Federal forces tracking alleged foreign interference have revealed a “coordinated and malicious” effort launched by China against liberal leadership candidate Christia Freeland.
Canada’s Global Affairs-based rapid response mechanism Canada is monitoring cyberspace for indications of state-sponsored information manipulation on behalf of security and intelligence threats to the election task force.
The government recently announced that task forces that are normally active during election campaigns will be run during liberal leadership contests.
In a statement, the task force said the information manipulation directed at Freeland has been traced to the most popular news accounts of WeChat, an anonymous blog previously linked to the Chinese government.
According to the task force, RRM Canada has identified more than 30 Wechat news accounts participating in the campaign and received “a very high level of engagement and opinions.”
WeChat News Recipersaging Freeland has earned over 140,000 interactions between January 29th and February 3rd, with RRM Canada estimated that between 2 and 3 million WeChat users have seen the campaign globally.
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On Friday, the task force explained to liberal leadership officers and members of Freeland’s leadership campaign about the findings, the statement said.
In X’s post, Freeland says he is “not threatened” by Chinese foreign interference.
“We’ve spent years in the authoritarian regime and know first hand the importance of protecting our freedom,” Freeland said. “Canadian democracy is strong, and I would like to thank the national security agencies for protecting it.”
Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney said in a post on X that she fully supports Freeland and her campaign “in light of this disturbing report.”
“I am totally committed to defending this racial integrity and standing firm against attempts to undermine our democracy,” Carney said.
Taskforce members will continue to monitor the online environment for foreign state-supported information services during their leadership campaign, the statement added.
