Ted Cruz, AfD, A Russian Oligarch and the future Canadian Premier who told them how to dismantle education

The pandemic was seen as an opportunity for maximum disruption, and in the spring of 2020, a group of far-right politicians and policymakers gathered to talk dismantling public education.

In the spring of 2020, I was a member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly for the constituency of St. Boniface, and leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party, the third party in the legislature with three of 57 seats.

The party in power, the Progressive Conservatives, were led by Brian Pallister, whose goal was to use the province as a laboratory for radical right ideas, especially in the second term, which he won in 2019.

The declaration of a global pandemic threw a monkey-wrench in that.

I had worked at the Winnipeg-based International Centre for Infectious Diseases in pandemic response during H1N1, and I was absolutely filled with dread, because I had an inkling of what to expect if we didn’t prepare.

In the first days, the legislature could not be operated safely, and for anything to pass required emergency approvals.

I will say that I naively thought that a state of emergency would lead politicians to set aside some partisanship, but the result was precisely the opposite. The government doubled down on being two-faced.

As we were working together to pass an emergency bill to approve funding - that the government was suggesting would be used to fund emergency measures, the government was sending out e-mails demanding plans for cuts of 10%, 20%, and 30% to universities, as well as cuts at Crown Corporations. None of these cuts made a shred of sense.

Someone brought to my attention that the Minister of Education, Kelvin Goertzen - the Government House Leader - who hailed from the ultraconservative town of Steinbach Manitoba, had participated in an online conference with Ted Cruz and Betsy Devos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, with something called the GHEX - the Global Homeschool Exchange.

This apparently inocuous organization turned out to have been attended entirely by representatives of the global far right - Americans like Cruz and DeVos a Board member of the Neo-Nazi, holocaust-denying party AfD, Russian MPs aligned with Putin, representatives of Brazil’s Bolsonaro Government and a right-wing party from South Africa.

Other U.S. participants included

Robert C. Enlow, President & CEO of EdChoice “Before the establishment of EdChoice in 2016, Robert was an integral part of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice from its founding in 1996”.

The idea of “school vouchers” was originally developed as a response to desegregation. Since public schools had to be segregated, conservatives proposed vouchers for private schools instead.

Michael Donnelly - HSLDA Senior Counsel & GHEX Secretary. In March 2020 Donelly gave interview to the far-right news outlet Breitbart talking about using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretence to push home schooling.

Donnelly, however, he sees the potential for a shift in perspective:

“But, it will give us a chance to expand online delivery that already exists to test out new kinds of online delivery. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, after lots of initial difficulties, you start to see people say, “You know what? There’s actually a lot of benefits to receiving education in the home.”

Then you may see not just an expansion of online public schooling, which again is what most of this will be, but people seeking more homeschooling that is separated from their public school. And so, it could be the sort of disruption that introduces people to a way of receiving education that they hadn’t really thought of before, they thought was just too weird. And it may make it more mainstream.”

I took the old-fashioned view that if a Canadian Minister of Education shares a platform with a Neo-Nazi, they should resign.

Just that year, AfD had released a racist colouring book (February 2020), were placed under German surveillance as a “threat to democracy” (March 2020) and in May 2020, struggled to expel a known Neo-Nazi.

This was the response from the Minister:

"I have participated in many national and international conferences with people of divergent views on many topics. That is the nature of these conferences," said Goertzen who declined an interview request but sent an emailed statement. "I am fully accountable for my own comments. The views of other participants in any conference are theirs to defend."

The response of the “left” party in the legislature, the official opposition New Democrats, was to side with the government.

Their critic, the late Nello Altomare, told the Manitoba’s paper of record, the Winnipeg Free Press, that they cared about the PCs education policies, not whoever the Minister was sharing a platform with.

In fact, there was widespread indifference. Of course, there was still lots of chaos related to the pandemic, which was top of mind.

However, if there were any community groups or activists who were might be concerned about one of the senior most members of a majority provincial government sharing a platform with a network of far-right politicians and political parties, they were also silent.

In fact, during the conference, Manitoba’s Education Minister, who was in charge of a massive K-12 review of education, urged attendees to use Covid19 to push privatization.

He was not listening to people with different views: he was giving them advice, which the AfD’s Joachim Kuhs took and posted on his website.

Notably, a search for Kuhs shows he was continually spreading pandemic misinformation.

When AfD politicians met with Canadian Conservative MPs in 2023, leader Pierre Poilievre condemned the party while claiming the MPs did not know about their associations.

“On Friday, Sebastian Skamski, director of media relations for the Opposition leader's office, issued a statement attributed to Poilievre:

"Christine Anderson's views are vile and have no place in our politics. The MPs were not aware of this visiting Member of the European Parliament's opinions, and they regret meeting with her," says the statement.

"Frankly, it would be better if Anderson never visited Canada in the first place. She and her racist, hateful views are not welcome here."“

ALEC: The US “Bill Mill” that Saves Conservative Governments the trouble of thinking, writing, or drafting their own legislation

In addition to Ted Cruz, Patricia Rucker, a Republican State Senator from West Virginia was present. Rucker is the State Chair for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a “legislation mill” that creates far-right “model laws and policies” for conservative politicians to pass at the state level.

The bills ALEC has created - and that have been passed in many U.S. states - enable voter suppression, reducing collective bargaining rights and project labor agreements, and include entire strategies on undermining public schools. They draft legislation as well as the talking points to sell them - “school choice” “waste, fraud and abuse” and so on.

People generally and accurately see ALEC as being pro-corporate and pro-privatization - that public schools and public health care, police, jails, and the provision of services are moved from the public to the private sector in the name of “efficiency,” when the actual result is that people with secure middle-class jobs and benefits lose their jobs.

ALEC and these policies are not just about pork-barrel contracts for political donors: the goal of ALEC and these other organizations is undermine democracy and to create permanent conservative majorities, by destroying the organizations that tend to support non-conservative opposition parties - especially public sector unions.

These manipulations of the rules of the political game in the U.S. have been relentless. After Obama won in 2008, there was a concerted effort on the part of moneyed interests, like the Koch brothers, to take over states and start destroying the infrastructure of the Democratic party, and passing bills with harsh new restrictions on voting.

Since 2008, the Supreme Court passed “Citizens United” which equated money with speech, effectively allowing moneyed interests to completely dominate politics, and they have. The Supreme Court also repealed the Voting Rights Act, and individual states have crafted a string of voter suppression laws that have disenfranchised and made it harder to vote for millions of Americans.

It’s worth pointing out that in Canada and in the U.S. voting is a constitutional right. It’s in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it’s mentioned multiple times in the U.S. constitution, but it is a right that is routinely ignored.

Conservatives in Canada have tried the same thing, and always with the same phony reason: that they are trying to prevent voted fraud and the integrity of the election. Before the 2015 federal election, Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s Elon-Musk approved Leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, introduced a bill that would have disenfranchised 500,000 voters.

Russian Connections

Other GHEX panellists included a member of the Russian Duma, Inga Yumasheva, who was once questioned by the FBI on a visit to the U.S.

In fact, investigative reporters at the CBC did a little more digging into GHEX, and found that one of the board members worked for a sanctioned Russian Oligarch.

Alexey Komov, spokesperson for “God’s Oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev

Russian national Alexey Komov sits on the board of Global Home Education Exchange (GHEX), the international home-school advocacy group that hosted two webinars attended by Manitoba Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen.

Komov is better known for his work with Konstantin Malofeev, a Vladimir Putin ally and pro-family advocate who has been sanctioned by Canada and the U.S. for funding Russian aggression in Ukraine…

I'm a little bit surprised that the minister would have been involved," said Marcus Kolga, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based public-policy think tank.

"Alexey Komov is a well-known individual who has been known to advance pro-Kremlin narratives," said Kolga, whose research focuses on how Russia uses the media as a foreign policy tool.

He is also linked with Malofeev, "who is a Russian oligarch," said Kolga.

… Komov wasn't always a home-school advocate. He ran a management consulting firm — with clients that included the Russian state-run energy company Gazprom and Switzerland-based Zurich Insurance — up until the 2008 financial crisis dried up business.

For the 2018 GHEX conference:

Malofeev's Tsargrad TV was a media partner for the conference. In July, YouTube cancelled the broadcaster's account, citing a violation of sanctions laws.

A think tank called Katehon — a subsidiary of Tsargrad — is one of seven Russian proxy websites identified in an August U.S. State Department report as a "proliferator of virulent anti-Western disinformation and propaganda via its website ... led by individuals with clear links to the Russian state."

The reason Malofeev was sanctioned in 2014 by Canada and the U.S. was that he played a role in financing pro-Russian groups in Crimea.

On Feb. 2, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe ruled in Manhattan federal court to confiscate $5.4 million belonging to sanctioned Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeev. The ruling may set a precedence and pave the way for funds to help rebuild war-torn Ukraine.

Malofeev and his one-time security director, Igor Girkin, played a crucial role in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Today, they each harbor a vision of Russia being ruled by some latter-day Tsar.

When this news broke - in September 2020, I again called for the Minister’s resignation, to the same general indifference as in June.

The Minister brushed it off, the opposition ignored it, and so did any community groups.

At the same time, Manitoba’s Covid numbers were steadily creeping up. For weeks, cases had been in the top three provinces in Canada. Instead of preparing, the provincial government had abandoned any pretense of public health efforts. Because Manitoba’s cases had been low in the spring, the political brain trust in charge of province had reached the conclusion that Manitoba was somehow immune to a disease that was tearing through the U.S and had already caused some of the worse seniors’ home death rates in the OECD in Quebec and Ontario.

One of the ideas proposed by the Manitoba government for economic recovery that summer was an “event attraction” strategy. September of that year, the Health Minister announced yet another round of cuts and health re-organization in a system that was already strained beyond capacity before the pandemic.

The public and political outcry to the revelations that Manitoba’s Education Minister had been part of a conference for an organization that had the key propagandist working for a sanctioned Russian Oligarch’s was virtually non-existent.

While I called for the resignation of the Minister, I was alone, and the story did not have “legs” as they say. The story was generally ignored by the media and by politicians. No pearl-clutching editorials.

All of this was drowned out the the frankly horrific second wave of Covid in Manitoba, which resulted in some of the highest Covid death rates in Canada and dozens of seniors dying in a single night in the Maples Care Home in Winnipeg, and a third wave for which the government was equally unprepared. In the spring of 2021, the government ignored weeks of warnings when cases surged to the point that the health system hit its limit, and the province had to start flying patients out. Steinbach, the town that elected the Minister of Education, had been a hotspot of public health order resisters, and in May of 2021, it was the covid hotspot for all of North America.

That summer, the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives decided to turf their highly unpopular leader and have a leadership contest.

Who did the PCs pick as their interim leader - and Premier of Manitoba? Kelvin Goertzen.

Of course, today the role of Russia in Ukraine and awareness of AfD have completely changed.

Elon Musk was promoting AfD in Germany, including speaking to a rally where he told them that Germany shouldn’t feel shame about their past. This is absolutely and without question minimizing the Holocaust, as well as the many other crimes Nazi Germany committed as they murdered and stole their way across Europe.

The one thing all of these have in common is not just extremism, but that the extremism aims at creating maximum disruption and division. Russia supported agents of chaos.

As it turned out, Malofeev was not the only Russian Oligarch operating in Manitoba (population: approx 1.4-million).

There were several more, who had bought a farm equipment manufacturing company, Buhler Buhler Industries, a Manitoba farm implement manufacturer.

In December of 2021, Founder John Buhler sold the last of his stake to Konstantin Babkin, Dmitry Udras and CEO / Director Yury Ryazanov.

Buhler, Babkin, Udras and Ryazanov all sit on the board of Buhler, whose operations are largely in Winnipeg and Morden.

Babkin is a co-founder of the Putin-friendly Action Party, and Udras and Ryazanov are apparently party members as well.

Despite calls for sanctions due to the Ukraine war, there have been no sanctions against Buhler Industries.

The involvement of Russian Oligarchs in Manitoba happen to overlap with areas that are profoundly politically and religiously conservative. The Morden-Winkler Area, along with Steinbach were some of the most areas where covid conspiracy theories took the deepest root. Those towns were the source of many of the people who occupied the Manitoba Legislature and blocked Manitoba’s highways - as well as being covid hotspots.

This area - in Southern Manitoba - is home to some of the most influential Conservatives in Canada.

Former Justice Minister and now judge Vic Toews: Former Premier Brian Pallister; Candace Bergen, Interim Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada; Kelvin Goertzen, Minister of Justice, House Leader and former Interim Premier; Senator Don Plett, former President of the Conservative Party of Canada, who was implicated in an accounting and campaign finance scandal. It is an area that is also a rich source of campaign financing for both the Conservative Party of Canada and the Manitoba PC Party.

To date, I think I am the only politician ever to even address this.

I understand from many years experience that how whether stories get traction depends on many factors. Timing, what else is happening, where it’s happening (in a media centre) and who is involved. It’s easy to be drowned out in the noise.

When people wonder why issues get dropped, it’s because there is often a window of opportunity with news, and if it passes, even if you are discussing the issue, it won’t get traction. Facts are expensive and opinions are cheap.

That being said, I always thought that a story about a Manitoba Government Cabinet Minister, Ted Cruz, a German Neo-Nazi and Russian Oligarchs might ignite a bit more interest.

It’s also worth pointing out that while there has been an enormous media focus in Canada on Chinese and Indian political interference, the Russian interference has largely been ignored.

It’s now five years later, and oligarchs and AfD are news everywhere.

While hindsight is 20/20, there is no doubt that Russia has been running highly disruptive disinformation campaigns aimed at disrupting the US, Europe and Canada.

Last year, it emerged that Russia had been funnelling money to right-wing “influencer” podcasters through a Canadian company called Tenet, to spread anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian propaganda, as well as anti-Canadian Liberal propaganda. While Tenet and its owners lived in Quebec, the company was initially registered in Manitoba. And because it’s Manitoba, no one has bothered to ask why.

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