Self hosting is a viable option, if not difficult. This is also an opportunity to start Canadian-oriented services.

Try AliExpress. It has all the same Chinese garbage, but at half the price.

I already stopped buying from Amazon. You can buy exactly the same Chinese crap from AliExpress for half the price. Bonus points for not funding Bezos’ attempts to undermine democracy in our own backyard. Just gotta be a bit more patient, but that’s an easy price to pay.

aren’t they pretty staunch bloc supporters rather than lib or con

Pretty easy choice these days

I am one of those. I ditched Signal and went back to the stock sms app and adopted matrix. Haven’t looked back since. The reality is that Signal dropping support for sms wasn’t going to stop me from using SMS. For that, other people need to be convinced to stop using it at the same time. Signal didn’t have nearly the market size needed to make that happen. And now that card is played, and nothing has changed. Signal is just another messaging app among hundreds. At least matrix offers a real paradigm shift.