelligence wants (17:35:43 - 17:36:31). If this evidence-free accusation sounds familiar, it’s because you simply have to replace the words ‘Russia/Russian’ with ‘China/Chinese’, and you’ll hear the narrative Canadian intelligence has been peddling for years.

Alexander also made an eye-catching claim (17:37:20 - 17:37:38), that the Canadian government’s pressuring of the Canada Radio Television Commission (CRTC) to ban Russia Today, “was part of the sanctions regime set up by all of the G7 countries and others.” Just as eye-catching was another evidence-free claim (17:55:16 - 17:55:23) that “Russian-directed assets are major players on all the main platforms.”

Alexander, a remarkable spreader of disinformation himself, called for Canada to create “invest in media literacy” to have “good defense against disinformation and propaganda”, along with “a lead agency for disinformation” (17:43:15 - 17:44:05). Bridgman quickly noted that he was “not going disagree with any of that”, and “I think that these are all recommendations I’ve made in other contexts” (17:45:15 - 17:45:25).

This McCarthyite study on Russia, with the torch lit by Canada’s Parliament, is now being carried forward by Canada’s Senate. The longer this study carries on, the greater the odds are of another case of smearing occurring under the protection of Parliamentary Immunity. Who will be the next target after Pugliese, is yet to be known.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, an independent news outlet covering Canadian foreign policy with a strong focus on Canada-China relations. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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