A year ago, weeks after the Carney Liberals won the last federal election, the websitealbertaseparatist.comsprang up, accompanied by similarly named TikTok and YouTube accounts.

Article headlines included “The case for sovereignty over statehood” and “Ottawa’s piggy bank wakes up” — but these sites don’t appear to have come from anywhere in Alberta.

Rather, researchers discovered the now defunct website and social media accounts likely came from a Russian covert influence network known as Storm-1516, known for making fictional websites that target audiences in various countries. And here, it targeted Canada and Alberta.

Both Russian and pro-Trump U.S. actors are amplifying and spreading misinformation about Alberta separatism in the hope of fraying Canadian unity and sowing distrust in key institutions and authorities, warns anew reportreleased Wednesday.

Governments and the public should also brace for more disinformation and foreign interference attempts in coming months if a separation referendum goes ahead, says the report by a collection of groups, including DisinfoWatch, the Canadian Digital Media Research Network and CASiLabs.

Russia has anextensive historyof using shadowy means to influence and sow division during elections in France, Germany, the United States and during the Brexit referendum.

“Now, U.S. officials and influencers have joined the threat landscape, not through covert strategies, but through overt political bullying, deliberate provocation, and a powerful social media influencer ecosystem that has trained its attention on one of the most consequential fault lines facing Canada’s future: the Alberta separation movement,” says the report, titled National Unity Under Threat.

The overt means range from pro-Trump influencers celebrating separatism talk and the prospect of “51st state” annexation to administration officials meeting in Washington with Alberta independence leaders, and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessentspeaking favourably about separatismon TV.

In addition to Russian and U.S. efforts, there’s the recently uncovered artificial intelligence“slopaganda” videos, which a CBC/Radio-Canada investigation traced back to Dutch content creators.

This new report describes this third interference branch as "economic opportunists.”

Source: Drudge Report