A Letter to My American CFI Cousin

By Russell Pangborn

A letter to my American CFI cousin

Dear American CFI member,

There are quite a few brutal dictatorships out there. Apparently, a Presidential hunch was an official reason to start a war with one of them, and no one is sure what the real reasons and goals are.

The premier of the Canadian province of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, made an appeal for ending this war while alluding to a reason a lot of us wonder about – distraction from the Jeffry Epstein inquiry. History has taught us that with war, a wannabe tyrant can find good excuses to suppress a democracy. Anybody in favour of a free press and fair elections can now be accused of being a traitor to the nation if they question that leader … So, here is my question:

What are you doing to stop your country from turning into a dictatorship? 

Up here in Canada, our democracy is still healthy … but what happens politically south of us can mess that up in a hurry. We all should have learned from the Weimar Republic’s descent into a fascist Nazi state that complacency in our comfortable lives is not a good strategy. If they eventually are going to break down your doors, maybe a stronger response earlier would have been prudent. If you didn’t vote in that last election that gave majorities to each branch of government, facilitating the end of democracy, then shame on you. But there is still some time to redeem yourself. If you did recognize the threat posed and voted accordingly, you were let down by the roughly 1/3 who did not exercise their right to fill out the ballot. If you are out marching in the No Kings Days protest or one of the heroes in Minneapolis pushing back against a masked fascist policing presence, my hat is off to you. If you voted against this government and are not happy with the current government but feel no urgency about convincing the non-voting 36 percent to participate in the next election – you are not really aware of the danger your country is in. CFI members are like any group. There are those who are hyper-aware and those who are oblivious. I would like to believe you skew heavily towards the first.

Canadians are still incredulous that a minority in your country is wielding so much power. We have our fringe groups as well. But we have not handed over the reins of power to them. During COVID, we had a freedom convoy that held our capital prisoner with protests, and we had an anti-vaxer government group at the Ontario Ambassador Bridge blocking trade and traffic. Today, it is ironic that the menace of a bridge blocking threat is coming from your government. The President has uttered threats because Canada is such a nasty country. We supposedly do not play fair. Although completely funding the multi billion-dollar Gordie Howe bridge and ceding half ownership to the U.S. side sounds exceedingly fair to me. This may be coming because of a Canadian-China auto deal. Trump first said it was understandable, then backtracked to hyperbolic anger on it. While the U.S.’s new policies are f….g us on preexisting deals, looking elsewhere is verboten. But it is okay for the U.S. and China to make deals. One of the strangest arguments ever heard about any business deal is how any auto pact with China will destroy our favourite sport: The National Hockey League crushed out of existence by the Chinese, according to your President.

In my neighbourhood, a lot of Canadians are upset. The fact that a once-strong democracy is crumbling so rapidly is part of it, but the threats from a government your people have elected have certainly galvanized us to distrust the U.S.A. as a whole and bring us together. We have had to rethink our assumptions regarding our best friend never invading us for our resources.

I think you get the gist of why so many of my neighbours and countrymen are swearing off travel to your country. Insulting our leaders, dusting off the Monroe Doctrine, encouraging and possibly funding the fringe in Alberta who want to separate, (Texans in the past have wanted to separate, but we never gave them the time of day). Then there is the 51^st state joke, then not a joke, then a joke again … etc. We have learned by watching those jokes play out in your country. They are usually testing the waters for actual intentions. The one currently in development for your side of the border is the third-term gag. 

 Maybe more attention could have been focused on the damage being done by unethical news media outlets. The free speech argument supporting disseminating outright lies has come back to bite your country. Ironic that once the malicious power got consolidated courtesy of misinformation, the first act was to curtail accurate, verifiable news. No freedom of speech where it is most needed. One of the tenets of our organization should be that nothing is sacred from inquiry. Unchecked freedom of speech went through a modification with our hate laws up here. Some of us are debating the purposeful dissemination of outright lies from news organizations. 

A lot of us are making a conscious effort not to buy American-made goods. Some of us will even happily pay more for that Canadian-produced product. Our newly elected Prime Minister, Mark Carney, made us proud with his speech at Davos, earning a rare standing ovation when he acknowledged the new world order and a strategy to deal with it. (An interesting aside is that until your side started ramping up on aggressive language and economic policies, we had a Trump-like conservative front-runner leading in the polls.) 

There is some sympathy up here from having argued with a few of the cult members who are relatives or former friends. As some scientists have discovered in these debates, you can’t carry the day when peppered with a bunch of half-true facts taken out of context. You have a better chance with the appropriate research, logic and the scientific method, but those who need to hear and understand have an attention span that has already left the debate room by then. Like some of you, I have blown up some relationships, lost relatives and seen some of my Canadian heroes in an unflattering light.

Your system that was once so proud of a multi-faceted approach of checks and balances on levers of power has bent a knee to ultimate Presidential power. What is your self-anointed King planning? Since his decisions have not been stellar, there is the Save America Act, which is voter suppression on steroids to keep the power base intact after the upcoming impactful November elections. There is a ramping up of attacks on journalism, which already was out of hand with the authoritarians labelling objective reporting as treason. I am sure you know about most of this, but again, my question is, how hard are you fighting back? Your loss of a democracy will cross our borders.

Our former Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, was recently on a talk show and cited a quote attributed to Winston Churchill. 

“Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”

Things will have to get very bad before you start blowing things up. But if you are going to do the right thing, here is a wish list from your Canadian Cousin:

Get rid of a system that gives small, sparsely populated conservative states equal status and inordinate power over a majority of you. Put in some checks and balances on dark money and gerrymandering influencing elections. And finally, do something about your Supreme Court that initially enabled all this power. 

We need to work on some things as well. The notwithstanding clause is Canada’s albatross, providing a legal loophole to upend good government. 

I am aware that a few American CFI members will read this. I speak with a lot of people who are angry up here, and at one time, we were just mad at the MAGA people. But as the rhetoric and threats ramped up, some of us are wondering why more of the decent people in your country aren’t pushing back. Some did in Minneapolis and lost their lives for it. When they did, and lies were disseminated about them being terrorists, the Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, pushed back, calling ICE agents “Trump’s Modern-Day Gestapo’. I also must ask myself, if this rot crosses the border, what am I willing to do? Your turn will have passed, and it will be my turn to step up. Tough decisions… and that brings me back to one of my first points about the Weimar Republic. Staying complacent while the authoritarian infrastructure is built up is not a good strategy. Your country needs saving now before it solidifies all the mechanisms that enable repression of the popular will. Look how hard it is for the Iranians to dislodge a tyrannical theocracy. 

Good luck on your next election.