Marcus Kolga Testifies In Canada’s Parliament On The Threat of Authoritarian Transnational Repression

I have very fond memories of working with this committee going back more than a decade. This committee played an important role in advancing Canada’s Magnitsky law, a campaign that I had the great honour of leading with my friends and colleagues Irwin Cotler and Bill Browder.

But that work, along with my efforts to expose foreign authoritarian influence and information operations, and transnational repression, has also made me a target of our authoritarian regimes.

I am one of only three Canadians sanctioned by both China and Russia along with Charles Burton and Sarah Teich.

The threats, intimidation and harassment against me became increasingly intense when I led the Canadian civil society campaign for Magnitsky sanctions and published the first major Canadian report on Russian influence operations in Canada for the Macdonald Laurier Institute, titled Stemming the Virus, which I have provided to the clerk.

That report exposed Russian information and cognitive warfare targeting Canada, and outlined how the Kremlin has historically accused critics, both in Soviet times and today, of being fascists or neo-Nazis in order to discredit, dehumanize, and silence them. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been labeled this way, as have prominent Canadians, including former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland and Conservative MP James Bezan. Shortly after my report was published, an article appeared in an Ottawa newspaper accusing me of the same.