Former national security advisors and CSIS directors say the United States can become a "source of threat and instability"

The Canadian intelligence community will have to deal with the increasing influence of anti-democratic forces in the United States – including the threat posed by conservative media such as Fox News – according to a new report from a task force of intelligence experts.

"The United States is our closest ally and will remain so, but it could also become a source of threat and instability," according to a recently published report written by a task force of former national security advisors, former directors of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), former deputy ministers, former ambassadors, and academics. The group members have advised both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The report concluded that the time has come for the federal government to rethink how it handles national security.

The authors say Canada has become complacent about its national security strategies and is unprepared to face threats like Russian and Chinese espionage, "democratic backsliding" in the United States, rising cyberattacks, and climate change.

Vincent Rigby, a co-author of the report who worked until a few months ago as Trudeau's national security advisor, said, "We believe the threats are very serious right now, and they affect Canada."

Thomas Juneau, co-director of the task force and an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Public and International Affairs, said that while right-wing extremism in Canada has arisen domestically, the cross-border connections between extremist groups are concerning. The convoy was a "wake-up call," the advisor said, pointing to Senator Doug Mastriano’s victory in the Republican primary election for governor of Pennsylvania. He is a known supporter of the lie that election fraud caused former President Donald Trump's 2020 loss.

Juneau said, "There are serious risks of democratic backsliding in the United States, and at this point, this is not a theoretical risk."

The report said Canadian protests were supported by politicians in the United States and conservative media, including Fox News.

"This may not have constituted foreign interference in the traditional sense, since it was not the result of foreign government actions. But it represents, arguably, a greater threat to Canadian democracy than the actions of any country other than the United States," the report said.

During the convoy protest, Fox host Tucker Carlson – whose show attracts millions of viewers every night – described Trudeau on air as a "Stalinist dictator" and accused him of "suspending democracy and declaring Canada a dictatorship."

Carlson himself was recently criticized for promoting the replacement theory – a racist concept claiming that white Americans are deliberately being replaced through immigration.

This theory was cited in the statement of the 18-year-old accused in the mass shooting in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York earlier this month.

The conspiracy theory has also been linked to previous mass shootings, including the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand.

"When we think about threats to Canada, we think of the Soviet military threat, we think of al-Qaeda, we think of the rise of China, we think of the war in Ukraine. All these things are true. But 'the increasing threat to Canada posed by the United States is completely new. This requires a new way of thinking and a new way to manage our relationship with the United States,'" Juneau says.

That is why both Rigby and Juneau hope the report will prompt the government to launch a new review of the national security strategy – something that has not happened since 2004.

The report offers a number of recommendations. These include reviewing legislation related to CSIS powers, more use of open-source intelligence, and efforts to enhance cybersecurity. It also urges secret intelligence agencies to be more open to the public by disclosing more intelligence information and publishing annual threat assessments.

Edited by: Dima Abu Khair