From Quartz:
A new report by Canadian national intelligence experts says that country faces new threats from a once unlikely source: the United States.
The paper, published by a task force that includes two former directors of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Canada’s counterpart to the CIA), former national security advisors to Canada’s prime minister, academics, and other ex-diplomats and ministers, raises concerns about the effects of polarization and a “less predictable partner” in the US….
But a section about the threat to democracy from domestic sources in Canada looks specifically at the US influence on that growing problem, such as during the month-long truck convoy protest in Ottawa earlier this year, and related blockades of the US-Canada border. The convoys were “a disturbing taste of the harm a small group of determined protestors could inflict on people and the economy,” the authors write.
During the protests, which were sparked as a response to pandemic restrictions but became a general anti-government display, some supporters reportedly called for an attacklike that seen at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. About half of the international funding raised for the protests came from the US, and Americans both crossed the border to join the protest and help jam Ottawa’s 911 lines, according to Politico.
It “quickly became apparent that there were ties between far-right extremists in Canada and the United States,” the new report says, specifically naming open support for the convoy from “conservative media, including Fox News,” as part of the problem.
The authors also urge Canada’s national security agencies to contend with far-right groups at home that have built ties with like-minded political groups in the US. “Whether anti-government, antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-Asian, or misogynistic in nature, these groups reflect global trends that must be addressed at their roots,” the report says.
Thomas Juneau, co-director of the task force and associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, which spearheaded the report, reiterated some of the same points in an interview with CBC news, saying that there are “serious risks of democratic backsliding in the U.S.” that are “not theoretical” and could make Canada’s democratic institutions less secure.