This is National Post right wing scaremongering and attacking academic freedom. "Risks legitimizing" is absolutely ridiculous language that tries to put weird meta-limits on academic freedom.

This is a funded SSHRC project, which means it had to be written up as a research grant proposal which was then vigorously peer reviewed at the federal funding agency level. For this framing to be accepted it means that in this scientific community, this framing is a valid epistemological framework.

Then if you read the actual project page, as opposed to the National fucking Post you see clearly written:

Disclaimer

This research project is an exploratory, education-focused inquiry grounded in the principles of the need for impactful evidence-based policy research, academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and social and ethical responsibility towards participants (and policy impact). It seeks to understand and inform educational policies and practices in Canada by engaging with the lived experiences of Canadian immigrant communities now residing in the GTA/Ontario and who came from Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Caucasus and Central Asia—countries that regained or gained independence following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This project does not carry any political or ideological agenda. We are aware of the complex history of the Soviet Union, including the widespread experiences of oppression along national, linguistic, religious, class, and other lines. We are also aware of the contested nature and various uses of terms such as "post-Soviet". Our usage of this term is meant exclusively to describe countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Importantly, our study’s principal focus is on these communities' Canadian educational experiences. However, given that attitudes towards Canadian education are influenced by participants' prior knowledge and experience, and the qualitative-constructivist paradigm of the study, our participants often explain by sharing their educational experiences before coming to Canada, including those from both pre-independence and independence periods.

We are committed to the responsible and respectful use of data and language in our analysis and reporting.

Which means that the researchers are engaging actively with the actual problematic epistemological limits of the framing. This is what actual scholarship looks like, whereas the National Post hit piece is only interested in a sensationalized moral panic playing on right wing stereotypes about academia.

edit: added link to the project page

edit2: The project page is extremely illuminating. For example, the people making up the project team include people from Tajikistan, Ukraine, Armenia, and Estonia. These are not random people, these are people who would be extremely well versed in all of the nuances that are being discussed here. All the more evidence that the National Post hit piece is just more US-style moral panic. Which isn't that weird, given that the NP is owned by the US-hedge-fund-controlled company Postmedia.