Open Letter to Canadians: It’s Time to Say the Quiet Part Out Loud
Author's note: This letter represents my own views and are not representative of any public institution.
Meta and X pose a sovereignty threat to Canada. And we must act.
As an award-winning communications professional and military Public Affairs Officer, I’ve spent the last decade navigating complex online environments where information, perception, and power converge. It’s through this work that I began to suspect something was deeply broken in our digital ecosystem. And after listening to Taylor Owen’s recent Front Burner interview, which was excellent, I was struck not by what was said, but by what remains unsaid.
Specifically: the danger of our ongoing dependence on U.S.-owned social media platforms to communicate with Canadian audiences, shape public discourse, and even run elections. And in the wake of Meta's response to the Online News Act - which saw news consumption drop substantially once Canadian news content was blocked for Canadian Meta users - we have seen what happens when governments attempt to install guardrails around these platforms in the best interests of their citizens.
As we face an existential threat unlike any seen in generations - and an election that may shape our future for decades to come that is extremely vulnerable to foreign interference - every Canadian with an account on these platforms has a choice to make. In a media landscape already rife with disinformation, the stakes are no longer abstract. They're personal.
The Quiet Digital Coup
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: every Canadian with a Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, or X account is a digital asset of the U.S. global tech empire.
That empire encompasses not just social platforms, but the majority of search engines, content platforms, payment processors, cloud servers, data repositories, and e-commerce tools that serve individuals, businesses, and governments around the world. While the West was focused on China’s Belt and Road (and Tik Tok), we failed to see what was happening under our noses while the United States built up sophisticated weapons of mass manipulation while we happily entertained ourselves with cat videos.
Through these platforms, the United States didn’t just pioneer the Internet - it monopolized it. And now, via social media, it exerts soft power control over perception itself through unregulated, opaque, behavioral algorithms that shape what we see, believe, and do. We’ve built the Canadian digital ecosystem on platforms that are not only foreign-owned—they are foreign-aligned.
Why Isn’t This Being Taken Seriously?
Despite years of evidence, I’ve seen only fragmented acknowledgment of this systemic risk from Canadian media, academia, government, defence, or law enforcement. But that acknowledgement stops short from saying the thing that needs to be said.
We talk about online safety, disinformation, and election interference. But we haven’t addressed the core issue: the platforms themselves are the interference. They are extensions of U.S. geopolitical influence, and they now pose a clear and ongoing threat to Canadian sovereignty, national security, and democratic discourse. Social media isn't just weaponized. It is the weapon.
The truth is that the platforms upon which we've come to depend cannot be separated from the country from whence they've come, a country that, as political historian Heather Cox Richardson writes, is now rapidly dismantling its own democratic institutions in favour of dictatorship. And considering that the owner of X is at the helm of this dismantling, and Meta has seemingly aligned with MAGA ideology through the removal of fact-checking on the eve of their Federal Trade Commission Antitrust trial (and just last week, the only two democratic commissioners were fired from said commission), the writing is on the wall about the true nature of these platforms.
This Is Not a Call for Censorship
To be clear: I am not calling for censorship. Quite the opposite.
What we’re witnessing isn’t “free speech” - it’s the illusion of discourse, engineered under conditions of surveillance, perception manipulation, and behavioral control. These platforms determine what gets seen, prioritized, amplified, and suppressed - based not on democratic values, but on profit and power.
We’re not debating in a public square.
We’re shouting inside a machine.
We’re shouting inside a machine.
And that machine is not Canadian.
The Real Silencing
The irony is that any attempt to speak out against these platforms is quickly framed as a threat to free expression.
But I ask: What greater silencing exists than a system that decides who gets heard at all?
What greater threat to democracy than black-box algorithms designed to polarize, enrage, and suppress - while feeding off our attention?
We’ve normalized the idea that building a business, a message, or a movement requires playing by the rules of Meta and X. But those rules are neither neutral nor ethical. And the cost isn’t just economic. It’s existential.
A Sovereign Solution
This is why I’ve founded The Sovereign Shift™ - a movement to help Canadians reclaim sovereign thought through critical thinking and nervous system regulation, and digital agency by leaving social media, ending platform dependency, and building influence through ethical, decentralized strategies that honor our values and our humanity.
Small business owners, creators, and thought leaders who are ready to break free from the algorithm and build sustainable reach outside the system are going to be among the first wave in an exodus. But this shift isn’t just about marketing or convenience or even influence-building - it’s about sovereignty.
And we need more than individual exodus. We need Canadian technologists, entrepreneurs, and institutions to step up and create viable platform alternatives for Canadians with ethical guardrails - tools that serve people, not power structures.
We Can’t Wait Any Longer
I’m not writing this to condemn. I’m writing this because I care.
I’m a mother. A communicator. A business owner. A Canadian.
And I’m deeply concerned about what we’re handing over in the name of convenience.
We must stop pretending this isn’t a problem.
We must stop waiting for someone else to fix it.
We must stop outsourcing our communication, our democracy, and our attention to entities that do not serve our interests.
We must stop waiting for someone else to fix it.
We must stop outsourcing our communication, our democracy, and our attention to entities that do not serve our interests.
The shift to sovereignty begins now.
If you’ve felt this too - if you’ve sensed something is off, but couldn’t quite name it - know that you are not alone.
It’s time to come home to the truth.
It’s time to exit the illusion.
It’s time to build something worthy of the next generation, especially as we face an election rife with existentialist questions.
It’s time to exit the illusion.
It’s time to build something worthy of the next generation, especially as we face an election rife with existentialist questions.
It's time to use our power as sovereign individuals.
Remove the apps from your phone or use them strategically and critically until there is a viable alternative. Starve them of the attention they need to survive. And demand better, sovereign platforms and systems in their place.
An alternative won't be built unless there is demand. So start demanding.
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