Federal authorities say they have detected an information operation linked to the Chinese regime that seeks to influence Chinese-Canadians’ perceptions about Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Mark Carney.
The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force said the information operation was “deliberately amplifying narratives in a coordinated and inauthentic way” on the Chinese social media platform WeChat.
The initial information came from an anonymous blog on WeChat called Youli-Youmian, said to be the most popular news account on the platform. WeChat’s parent company Tencent says its social media platform has 1.3 billion monthly users.
The SITE Task Force said it observed “large spikes” of what it believes is “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” in relation to an article posted by the WeChat account on March 10 and March 25. The campaign around the March 25 article was being boosted by 30 smaller WeChat accounts, leading to the articles reaching between 1 million to 3 million views, SITE said, which is much higher than content usually posted by Chinese state media.
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“The SITE Task Force assesses that the foreign state-backed information operation was intended to influence Canadian-Chinese communities and look to mould perceptions about the candidate [Carney],” said Laurie-Anne Kempton, assistant secretary to the cabinet for communications with the Privy Council Office, during a press conference in Ottawa on April 7.
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Federal authorities provided links to the Chinese-language Youli-Youmian articles they said were part of Beijing’s information operation campaign.
The article identified as “amplifying the candidate’s stance with the United States” has multiple paragraphs lauding Carney’s experience as former governor of the central banks of Canada and the United Kingdom. The article says that even though Carney lacks political experience, he has an “ambitious” plan for economic recovery.
“While being tough on the United States, he seeks to form an ‘anti-trade protectionism alliance’ with Mexico and South American countries, while deepening economic and trade cooperation with China,” the Youli-Youmian articles says, based on a translation using an online tool.
The Youli-Youmian identified by SITE as targeting Carney’s “experience and credentials” has content that could be deemed either favourable or unfavourable to the Liberal leader.
The article calls Carney an “airborne prime minister” for not having a seat in Parliament and questions his French-language abilities. It also said the Liberal Party needed a “saviour” to “clean up the mess” left by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “So they set their sights on former central bank governor Carney, a financial elite,” says the article.
With the content of the articles appearing to be mostly positive towards Carney, SITE officials were asked by reporters to clarify what they had observed.
“We monitored over the period of time specified and we saw positive and negative narratives,” said Larisa Galadza, associate assistant deputy minister of the International Security and Political Affairs Branch at Global Affairs Canada.
“This kind of coordinated inauthentic behaviour is just an attempt to pollute the digital environment and try to shape opinions one way or the other,” said Kempton, when asked by reporters to comment on the purpose of the information operation considering it promotes both positive and negative narratives.
Vanessa Lloyd, chair of SITE and deputy director of operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said that China is “largely party agnostic” in its approach to foreign interference in Canada.
“As the information ecosystem is changing, then that can account for positive narratives in one instance and negative in the other,” she said.
Lloyd added that the main purpose of SITE’s announcement was to link publicly the Youli-Youmian WeChat account to China and the Chinese Communist Party.
“Intelligence has provided that there is a concerted effort behind that entity, within the Communist Party, to spread and manipulate the narrative that Canadians are seeing,” she said.
SITE officials said the same Youli-Youmian WeChat blog had been used during the recent Liberal leadership campaign won by Carney, to publish negative content about candidate Chrystia Freeland. Freeland was then a former cabinet minister and has since been appointed to the transport portfolio by Carney. Tory MP Michael Chong was also targeted in the same way during byelections in 2023, SITE said.
Chong reacted to SITE’s latest warning in a statement, saying Beijing is “engaging in a sophisticated campaign to interfere in Canada’s election with the aim of re-electing Mark Carney and the Liberals for a fourth term.”
SITE officials said during the April 7 press conference that they were speaking with WeChat’s parent company Tencent later that day about their findings. They also said the Liberal Party was briefed on the Chinese information operation campaign on April 6.
The Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party were contacted for comment but did not respond by publication time.
Past China Links
Foreign interference concerns have been heightened during the current election period, given the threat has been scrutinized in recent months by the Foreign Interference Commission. The commission, along with security bodies, have identified the Chinese regime as the foremost foreign interference threat in Canada.
In late March, during a campaign event, Carney spoke about diversifying Canada’s trading relationships amid the trade conflict with the United States, but said that any potential partners in Asia would need to share Canadian values, and that they “don’t include China.”
“There’s certain activity that we could have with China. We obviously do have a large amount of trade with them, but we have to be very careful, very deliberate, and they need to meet Canadian standards,” he said.
Carney was also faced with the issue of Beijing interference and transnational repression last week in the controversy around former Liberal candidate Paul Chiang. An incumbent MP in the Markham-Unionville riding, Chiang was found to have encouraged people in January to bring his then-rival Tory candidate Joe Tay to the Chinese consulate to collect the bounty placed on him by Hong Kong authorities.