Freeland leadership campaign targeted by foreign interference: task force

The national assemblage tasked with monitoring elections for overseas interference says it has briefed Liberal leadership campaigner Chrystia Freeland’s run astir a Chinese-backed cognition that has been spreading disparaging articles online astir her.

The Security and Intelligence Threats to Election Task Force (SITE) said successful a connection Friday that the “information operation” was identified by Global Affairs Canada’s Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM Canada) and traced to a fashionable WeChat quality relationship linked to China.

“RRM Canada detected coordinated and malicious enactment astir Ms. Freeland,” the connection said.

It estimated that betwixt 2 cardinal and 3 cardinal WeChat users globally saw the campaign, which included articles published to an anonymous blog that were past dispersed by implicit 30 different quality accounts connected the app.

“The run received precise precocious levels of engagement and views, with WeChat quality articles disparaging Ms. Freeland netting implicit 140,000 interactions betwixt Jan. 29 and Feb. 3, 2025.”

SITE said it briefed the Liberal Party enforcement and members of Freeland’s enactment run astir its findings connected Friday.

“I volition not beryllium intimidated by Chinese overseas interference,” Freeland said successful a station connected societal media successful effect to SITE’s announcement.

“Having spent years confronting authoritarian regimes, I cognize firsthand the value of defending our freedoms. Canada’s ideology is strong. My acknowledgment to our nationalist information agencies for protecting it.”

In her last months arsenic concern minister, Freeland took purpose astatine Chinese efforts to participate the North American car marketplace done Mexico and led efforts to enforce tariffs and bans connected Chinese electrical conveyance exertion and components.

SITE was established successful 2019 and includes representatives of CSIS, the RCMP, Global Affairs Canada and the Communications Security Establishment, the country’s signals quality agency.

It has monitored respective national byelections for overseas interference since its instauration and announced past month it would beryllium overseeing the Liberal enactment contention arsenic well.

Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s last study connected overseas interference successful Canada’s antiauthoritarian institutions identified disinformation and misinformation campaigns, overseas oregon domestic, arsenic the “single biggest menace to our democracy” aft starring a nationalist enquiry into the issue.

Foreign states proceed to usage much accepted methods to meddle successful Canadian democracy, Hogue said, but are augmenting those efforts done “sophisticated technological means” to sow disinformation some successful accepted media and connected societal media platforms.

“This menace is each the much nefarious due to the fact that the means disposable to antagonistic it are limited, and precise hard to implement,” Hogue told reporters upon releasing the report. “Nevertheless, we indispensable not springiness up, but alternatively onslaught it forcefully, each together.”

—With files from Global’s Sean Previl and Alex Boutilier