Canadian officials monitoring the federal election for foreign interference said Monday they have detected a Chinese-backed operation targeting Liberal Leader Mark Carney on the social media platform WeChat.
The “information operation” was launched by Youli-Youmian, WeChat’s most popular news account, which has been linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s central political and legal affairs commission, officials from the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force said.
According to the assessment unveiled Monday, the operation was intended to influence Chinese-Canadian communities and “mould perceptions” about Carney through articles that were amplified and spread by other WeChat accounts “in a coordinated and inauthentic way.”
“This information operation had contrasting positive and negative narratives, first amplifying Mr. Carney’s stance with the United States and then targeting his experience and credentials,” Laurie-Anne Kempton, assistant secretary to the cabinet for communications at the Privy Council Office, told reporters in Ottawa.
However, Kempton said that “at this time, the panel has determined that this is not affecting Canada’s ability to have a free and fair election.”
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She explained that the WeChat campaign is not preventing Canadians from being able to make up their own minds about their vote.
Officials notified the Liberal campaign about the Chinese operation on Sunday, “following increasing levels of engagement on the platform” two days after the election was called on March 23, the task force said.
The task force also noticed large spikes of activity on March 10, the day after Carney won the Liberal leadership race.
Articles spread through the operation received between 85,000 and 130,000 interactions and an estimated one million to three million views.
By comparison, posts from Chinese state media outlets like the People’s Daily on WeChat receive about 30,000 interactions on average, Canadian officials said.
The Youli-Youmian account was also behind information campaigns targeting Conservative candidate and outspoken China critic Michael Chong when he was a member of Parliament, as well as Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister and deputy prime minister, when she was running for the Liberal leadership against Carney.
The SITE task force said it will discuss the issue of the Youli-Youmian account with WeChat’s Beijing-based developer Tencent on Monday “to raise our concerns.”
SITE officials have assessed that Chinese state-affiliated actors will continue to target Chinese communities in Canada, “pushing narratives favourable to the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) interests on social media platforms,” Bridget Walshe, associate head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, told the Ottawa briefing.
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