Canada Warns of China-Backed Social Media Campaign Targeting PM Carney Before Election

On 08 April 2025, Bloomberg report­ed that Cana­di­an secu­ri­ty offi­cials have iden­ti­fied a Chi­na-linked influ­ence oper­a­tion push­ing sto­ries about Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney ahead of the coun­try’s April 28 elec­tion. The arti­cle begins:

Cana­di­an author­i­ties said a Chi­na-backed net­work pushed sto­ries about Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney in a bid to influ­ence the elec­torate, decid­ing to go pub­lic so vot­ers are aware of the manip­u­la­tion efforts ahead of an April 28 elec­tion. There were “large spikes of coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior” in March launched by an anony­mous blog on social media app WeChat called Youli-Youmi­an, Canada’s Privy Coun­cil Office said, cit­ing its Secu­ri­ty and Intel­li­gence Threats to Elec­tions task­force. The gov­ern­ment said Youli-Youmi­an is the most pop­u­lar news account on WeChat and it’s believed to be linked to the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, accord­ing to the task­force, which is com­prised of experts from secu­ri­ty agen­cies, the for­eign min­istry and police…

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Key Points

• Cana­di­an secu­ri­ty offi­cials iden­ti­fied “coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior” on WeChat from accounts believed linked to Chi­na’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty tar­get­ing Prime Min­is­ter Carney.
• The Youli-Youmi­an account, WeChat’s most pop­u­lar news source, along with 30 small­er accounts, shared both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive con­tent about Carney.
• Chi­na’s embassy denied involve­ment, call­ing the accu­sa­tions “absurd and unjus­ti­fied” while claim­ing no inter­est in inter­fer­ing with Cana­di­an affairs.
• Cana­di­an intel­li­gence offi­cials warned that Chi­na, Rus­sia, and Iran will like­ly use AI-enabled tools to attempt elec­tion inter­fer­ence in 2025.

Russian Influence in Canada: Disinformation Campaigns, Electoral Interference, and Strategic Countermeasures

Recent GIOR reports reveal Russia’s per­sis­tent efforts to under­mine Cana­di­an democ­ra­cy through dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, elec­tion inter­fer­ence, and the exploita­tion of soci­etal divi­sions. A report show­ing that half of Cana­di­ans have encoun­tered pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives online high­lights how claims like “Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism is neo-Nazi” res­onate par­tic­u­lar­ly with right-lean­ing indi­vid­u­als. Anoth­er analy­sis reveal­ing that 25% of Twit­ter dis­course about Ukraine in Cana­da ampli­fied pro-Russ­ian mes­sag­ing found that much of this con­tent orig­i­nates from U.S.-based influ­encers. Addi­tion­al­ly, a report on for­eign inter­fer­ence threats to Canada’s elec­tions high­light­ed how Russ­ian actors use AI-enabled tools to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion and dis­rupt demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es. These tac­tics are part of broad­er Krem­lin strate­gies to polar­ize soci­eties and weak­en West­ern uni­ty. In response, Cana­da has imple­ment­ed coun­ter­mea­sures such as sanc­tions on Russ­ian enti­ties, pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paigns debunk­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion, and col­lab­o­ra­tion with inter­na­tion­al part­ners to mon­i­tor and expose malign activities.

Ref­er­ences:

1. Canada’s efforts to com­bat Russ­ian disinformation

2. Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion fogs up view of Ukraine war for Canadians

3. An exis­ten­tial threat: Dis­in­for­ma­tion ‘sin­gle biggest risk’ to Cana­di­an democracy

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