The same firm ran a campaign to save CBC — and Canada Proud's push to defund it

Jan. 8, 2026

Last spring, two opposing messages were pumped into the social media feeds of Canadians. The first came from the Canadian Media Guild, a union of journalists across Canada, primarily made up of CBC employees. “Local journalism matters. Sign our petition to stand up for Canadian journalism,” it read.

At the other end of the spectrum was Canada Proud, a vociferous opponent of both the public broadcaster and the mainstream media: “It's time to DEFUND THE CBC!” Since 2020, Canada Proud has called for the end of the CBC at least 35 times.

Evidence has now emerged that they were posted by the same strategic communications firm: Mobilize Media Group. The contact phone number for the Canadian Media Guild’s ad campaign leads to Noah Alter, a Senior Digital Strategist at Mobilize — the same firm behind Canada Proud.

This suggests that CBC employees’ union dues indirectly funded the same firm calling for their jobs to be eliminated. Equally, it indicates that the firm behind Canada Proud — one of Canada’s leading critics of public broadcasting — ran a campaign on behalf of CBC workers.

“It's like the Trump administration promoting Biden in an ad campaign,” said Ahmed Al-Rawi, Director of the Disinformation Project at Simon Fraser University. “This is unreal, like science fiction.” 

The Canadian Media Guild originally contracted a different PR firm, Counsel Public Affairs, to run its Local Matters campaign. Unbeknownst to the Canadian Media Guild, part of the digital campaign then appears to have been outsourced to Mobilize Media Group.

“We are unaware of any subcontractors the organization may have used during that time,” said Tali Zrehen, the union’s executive director.

Canada’s National Observer gave Counsel Public Affairs and Mobilize Media Group the chance to comment. Neither responded. (The Canadian Media Guild also represents staff at Canada’s National Observer.)

Al-Rawi is concerned about the integrity of Canadian democratic discourse when the most influential ideological voices are products for clients, and when transparency erodes through nested corporations.

“The end result will be disruption of our understanding of reality,” he said. 

The Local Matters campaign

Between February and March 2025, the Canadian Media Guild spent at least $150,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads promoting local journalism, according to Meta’s Ad Library.

The Local Matters campaign was intended as a reaction to threats to defund the CBC from Pierre Polievre (seen at the time as likely to be the next prime minister) and amplified by pages like Canada Proud.

The ads featured images of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “If Canadian journalists don’t tell our stories … then American journalists will,” warned one.

The campaign was launched under former CMG president Annick Forest, whose elected mandate ended on December 31st 2025. When asked about the campaign by Canada’s National Observer she declined to comment, “as I am no longer the president.” 

At the time, the campaign was met with significant pushback. At a meeting of the CBC Toronto guild chapter in February 2025, members raised concerns that the campaign didn’t explicitly mention the public broadcaster. “How do we save the CBC/SRC if we don’t use the term ‘CBC/SRC’?” one motion asked, referring to the CBC’s English and French services.

The union hired Counsel Public Affairs to run the campaign, a firm known for serving clients across the political spectrum. Data from the federal lobbying registry show that it has worked with parties ranging from the David Suzuki Foundation to Cenovus Energy and the Woodland Cree First Nation.

Counsel Public Affairs’ President, Brad Lavigne, was the New Democratic Party’s national campaign director in the 2011 general election, while one of the firm’s many vice presidents is Amber Ruddy, a member of the Conservative Party of Canada’s National Council. 

Corporate records obtained by Canada’s National Observer show that Amber Ruddy has ties to Canada Proud’s creator, Mobilize Media Group founder Jeff Ballingall. Ruddy is the director of Act Digital Inc., a marketing company that was contracted by Ontario Proud during the 2018 Ontario provincial election. Ontario Proud is also operated by Ballingall. 

Digital evidence suggests that Counsel Public Affairs enlisted the help of Mobilize Media Group to run the Local Matters campaign.

Meta requires all political advertisers on Facebook and Instagram to provide a contact phone number. This number is authenticated during Meta’s verification process; it would be impossible to add it without access to the phone with that assigned number.

Canada’s National Observer called the number and reached a man who refused to share his name. We then called again and reached the voicemail of Noah Alter, Senior Digital Strategist at Mobilize Media Group.

Influence for hire

While it is commonplace for strategy firms to cater to clients across the political spectrum, Mobilize Media Group has often acted as an advocacy group in its own right, according to Al-Rawi. 

Canada Proud’s website frames it as a “grassroots group of Canadians” rather than an influence-for-hire product. A 2022 investigation by Canada’s National Observer found that Ballingall’s firm was linked to other supposedly grassroots local community pages on Facebook, including Squamish Voices, Vaughan Voices, Richmondhill Voices and Brampton Together.

Ballingall founded Ontario Proud in 2016 and, with the help of funding from real estate developers and construction companies, succeeded in helping Doug Ford win the 2018 Ontario provincial election.

In 2019, he went national, starting Canada Proud with the goal of ousting Justin Trudeau. The page has since grown to become one of the most influential right-wing accounts in the country, with more than 700,000 followers on Facebook.

Al-Rawi explained the group has been “aggressive and antagonistic against the CBC.” He was surprised that the same company responsible for such a longstanding effort to defund public broadcasting was willing to run ads for a union of CBC employees. “The followers of Canada Proud and Mobilize Media should be shocked by this revelation,” he said. 

Alter, who set up the ad account supporting Canadian journalism, is also the contact for other pages run by Mobilize Media Group, including Canadian Crime Watch, as revealed by the Investigative Journalism Foundation. This page frequently posts images of criminals to increase awareness of crime in society.

Canada Proud recently launched attack ads on Mayor of Mississauga Carolyn Parrish, who opposed a budget increase for the Peel Regional Police. 

Because these ads are posted outside of an election period, there is no legal requirement to disclose who paid Mobilize Media Group to run them. Meta does require an “accurate, complete and truthful” funding disclaimer on all political ads but this is often not enforced in practice.

The result, Al-Rawi said, is that Canadians "see a reflection of the truth, but not the truth itself."