Chinese and Russian Election Interference in Canada Had Little Impact: Government Task Force Finds

Chi­na and Rus­sia once again tried to inter­fere in Canada’s lat­est fed­er­al elec­tion but like­ly had min­i­mal impact on the vote that was ulti­mate­ly free and fair, said the for­eign inter­fer­ence in elec­tions watch­dog. “While for­eign actors attempt­ed to under­mine it, it did not affect the integri­ty of the elec­tion. There were no sig­nif­i­cant secu­ri­ty inci­dents observed dur­ing the elec­tion, no cyber threats and no inci­dents of vio­lent expres­sion,” Secu­ri­ty and Intel­li­gence Threats to Elec­tions (SITE) Task Force spokesper­son Lau­rie-Anne Kemp­ton told reporters Thurs­day. SITE — com­posed of the RCMP, Cana­di­an Secu­ri­ty Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Secu­ri­ty Estab­lish­ment and Glob­al Affairs Cana­da — is tasked with mon­i­tor­ing fed­er­al elec­tions for for­eign interference.

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/china-and-russia-tried-to-interfere-in-last-election-but-to-little-avail-watchdog-says

Key Points

• The SITE Task Force detect­ed small-scale efforts from for­eign enti­ties, includ­ing transna­tion­al repres­sion, inau­then­tic and coor­di­nat­ed ampli­fi­ca­tion of web con­tent, and online scams using politi­cians’ like­ness­es dur­ing the election.
• Dur­ing week­ly brief­in­gs, SITE warned the pub­lic of two sep­a­rate online cam­paigns that appeared backed by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, includ­ing inau­then­tic boost­ing of posts about Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney on WeChat and infor­ma­tion about a boun­ty on Con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date Joseph Tay.
• Rus­sia made mild attempts to influ­ence pub­lic online dis­course by lever­ag­ing its for­eign infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion net­works through web­sites that laun­dered and ampli­fied aggre­gat­ed items from Russ­ian gov­ern­ment-con­trolled media out­lets about Cana­di­an candidates.
• The report stat­ed that for­eign inter­fer­ence is becom­ing hard­er to detect as tech­niques become more sophis­ti­cat­ed and sub­tle, with threat actors like­ly adapt­ing their trade­craft to con­ceal their activ­i­ty further.

Russia and China Election Interference in Canada: Disinformation Campaigns Target Democratic Processes

Russ­ian and Chi­nese inter­fer­ence in Cana­di­an elec­tions has esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly through coor­di­nat­ed social media cam­paigns, AI-enabled dis­in­for­ma­tion, and tar­get­ed oper­a­tions against dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties. Cana­di­an secu­ri­ty agen­cies uncov­ered two Bei­jing-led social media cam­paigns dur­ing the 2025 fed­er­al elec­tion tar­get­ing Lib­er­al Leader Mark Car­ney and Con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date Joe Tay via WeChat. The Youli-Youmi­an account, WeChat’s most pop­u­lar news source, believed to be linked to Chi­na’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty, along with 30 small­er accounts, spread both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive con­tent about Car­ney, while mock “want­ed” posters tar­get­ed Tay for his crit­i­cism of Bei­jing’s Hong Kong policies.

Chi­nese oper­a­tions demon­strate sophis­ti­cat­ed long-term strate­gies extend­ing across mul­ti­ple elec­tion cycles. Dur­ing the 2021 fed­er­al elec­tion, Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty-aligned actors under­mined Con­ser­v­a­tive leader Erin O’Toole through threats pub­lished in the state-owned Glob­al Times tabloid, warn­ing that “Chi­na will pay back with a strong counter strike and Cana­da will be the one to suf­fer” if Con­ser­v­a­tives adopt­ed their anti-Chi­na plat­form. The Chi­nese Min­istry of For­eign Affairs attacked polit­i­cal lead­ers through state­ments post­ed on the Chi­nese Embassy web­site, crit­i­ciz­ing Canada’s human rights record, while pro-Bei­jing orga­ni­za­tions tar­get­ed indi­vid­ual can­di­dates like British Colum­bia MP Jen­ny Kwan for her sup­port of Hong Kong pro-democ­ra­cy protests and asy­lum mea­sures for Hong Kongers.

Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion oper­a­tions have achieved alarm­ing pen­e­tra­tion into Cana­di­an infor­ma­tion ecosys­tems through ampli­fi­ca­tion by domes­tic actors. Toron­to Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty research found that 51% of Cana­di­ans encoun­tered pro-Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da about the Ukraine war, with the most preva­lent claim that “Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism is a neo-Nazi move­ment” reach­ing 35% of the pop­u­la­tion. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, between 49–64% of right-lean­ing Cana­di­ans sup­port pro-Russ­ian claims, includ­ing beliefs that the Unit­ed States oper­ates bio­log­i­cal weapons labs in Ukraine and that Kyiv spreads doc­tored atroc­i­ty photos.

A Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary analy­sis of 6.2 mil­lion tweets revealed that approx­i­mate­ly 25% of accounts in the Cana­di­an Twit­ter ecosys­tem dis­cussing the Ukraine war were spread­ing pro-Russ­ian talk­ing points, with many Cana­di­ans serv­ing as unwit­ting “Tro­jan hors­es” ampli­fy­ing nar­ra­tives orig­i­nat­ing from Rus­sia, Chi­na, or right-wing Amer­i­can influ­encers. The research con­firmed that the Russ­ian state appa­ra­tus con­trols numer­ous accounts tweet­ing in Cana­da, influ­enc­ing posts that get retweet­ed and repeat­ed across net­works while express­ing claims that Ukraine is fas­cist or that NATO expan­sion threat­ens Russia.

Cana­di­an intel­li­gence agen­cies warn that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­formed inter­fer­ence capa­bil­i­ties, with hos­tile actors deploy­ing AI-gen­er­at­ed deep­fakes, auto­mat­ed account cre­ation, and indus­tri­al-scale con­tent gen­er­a­tion. The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Secu­ri­ty Estab­lish­ment assessed that Chi­na, Rus­sia, and Iran will “very like­ly” use AI-enabled tools to inter­fere with demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es, with Bei­jing employ­ing vast AI capa­bil­i­ties to push nar­ra­tives favor­ing its inter­ests while tar­get­ing Chi­nese-dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties specif­i­cal­ly. More than a quar­ter of glob­al elec­tions between 2023 and 2024 expe­ri­enced AI-dri­ven inter­fer­ence attempts com­pared to just one iden­ti­fied in the pre­vi­ous two years, demon­strat­ing expo­nen­tial growth in sophis­ti­cat­ed manip­u­la­tion tech­niques that cre­ate deep­fake pho­tos, videos, and audio while enabling auto­mat­ed social media oper­a­tions that spread dis­in­for­ma­tion at an unprece­dent­ed scale with­out human involvement.

Exter­nal References:
— Cana­da warns of elec­tion threats from Chi­na, Rus­sia, India and Pak­istan — Al Jazeera
— 2025 fed­er­al elec­tion ‘very like­ly’ to be tar­get of AI med­dling by Chi­na, Rus­sia and Iran — Globe and Mail
— Chi­na, Rus­sia will ‘very like­ly’ use AI to tar­get Cana­di­an vot­ers — CBC News
— Update on Canada’s Actions to Pro­tect Gen­er­al Elec­tion 45 — Gov­ern­ment of Canada
— For­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion is a loom­ing threat in Canada’s elec­tion — Globe and Mail

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