Canadian Domestic Intelligence Service Warns Of Chinese Foreign Media Interference

Cana­di­an media report­ed in Decem­ber that the Cana­di­an Secu­ri­ty Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, Canada’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency, was warn­ing that Chi­na’s efforts to dis­tort the news and influ­ence media out­lets in Cana­da “have become nor­mal­ized” and “more sophis­ti­cat­ed, fre­quent, and insid­i­ous.” Accord­ing to a CBC report:

Decem­ber 7, 2021 As Canada’s spy agency warns that Chi­na’s efforts to dis­tort the news and influ­ence media out­lets in Cana­da “have become nor­mal­ized,” crit­ics are renew­ing calls for Ottawa to take a far tougher approach to for­eign media inter­fer­ence.  The warn­ing is con­tained in brief­ing doc­u­ments draft­ed for Cana­di­an Secu­ri­ty Intel­li­gence Ser­vice Direc­tor David Vigneault in prepa­ra­tion for a meet­ing he had with Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau ear­li­er this year.  That meet­ing focused on the rise of for­eign inter­fer­ence in Cana­da — some­thing CSIS says has become “more sophis­ti­cat­ed, fre­quent, and insid­i­ous.” One way for­eign states — includ­ing the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na (PRC) — try to exert pres­sure on oth­er coun­tries is through media out­lets, say the doc­u­ments, obtained through an access to infor­ma­tion request.  “In par­tic­u­lar, PRC media influ­ence activ­i­ties in Cana­da have become nor­mal­ized,” it reads.  “Chi­nese-lan­guage media out­lets oper­at­ing in Cana­da and mem­bers of the Chi­nese-Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty are pri­ma­ry tar­gets of PRC-direct­ed for­eign influ­enced activities.”

Read the rest here.

Ear­li­er this year, we report­ed about a Cana­di­an study alleg­ing the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) runs a sophis­ti­cat­ed net­work that inserts Bei­jing-friend­ly nar­ra­tives into var­i­ous media out­lets and out­lin­ing the var­i­ous tac­tics the CCP uses to influ­ence Cana­di­an pol­i­tics. Accord­ing to the study:

The tac­tics deployed by the CCP and its affil­i­ates fall under sev­en broad cat­e­gories cov­ered in this report: (1) polit­i­cal influ­ence, (2) elite cap­ture, (3) sur­veil­lance and intim­i­da­tion, (4) infor­ma­tion and nar­ra­tive dis­cur­sion, (5) aca­d­e­m­ic influ­ence and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, (6) nation­al secu­ri­ty, and (7) the Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment (UFWD).

Read the full study here.

In Octo­ber, we report­ed that the CCP tar­get­ed Canada’s fall 2021 fed­er­al elec­tions. In 2019, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Crit­i­cal Elec­tion Inci­dent Pub­lic Pro­to­col to mon­i­tor for­eign chal­lenges to the integri­ty of the 2019 and 2021 fed­er­al elections.