Thread by @Dash_Politics

A Tale of Two Coups: A thread about the diverging performance of democratic institutions in response to recent coup attempts in Canada and the USA. #KlondikePapers #January6thHearings #FreedomConvoy #cdnpoli #CanadaDay #EmergencyAct

TL;DR: The US is outpacing Canada in responding to foreign attacks on its democracy by communicating intelligence with its population.

1/62 The past month has been a study in contrasts as the proverbial chickens come home to roost for both the Canadian “Crypto Convoy” and January 6 coup attempts of the past two winters.

2/62 Here in Canada Pat King keeps getting new criminal charges piled on at virtually every court appearance, disgraced former MPP Randy Hillier no longer represents the good people of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston and has jail time to look forward to in his retirement.

3/62 This week saw the first guilty plea from a participant, even though he was released after only 116 days in custody and said he had “no regrets”.

4/62 In the US, the Department of Justice has so far corralled hundreds of rioters with charges up to and including seditious conspiracy.

5/62 A higher up in the conspiracy, Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer who advised state legislators to reverse results in their states, had his house raided by the FBI on Wednesday.

6/62 Where the neighbours have notably diverged has been in the response of their political systems.

7/62 To begin with the US House committee investigating Jan 6, bipartisan cooperation has yielded an expeditious and thorough accounting of how American democracy was almost extinguished.

8/62 Americans are getting the facts, benefitting from robust intelligence gathering expertise that was leaned on by the committee to do its work.

9/62 As I have lamented in previous columns, too often the work of intelligence professionals stays hidden from public view, creating an information vacuum that can be deliberately seeded with misinformation.

10/62 I think the Jan 6 committee represents a much needed exception in the frankness with which intelligence is shared and communicated to the general population.

11/62 This is a reversal from previous investigations, most notably the 9/11 Commission report, which glossed over or ignored difficult questions to the world’s detriment. But that’s a topic for another thread.

12/62 The bottom line is that if the people are not given even a small window into what is actually going on, not only will they be unable to arrive at rational conclusions but they are also more vulnerable to believing toxic lies.

13/62 Which brings me to the response of the Canadian political system.

14/62 The last time I posted, barely a week had passed since the Emergencies Act succeeded in removing the greatest threat to the existence of the Canadian state since Hitler’s attack on Canada during the Battle of the St. Lawrence River.

15/62 At the time I argued that the convoy represented a paramilitary attempt to overthrow the Canadian Constitution and establish a dictatorship by force, with covert sponsorship from Russia and others - a conclusion that I stand by just as strongly today.

16/62 Russian interference in politics in the US is comparatively well chronicled and we keep seeing the same patterns, techniques, language and even the same people crossing over the border to work here.

17/62 When James Topp completed his march to Ottawa this past week, it was Trump advisor Paul Alexander there to greet him.

18/62 Some Canadian “protest” groups have appointed themselves “constitutional sheriffs”, with the exclusive ability to arrest, try, and execute anyone who goes against their “interpretation” of the Constitution, a sadly familiar concept if you follow US politics.

19/62 Presently Canada is a country with the rule of law and respect for individual liberties and freedom so we are now seeing the due process established in the Emergencies Act itself play out in the form of a Special Joint Committee of Parliament, including senators and MPs.

20/62 Observing these proceedings has been unintentionally revealing. I say unintentionally because it’s clear the government intends to reveal exactly as little as possible about the nature of the threat Canada was under when that decision was taken.

21/62 Perhaps this is to be expected. The government has shown an overall preference for secrecy.

22/62 For example, Library and Archives Canada recently gave itself until at least the year 2098 to fulfill a request for information about “Project Anecdote”, an RCMP investigation into money laundering and public corruption from 1993, under the Access to Information Act.

23/62 Maybe the reasoning is that being more forthright would jeopardize ongoing intelligence collection activities, sources and methods that are crucial to keeping Canada safe.

24/62 Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose testimony for the Special Joint Committee earlier this month drew widespread attention, is an old hand when it comes to the murky realm of clandestine operations.

25/62 According to reporting by The Globe and Mail, Ms. Freeland cut her teeth during the collapse of communism, working to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union.

26/62 She was so good at her work that the KGB’s dossier on her delivers backhanded praise of her language skills and determination.

Ms. Freeland and the government she helps lead have played their cards close to their chests because they are dealing with a familiar enemy.

27/62 You wouldn’t know it from her testimony to the committee though. Under aggressive questioning by Conservative members she has carefully avoided the plain truth that was obvious to me, a casual observer, in February - that Canada is under attack.

28/62 Note my use of the present tense. Quite the contrary, her testimony framed the government’s decision to invoke the Act as founded on the economic damage inflicted by the border blockades' interruption to international trade.

29/62 This was definitely a consideration, but with data showing cross border trade up 6% in February 2022 compared to February 2021, saying this was the motivation seems a bit disingenuous. I have no doubt that the primary motivation was in fact the security situation in Ottawa.

30/62 Think of the convoy as a cancer, the main tumor was in Ottawa, the border blockade distant metastasis, of great concern no doubt but fundamentally secondary in nature.

31/62 Just as an Oncologist will prescribe a treatment regimen of systemic chemotherapy, the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act to save itself from mortal danger.

In my view, Ms. Freeland’s reticence is self-defeating.

32/62 Offering Canadians facile and incomplete explanations carries dire risks. The infrastructure of the convoy is not just intact, it has adapted to become much stronger using the events of this winter as a learning exercise for the future.

33/62 Forget about the losers who were the public face of the convoy - King, Hillier & CO - they are and always were completely expendable. They are not principals.

33/62 Forget about the losers who were the public face of the convoy - King, Hillier & CO - they are and always were completely expendable. They are not principals.

34/62 Their criminal prosecution is just and necessary - but it is not even close to sufficient if Canada is to survive future such events. There’s always another greedy idiot who will sell out her country for fame and fortune.

35/62 The government is severely retarding domestic discourse on what kind of legislation is urgently needed to target the underlying structures of the organizations that aim to overthrow the government - the true source of the immense resources needed to execute such an attack.

36/62 Where intelligence fails to shed light, misinformation flourishes.

Presently the government is locked in petty circular debates that leave the average viewer with the impression that they did not have any justification for using the Act.

37/62 Are economic threats enough to justify it, as is implied by Ms. Freeland’s testimony? That would be an unsatisfactory answer for many Canadians and out of sync with the language of the statute, which does not include economic emergencies.

38/62 The law states the threshold is a threat to the sovereignty of Canada, but do economic problems qualify? Many legitimate forms of protest and organization relied on by Canadians for centuries to secure rights and express themselves involve some level of economic disruption.

39/62 Does that mean the Emergency Act can be applied in these circumstances as well?

40/62 Instead of examining these substantial issues, we have debates about whether the police asked the government to invoke the law, as Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino testified, using language disappointing for a Cabinet minister who is also a trained litigator.

41/62 The notion that police would give legal advice to the government in any circumstance, let alone on such a politically explosive and discretionary action, is simply absurd. Doesn’t the federal government have lawyers to do that for them?

42/62 What training or education do police have to give advice on invoking the Emergencies Act?

Police can detail their challenges and the government can come up with legislative solutions, solutions for which it, and it alone bears responsibility for defending in the future.

43/62 Trying to place the police at the centre of this decision was bound to backfire as it did spectacularly when the Chiefs of all three relevant police forces confirmed they did not request the invocation of the Act. What about the norm of ministerial responsibility?

44/62 Yet this is the circular line of questioning that has caught the government bleeding credibility for weeks, appearing as if it has something to hide or is not prepared to own its decision, which ironically by law is its sole prerogative to exercise.

45/62 There is also the matter of the convoy’s viral donation campaigns, which according to GiveSendGo and GoFundMe, raised between 12% and 40% of their funds from accounts originating outside of Canada, totaling at least $5 million.

46/62 This does not include at least $1 million in crypto “currency” funneled into participants’ digital wallets during the occupation, most of which evaded seizure by the federal government even after the Emergencies Act was invoked.

47/62 It’s hard to tell what is more scandalous, how so many Canadians would chip in and donate to a coup attempt, or that so much foreign money was also involved, but either way neither of these issues have been illuminated on the Committee.

48/62 Instead the spotlight has been on a CBC article that erroneously reported the fundraisers were suspended due to questionable donations rather than violations of terms of service.

49/62 In this information environment it’s no surprise that disinformation has rushed in to fill the void.

50/62 Earlier this month the “Klondike Papers” made their debut on Canadian left-wing twitter, boosted by prominent voices and a well cultivated botnet, these documents were supposed to blow the lid off a right-wing conspiracy to assassinate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

51/62 I won’t share the details here because it’s too contrived and I believe it is a false flag operation. Why? The “papers” aren’t available for just anyone to view, and those who have seen them have found little of substance.

52/62 The papers have conspicuously little to say about the people and organizations on the right-wing scene that participated in the convoy.

53/62 Rather the intent appears to be to seed a false narrative into the minds of Canadians who are hungry for the truth, further compounding confusion, apathy and disengagement at a time when vigilance and civic participation are most needed.

54/62 All these events are occurring in the context of renewed activity from the organizations that brought us the Ottawa occupation, as well as new ones that have popped up in the months since.

55/62 Just like last time, many of these groups purport to represent law enforcement and military and employ people who have served in the highest levels of Canada's intelligence apparatus.

54/62 All these events are occurring in the context of renewed activity from the organizations that brought us the Ottawa occupation, as well as new ones that have popped up in the months since.

55/62 Just like last time, many of these groups purport to represent law enforcement and military and employ people who have served in the highest levels of Canada's intelligence apparatus.

This time around talk of violence and covert intrigue is even more apparent.

56/62 With a major event planned for Canada Day, Ron Clark, one well known livestreamer from the convoy warned his followers to stay away from Ontario to avoid being “slaughtered - he will be celebrating in Alberta.

57/62 Other groups, such as “Marcus Ray” and “Veterans 4 Freedom - V4F” have been claiming they have thousands of former military and police training to violently overthrow the government - while accusing each other of being counter intelligence informants for the state.

58/62 It may be three years before the next federal election, but if the time to make the argument for the Emergency Act’s absolute necessity isn’t now, when?

59/62 If proactive measures aren’t taken now in the form of new legislation to target foreign financing of terrorist plotters on a permanent basis, a last minute invocation of the Emergencies Act may not be enough to avoid calamity next time.

60/62 Ultimately both Canada and the United States are undergoing tests of the strength of their institutions. If Canada can be toppled using a targeted paramilitary attack on its capital, then it increases the likelihood that the same thing could be done in the US.

61/62 The nation state actors who are coordinating this effort know that installing a friendly dictatorship by engineering the collapse of aged and fragile institutions will be orders of magnitudes less costly than a full on military confrontation with NATO.

62/62 That is why we have and will continue to see escalations until the attack is publicly exposed and decisively stopped, or it is successful.

62/62 That is why we have and will continue to see escalations until the attack is publicly exposed and decisively stopped, or it is successful.