In total, SITE and its partners spotted over 30 WeChat news accounts that were part of the campaign against Freeland
OTTAWA — The federal elections monitoring task force says the Chinese government is linked to a “coordinated and malicious” disparagement campaign against Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland on China’s largest social media platform.
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“The launch of this information operation was traced to WeChat’s most popular news account – an anonymous blog that has been previously linked by experts at the China Digital Times to the People’s Republic of China,” reads the statement from SITE.
The SITE task force was set up in 2019 to monitor for hostile foreign interference during federal elections and by-elections. Its composed of members from CSIS, the RCMP, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC).
SITE and its partners said Friday they spotted over 30 WeChat news accounts that were part of the campaign against Freeland. The task force briefed both Liberal Party leadership and members of Freeland’s campaign on Friday before making its findings public.
The statement did not say what the disparaging content was about, nor did it identify the WeChat accounts in question. But it said that the malicious content was viewed by millions of people.
“The campaign received very high levels of engagement and views, with WeChat news articles disparaging Ms. Freeland netting over 140,000 interactions between January 29 and February 3, 2025. RRM Canada estimates that 2 to 3 million WeChat users saw the campaign globally,” reads the statement.
GAC did not immediately respond to a request for more information, such as which accounts were spreading the “disparaging” content and if the government had acted to limit its spread.
“Having spent years confronting authoritarian regimes, I know firsthand the importance of defending our freedoms. Canada’s democracy is strong. My thanks to our national security agencies for protecting it,” she wrote.
In her final report released last week, Foreign Interference Inquiry Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue said disinformation was an “existential threat” against Canada.
“The members of SITE will continue to monitor the digital information environment for foreign information manipulation, and to shine a light on hostile foreign state-backed information operations during the Liberal Party of Canada leadership campaign,” SITE said in the statement.
The comments targeted posts by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and dozens of other Liberal and Conservative MPs. The accounts, which were either new or hijacked, usually accused the MP of various criminal or ethical violations.
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