The Canada Thread

Canada is almost certainly headed toward some kind of inquiry into foreign interference in its democracy.

But if its focus is solely on China or Russia and other state actors, it won’t be tackling the potentially far more troubling forces that proved so disruptive to Canada during last year’s convoy protest.

Is the country ready to take that dark dive into foreign interference — the non-China variety?

Michael Kempa is a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa who closely watched the convoy protest and is now writing a book on who and what was behind it.

“I personally am more worried about the influence of the far right from the United States and elsewhere,” Kempa says flatly when I ask him about foreign interference. “Which is not to say, I don’t think that there’s nothing to worry about with the efforts of the Chinese government to corrupt our system, or Iran, or Russia.”

Kempa thinks it’s a good thing the Canadian political conversation has become seized with foreign interference over the past few months, but he also believes it’s been far too narrowly focused only on questions surrounding China.

“But there are all manner of non-state entities that are seeking to influence our electoral outcomes,” he says.

So would an inquiry help?

“Absolutely,” Kempa says. “An inquiry would help because it would start to illuminate the state and non-state networks of misanthropic actors that seek to influence electoral outcomes.”

Kempa’s book is due out next year. It’s called “The Freedom Convoy: Transporting the Dark Politics of the Far Right Across Canada.” It will confront some disturbing realities only hinted at during the formal inquiry into the convoy protest, led by Justice Paul Rouleau.

The Rouleau inquiry did feature testimony and participation from most of the convoy protest leaders — people such as Tamara Lich, Brigitte Belton, Chris Barber, James Bauder, Pat King and Tom Marazzo, to name a few. Kempa is interested in these characters, but also to the networks and financing that opened up to them as the convoy widened its grip on order in Canada.

Matt Gurney, co-founder of The Line, did some groundbreaking work in Ottawa during the convoy protest in February 2022, and he wrote memorably of the “hard men” lurking at the headquarters out on Coventry Road in Ottawa. He was referring to the more quiet organizers making their presence felt amid the horn honking, bouncy castles and hot tubs lining Wellington Street in front of Parliament.

While Kempa thinks the Rouleau inquiry and report yielded significant, groundbreaking work, he thinks the process treated the question of foreign influence in the same, limited way as Canadian political debate of late — as mainly a problem only when hostile governments are meddling.

One of the chapters in his book is titled “Global Misanthropes” — the name Kempa gives to actors who aren’t meddling in countries’ democracies on behalf of any government or even any coherent, political ideology. They’re just out to provoke chaos, disorder and distrust in the state and institutions.

Those forces were at play during the convoy, Kempa asserts, and there were all kinds of hints and warnings that some of the protest was being prodded along by forces in the United States.

Their organizational weakness is also their strength, it appears. They are hard to track simply because they are more of a movement, or a collection of grievances. Generally, those grievances can be summed up as “anti-modernity,” Kempa says — opposition to everything from science to banks or any kind of data-collecting institution.

Kempa says it’s important to note this movement cannot be seen as one centrally organized cause, but instead a loosely aligned network of fellow travellers, mainly on the far right, who are ready to latch on to any cause that causes disruption. COVID and the pandemic restrictions became a powerful cause for them because it fed on people’s long-simmering frustrations, especially after the Omicron wave in late 2021. Kempa calls the convoy protest “a tactic in search of a cause,” and urges people to recall that smaller convoys were bubbling up in the U.S. and as far away as Australia before it hit Canada’s capital and border points with the United States.

“They’re not a co-ordinated cabal. They tend to know one another because they’re wealthy, and they donate money to all kinds of these things,” Kempa explains. “They go to fundraisers and see each other and they rub shoulders with the more nasty characters that are more peripherally involved, especially in the United States.”

It’s worth remembering too, incidentally, that some of the foreign influence during the convoy was happening right out in plain sight, with the Canadian demonstrators being urged on by Fox News and even some leading Republican politicians.

If this all sounds like the makings of a fictional thriller or even a conspiracy theory, well, that’s hard to dispute. Then again, no one would have predicted that a ragtag demonstration against COVID measures would turn into three-week long occupation of Canada’s capital and an economy-threatening blockade at the biggest border point between Canada and the U.S in early 2022.

It remains to be seen how large an inquiry or an investigation is being negotiated among the government and opposition parties right now. Back in the winter, when Katie Telford, the prime minister’s chief of staff, was asked about the prospects of an inquiry, she said that much revolved around what question(s) an inquiry would have to address.

There’s a real danger, in other words, of making an inquiry so large that it will only skim the surface of foreign meddling in Canada’s democracy.

Kempa believes there’s a way to do an inquiry that would get at the questions he’s pursuing in his convoy research and forthcoming book.

“The way to do it would be to focus on the entry points of foreign interference,” he explains. “Instead of saying, ‘what are all the forms of foreign interference out there?’ you say, ‘where is the Canadian system targeted?’” For instance, he said, take a hard look at who and what is trying to fiddle with nominations at any political level — whether that’s state actors like China or Russia, or non-state players like we saw during the convoy.

In the coming days, Canadians will learn just how ambitiously the political class is seized with the issue of foreign interference. If it’s only about what’s been in the headlines these past few months, it’s an opportunity missed to shine a light on a darker, potentially larger threat to democratic integrity here.

Canada just arrested “Dark Foreigner,” one of the most influential neo-Nazi propagandists of the past decade.

Patrick Gordon Macdonald, 26, was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and charged with participating in an activity of a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity, and commission of an offense for a terrorist group (wilful promotion of hatred.)

Macdonald was first initially identified as the neo-Nazi propagandist “Dark Foreigner” by VICE News in 2021. An investigation exposed Macdonald’s long history of working as essentially the chief propagandist with the neo-Nazi terrorist organization Atomwaffen.

“Mr. Macdonald allegedly helped produce propaganda material for the benefit of the terrorist entity Atomwaffen Division,” reads the RCMP press release. “He allegedly participated in and facilitated the creation, production and distribution of three terrorist propaganda videos.”

“This case is the first in Canada in which an individual advocating a violent far-right ideology has been charged with both terrorism and hate propaganda.”

The RCMP did not comment on VICE News' original story.

Following the publication of Macdonald’s identity by VICE News, the neo-Nazi was raided by the RCMP in early 2022 and several computers were seized. At the time,Macdonald was living in his parent's home, where he was running a small graphic design business.

Sources indicated to VICE News that he remained active with the extreme right after he was identified. Earlier this year, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network published an article alleging that he was a member of a Canadian Active Club, a neo-Nazi fitness group.

Macdonald was an immensely influential neo-Nazi propagandist and his work inspired other neo-Nazis and was one of the cornerstones of an aesthetic that became known as “terrorwave." Macdonald first joined the movement in 2017 via the influential neo-Nazi website Iron March, where he linked up Atomwaffen, an infamous neo-Nazi group connected to multiple murders. Using the alias “Dark Foreigner,” Macdonald quickly became the group’s chief propagandist and created posters and artwork celebrating terrorism, bigotry, and violence.

“Dark Foreigner was a critical figure in the development of the neofascist accelerationism aesthetic,” Matthew Kriner, the managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium told VICE News. “His arrest shows that law enforcement in Canada is committed to addressing and disrupting the growing threat of accelerationist violence and hate.
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“Dark Foreigner was well connected in accelerationist networks and likely will represent the first of additional investigations and arrests associated with the accelerationist threat.”

Macdonald’s work and influence can still be seen today in the extreme right.

On top of creating artwork and propaganda for these neo-Nazi groups, Macdonald actively helped organize and tried to grow the groups, even traveling internationally to visit neo-Nazis overseas, VICE News has previously reported. Multiple people that Macdonald worked and palled around with would catch terrorism charges in the United Kingdom.

Other unnamed individuals were arrested alongside Macdonald but have not been named nor charged by the RCMP. Canada declared Atomwaffen a terrorist organization in February of 2021.

He will go before a judge later today.

A leader of a far-right “convoy” camped out near Canada’s capitol has said the group plans to “pick up” homeless people off the street to join its a conspiracy-drenched movement to overthrow the nation’s government, which it views as part of a global cabal of pedophiles.

In an instagram live video that was saved and edited by Reddit user “Mr-MayorMcCheese,” convoy organizer Norman Blanchfield said, in a heavy Quebecois accent, “The homeless people they want to fight with us. Those ones they want to change and they want to have a life. So we’re going to take twenty with us, and I never said that on live before. But we only have three homeless people here.”

In the video, Blanchfield, who hails from Gatineau, Quebec, suggests homeless people will be given food and work in exchange for their help. “Everyone gonna work,” he said.

“Twenty person, we’re gonna go pick up,” he says, “if they want, and I’m sure they’re gonna say yes. We’re gonna tell them we have a fight to do against this corruption. And I really know they have a lot of them, they’re mad against this corruption government, and they’re gonna be willing to fight with us.”

Blanchfield says in the video that the city made sure they had a septic tank in their camper. He warns people not to send homeless people to the convoy or to tell people it’s an encampment. “Don’t say everywhere it’s an open camp for homeless because we’re not able to take the homeless everywhere and every kind of homeless,” Blanchfield says, adding that he doesn’t want people with mental illness or drug problems to join.

An advocate with a legal clinic assisting unhoused people in Blanchfield’s home of Gatineau, about an hour from the convoy’s camp, told Motherboard they weren’t aware of the situation, but called it “extremely concerning” and said they had to investigate more.

The convoy calls itself “Save the Children” and, according to Press Progress, it consists of about a hundred people in vehicles parked in a field 40 minutes outside Ottawa.

Several key members of the convoy were affiliated with the anti-vaccine “Freedom Convoy” that occupied downtown Ottawa in 2022. Members of the Save the Children Convoy profess a wide-range of conspiratorial beliefs, including the QAnon conspiracy belief that Donald Trump is fighting a global cabal of pedophiles in the government who conduct Satanic rituals. (Although some members denounce this particular theory, according to Press Progress.) Members also subscribe to New Age spirituality, “health and wellness” culture and believe they are legally separate from the Canadian government. Blanchfield is also associated with a group called Bridges to Freedom which posted a manifesto calling for the government to resign.

The movement’s self-appointed spokesperson Gordon Berry advocated for arresting politicians and dismantling the government. Attendees of early meetings told Press Progress that the group had initially intended to send caravans to Toronto and Tofino, British Columbia in a plot to target politicians, police, and freemasons.

While unhoused people, just like housed people, are free to join roving convoys of conspiracy theorists, Blanchfield’s description of the arrangement suggests they’re being lured with work and services and aren’t yet on board with the group’s mission, which includes fighting an imaginary threat of world government leaders openly endorsing pedophilia.

Canada is caught in a “population trap” for the first time in modern history and needs to limit immigration to escape it, say economists with the National Bank of Canada.

A population trap, according to Oxford dictionary, is when the population is growing so fast that all available savings are needed to maintain the existing capital–labour ratio, making any increase in living standards impossible.

It’s historically been seen in emerging economies, and escape requires either an increase in savings, a cut in population growth, or both.

National Bank’s report joins the growing chorus of concern that the influx of newcomers over the past two years, many of whom are temporary workers or students, is too much for the economy to handle. Others caution there could be economic repercussions if Ottawa cuts off the flow too quickly.

Canada’s population grew by 1.2 million in 2023, a “staggering” amount when you consider that the next biggest surge was when Newfoundland joined the nation in 1949, says the report by National Bank economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme.

From a global perspective Canada’s population growth of 3.2 per cent last year was five times higher than the average of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations.

“We currently lack the infrastructure and capital stock in this country to adequately absorb current population growth and improve our standard of living,” said the economists.

No where is this strain more evident than in housing, they say.
National says the shortfall has reached a record of only one housing start for every 4.2 people entering the working-age population. The historical average is 1.8.

Government programs are underway to address this, but to meet demand and reduce housing inflation, Canada would need to double its housing construction capacity to about 700,000 starts a year, “an unattainable goal,” according to the economists.

“More worrisome is the fact that the decline is not simply due to a lack of housing infrastructure,” they said.

Excessive population growth is also impeding economic well-being, they argue. A fact they say is underscored by real gross domestic product growth per capita stagnating for six years in a row.



Capital stock, the physical and financial resources used to create value in an economy, has failed to keep up with population growth. Private non-residential capital stock has been falling for seven years, National says, and is now is at the same level as in 2012, while it is at a record high in the United States.

According to National calculations, capital stock per capita plummeted to about 1.5 per cent in 2023, compared with a high of almost 4.5 per cent in the 1960s.

“This means that our population is growing so fast that we do not have enough savings to stabilize our capital-labour ratio and achieve an increase in GDP per capita,” the economists said. “Simply put, Canada is in a population trap for the first time in modern history.”

If Canada is to improve its productivity, policy makers must set population targets against the constraint of our capital stock, they argue.

“At this point, we believe that our country’s annual total population growth should not exceed 300,000 to 500,000 if we are to escape the population trap.”