Canadian Security Officials Uncover Chinese Election Interference

Chi­nese inter­fer­ence in Cana­di­an elec­tion efforts has been iden­ti­fied dur­ing the 2025 fed­er­al cam­paign. On April 25, 2025, The Globe and Mail report­ed that Cana­di­an secu­ri­ty agen­cies uncov­ered two appar­ent Bei­jing-led social media cam­paigns aimed at shift­ing opin­ion among Chi­nese Cana­di­ans about spe­cif­ic can­di­dates. The arti­cle begins:

The first fed­er­al elec­tion cam­paign to take place in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence age has fea­tured fake images of par­ty lead­ers mas­querad­ing as news sto­ries, Chi­nese efforts to shape views about two politi­cians and online mis­in­for­ma­tion about vot­ing. How­ev­er, despite the preva­lence of false infor­ma­tion on social media, experts say the integri­ty of Mon­day’s vote appears to be intact. “It could have been much worse,” said Aen­gus Bridg­man, direc­tor of the Media Ecosys­tem Obser­va­to­ry (MEO), a research group at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty that ana­lyzes dig­i­tal threats to democ­ra­cy. At the out­set of the cam­paign, experts had warned Cana­da was at high risk of attack by hos­tile for­eign enti­ties – includ­ing pos­si­bly from with­in the Unit­ed States – attempt­ing to med­dle with the elec­tion by covert­ly spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion online.

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-what-we-know-about-disinformation-campaigns-uncovered-in-the-federal

Key Points

• The Secu­ri­ty and Intel­li­gence Threats to Elec­tions task force iden­ti­fied Chi­nese elec­tion inter­fer­ence Cana­da cam­paigns tar­get­ing Lib­er­al Leader Mark Car­ney and Con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date Joe Tay.
• Bei­jing’s first oper­a­tion spread both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive nar­ra­tives about Car­ney through the WeChat plat­form and YouliY­oumi­an news account.
• The sec­ond cam­paign tar­get­ed Joe Tay, a Con­ser­v­a­tive crit­ic of Bei­jing’s Hong Kong poli­cies, with dis­parag­ing con­tent and mock “want­ed” posters.
• Despite these inter­fer­ence attempts, offi­cials deter­mined the Chi­nese elec­tion inter­fer­ence Cana­da efforts had not affect­ed the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to hold free and fair elections.

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.