From A Letter From A Maritimer

The far-right messaging is getting louder. There’s more of it, more aggressive, more targeted. The same narratives that ran during the federal election are back, repackaged with new language but aimed at the same people. 

My read? Someone changed tactics. The Conservative Party took a beating in the recent by-elections, and this looks like the response. Flood the zone. Crank up the machine.

I want to be honest about what I know and what I don’t. I’m one person watching feeds. I don’t have access to real-time platform data. I can’t hand you a number and say “here is the proof the level of activity has increased”.

What I can tell you is this. The machine capable of producing exactly what I’m seeing was identified and documented in public, in detail, less than a year ago. And the institution that should be monitoring coordinated anti-democratic messaging in Canada between elections does not yet exist.

Canada carries a particular vulnerability that most democracies don’t. In 2023, Meta removed Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram in retaliation for legislation that would have required the platform to compensate Canadian journalism for content shared on its feeds. The practical effect was to create a vacuum where credible, fact-checked reporting used to be. Canada Proud moved in. Because it isn’t classified as a news organization under Meta’s content policies, it posts freely on the same platforms that now block the CBC, the Globe and Mail, and every local news outlet in the country. 

The result is an information environment where a politically connected attack operation with 1.4 million followers reaches more Canadians on Facebook every week than any legitimate news organization in the country, and the platforms have no obligation to treat it differently than they would a neighbourhood community group. Meta didn’t intend to build a disinformation delivery system. But that is what it built. And Canada Proud has been one of the primary beneficiaries.

I’d say this is serious. Not something to ignore.
I have sent a letter to my MP – Lena Metledge Diab.

We can all see what is happening. Anti-democratic forces are using a bullhorn in this country, in the open, and they have been doing it for months. The research is on the record. The network is documented. The government has been told what is at stake and what needs to be built.

What is missing right now is the political will to act, and that only moves when citizens demand it.

I’ve said it before that this is not the Conservative Party of the past, the one that many of us Canadians voted for. That is a separate conversation, and it is one we need to have.

But right now, today, the ask is simple. We see the threat to our democracy. Say so. Loudly. To the people we elected to protect Canada, our people, this democracy.

That is not someone else’s job. It is ours.

The disinformation is getting louder, more targeted, more mean and disruptive. We can’t sit back and wait for someone else to step up. Each of us has to engage before it’s too late and the hate rolls across our country like that anti-vax truck covey two years ago!