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Beijing-linked information campaign boosts Mark Carney on WeChat, says security task force
Apr 9, 2025
We are aware of an information operation targeting the 45th general election on the social media platform WeChat. The information operation was launched by Youli-Youmian (有理儿有面), WeChat's most popular news account. Intelligence reporting links the Youli-Youmian account to the PRC Chinese Communist Party Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. The content of this information operation contains a story about the Prime Minister, Liberal Party of Canada leader and candidate in Nepean, Mark Carney. This content has been amplified 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. The SITE task force assesses that the foreign state-backed information operation was intended to influence Canadian Chinese communities and look to mold perceptions about the candidate. The campaign received high levels of user engagement and views between 85,000 and 130,000 interactions and an estimate of 1 to 3 million views, WeChat developer Tencent reports.
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0:01
during last week's update on protecting the 45th general election from foreign interference we outlined a new candidate
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security program and addressed the threat posed by transnational repression a reminder that the candidate
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security program is in place for those who feel intimidated or threatened the program provides an additional layer of
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security through unarmed private sector security services to candidates more
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information is available at the Democratic Institutions web page
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we will also be sharing an overview of cse's cyber threats to Canada's democratic process report
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the panel of the critical election incident public protocol continues to meet and receive regular briefings from
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the security and intelligence threats to election task force also known as site at this time the panel has not
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found any incidents that have impacted Canada's ability to have a free and fair election
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we are aware of an information operation targeting the 45th general election on the social media platform
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WeChat the information operation was launched by Yoli Yumen WeChat's most
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popular news account intelligence reporting links the Yoli Yomian account to the PRC Chinese
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Communist Party Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission
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the content of this information operation contains story about the prime minister Liberal Party of Canada leader
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and candidate in Napian Mark Carney this content has been amplified
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in a coordinated and inauthentic way this information operation had
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contrasting positive and negative narratives first amplifying Mr car's stance with the United States and then
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targeting his experience and credentials the site task force assesses that the
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foreign statebacked information operation was intended to influence Canadian Chinese communities and look to
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mold perceptions about the candidate the campaign received high
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levels of user engagement and views between 85,000 and 130,000 interactions
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and an estimate of 1 to three million views wechat developer Tencent reports that
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the platform itself has over 1.3 billion monthly active users but has not
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disclosed how many of those users live overseas the activity saw large spikes
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of what is believed to be coordinated inauthentic behavior on March 10th and 25th 2025
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following increasing levels of engagement on the platform the Liberal Party representative was briefed about
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the findings on April 6th the site task force will be discussing this issue with Tencent the
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developer of WeChat later today to raise our concerns as part of our efforts to be
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more transparent with Canadians we have also published a backgrounder which details our findings about this latest
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information operation this backgrounder is included in the news release being issued today
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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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this case is contained to one platform and has not spread further nor is it
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affecting Canadians abilities to make informed decisions about their vote
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we continue to encourage Canadians to verify and question the information they see
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online as outlined in previous site task force briefings the current threat landscape is unique from previous
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election periods in part as threat actors adapt their methods and conceal their foreign interference activities
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for instance myths and disinformation online can be fueled by artificial intelligence through its ability to
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leverage algorithms to amplify messages and content and its ability to further generate fake images and videos such as
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deep fakes this was underscored in a recent government of Canada's statement of
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Canadian democratic principles that calls on all of society to take action to protect the democratic principles of
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integrity transparency authenticity and accountability it is also why the
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government has been engaging with representatives from social media platforms and tech companies for several months to discuss our mutual commitment
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to free fair and secure elections these discussions are ongoing and have been productive
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government of Canada officials are meeting regularly with platforms to share information on emerging issues and
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encourage them to uphold the principles of integrity transparency and authenticity we also engage platforms to
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share information regarding online activities that may threaten democratic process integrity such as foreign
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information manipulation and interference operations suspected bot activity and coordinated inauthentic
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behavior in terms of services and ways to report disinformation content that violates
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these terms should be reported to the platform questions about social media social and digital media platforms
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actions or services should be addressed directly with the individual platforms it is important that we all
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remain vigilant and proactive to help ensure the safety of our collective digital environment and the integrity of
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the information we consume online we cannot and will not take for granted the system that underpins our rights
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freedoms and Canadian values that we hold dear democracy thrives in the light and
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in our collective actions the panel will continue to meet regularly to be briefed by the site task
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force this will be done at least once a week or more often as required
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uh Jim Bronko Canadian Press uh good morning concerning the operation
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against Mr carney that you outlined today could you provide us with a little bit more information there's some in the
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the materials thank you uh but about the the intent and and nature of the um
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information that was amplified online so maybe I'll start and then I'll turn it over uh to Lissa so I don't think we can
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speak to the intent i will say that the PRC should not be trying to shape uh the opinions of Canadians especially during
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an election period uh but it was the RRM uh who was involved in this so Lissa maybe you'd like to add to that sure
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thank you i I agree with Laurianne that we're not going to speak uh to the intent i think at our first tech brief
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we tech brief we we spoke about uh China in general and uh and how we see them
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behaving in in the Canadian ecosystem and and in other elections um in this
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case as we've noted in the news uh release and the backgrounder there were contrasting positive and negative uh
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narratives um I think what is uh important for all of us to take away
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from the information being presented today is that intelligence links this
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account to entities of the people's republic of China and uh and so whether
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that's uh the narratives about Mr carney uh any other um any other uh public
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figure in in Canada uh or anything else it's important for Canadians to
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understand this link that uh that has been covert
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uh concerning the timeline you you indicate that that uh a Liberal representative was briefed I believe yesterday um it was first noticed March
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10th and March 25th and I think there's a suggestion that the the narrative was
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amplified online but sometime after that if you could give us an indication as to why it it would take that long to to
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brief bring this to the attention formally of the Liberal representative um maybe there's a good reason for that
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but perhaps you could explain the the timeline there sure happy to um so these were the two
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spikes of activity that we saw march 10th was outside of the Liberal Party um
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uh leadership campaign uh and so uh site was not uh not active in and providing
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uh advice at that time uh in terms of the spike on March uh 25th uh that's
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when we first noticed it uh and then we monitored the activity uh to be able to
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confidently identify uh the the source and and the connection uh and that was
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brought to the attention of the panel last week and the Liberal Party was briefed shortly thereafter
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um Ryan Tumulty Toronto Star yeah good morning um you said in your
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opening remarks and in the press release that you don't believe that this campaign uh was enough to influence
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Canada's ability to have a free and fair election because it was only on one social media platform and I guess a more
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niche social media platform as it is i'm I'm wondering if you guys have identified a threshold uh for inaccurate
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or inauthentic material spreading on social media is it two platforms is it
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three like what is the threshold you guys have identified where you feel it would uh breach the free and fair
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election standard sure um this is um the core function of the panel of five so
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the protocol that's set up and it's not a simple arithmetic calculation it's not
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number of platforms it'll be a a range of things from its potential impact
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whether it's in a single riding or across the country the number of people likely influenced how convincing is it
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it's really like five six dimensions to it so the threshold is really about
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nuance judgment and that's the judgment that the panel will be making i think
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maybe the other piece I would add to that is um it is difficult for us to understand how many Canadians may have
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seen these narratives because of uh the platform that it is and uh the
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posts Lissa correct me if I'm wrong were posted in simplified Chinese and so they have a large base of monthly active
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users but it's unclear to us how many Canadians uh might have seen the narrative so it was important for us to
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flag it but it's difficult to uh to gauge beyond
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And then just as a followup um WeChat was identified in the campaign targeting liberal leader uh sorry liberal
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candidate um Christopher Freeland and Michael Chong as well i know in the last election it was identified in the
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Foreign Interference Commission as as targeting voters um both Aaron Oul and
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Kenny Chu the local candidate in Richmond uh I'm wondering what your interactions with this company have been
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and also sort of what recommendation you would have to Canadians who may still look at WeChat as a reliable source of
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news and information marissa can I invite you to take that question
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we've engaged with Tencent on a number of occasions and and at various levels and we've done so in uh in collaboration
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uh with our colleagues um they are uh the kind of conversation that we have with the other platforms as well where
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the um where our approach is to point out the activity that we're witnessing
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that we believe contravene their terms of service uh and uh ask them to uh pay
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their turn their attention to it um we do not ask uh the platforms to take a
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specific action other than to pay attention to this material um because
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it's not the government's role to be policing these platforms or telling private companies how to behave but they
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have their own terms of service and if we see something we ask them to to compare uh and that's been the
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discussion with uh with Tencent as well and will continue to be and on whether
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to accept it as a reliable source of information there are so many platforms out there so
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many sources of of information when we see something specific uh in the context of of site uh the purpose of these
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briefings is to bring that to the attention of of Canadians and uh we hope that we all learn from this also what
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the what the sort of more general principles are that we should apply to our consumption of of social media and
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today we're providing a very important piece of information about the number one most popular account on WeChat
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uh I see two questioners in the room uh the Globe and Mail and Parliament today online and 9 minutes on the clock so uh
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I think I think we can make it but we'll start with uh Peter go ahead thanks uh
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Peter Mazer from the Hill Times does the government have any specific plan or
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ability to counter disinformation that's sent to Canadian voters who speak only
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Chinese or primarily Chinese
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oh products yeah so for Canadians who speak only uh
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Chinese we have available to them advice on how to um ensure that they are not
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being subject to miss and disinformation this is been translated into 10 uh
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languages and believe two types of Chinese are part of that product base
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those products are available on the Democratic Institutions website including a toolkit
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i'm just wondering you know you mentioned before these briefings are a big part of the work that you're doing
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to try and fight back against this stuff but if no one in here is publishing in the Chinese language then how does that
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community get these messages that what they're seeing on their screens might be disinformation
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there are other uh ways that we get get out uh the word to um Chinese diaspora
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groups there is for instance the digital citizenship initiative which has been in
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place for about six years there have been over 150 different projects some of them are um kind of um targeted or
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they're they're um projects that are with um minority language groups and
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their purpose is to promote things like digital citizen literacy and critical u
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media literacy as well so that would be a way to get out the word in the community generally in addition there's
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also um different parts of the government it happens to be public safety have good uh connections with
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different diaspora groups and they have those conversations as well
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christopher and our new national post um I just want to come back to um the content i uh my last Mandarin class was
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13 years ago so uh I used Google to uh translate them and uh from the examples
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that are in the backgrounder it appears that the content is mostly um promoting
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Mr carney's strength i think the language that it says is uh United States meets Canada's tough opponent um
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and so uh Miss Gladzo you mentioned something about negative and positive in the background didn't see that but it
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appears to me from what's in here that the content is um I don't know if it's
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promoting Mr carney but it seems very cast him in a positive light is that broadly what this content that you've
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seen that this particular campaign is that what it seemed to be doing overall
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we saw we monitored uh over the period of time specified and we saw positive and negative narratives i think a really
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important um aspect of the work that we do in site and in these briefings is to
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not further amplify uh information that is out there at the interest at the behest of a foreign government um and so
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uh yeah there there were positive and negative
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so then what would be the point of the campaign if they're both undermining him
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and promoting him
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so I mean I think maybe you know disinformation is one is one thing but this kind of coordinated inauthentic
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behavior is just an attempt to pollute the digital environment um and try to
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shape opinions one way or the other um I think and Vanessa will correct me if I'm wrong I think it's fair to say the PRC
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is party agnostic like this isn't a this isn't an an attempt one way or another but it is to kind of sew confusion and
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discord in the digital environment i would I would say also that um our mandate isn't to first understand the
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point of a foreign information manipulation operation uh it's to
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identify it to confirm that it is uh coordinated inauthentic behavior that it
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is statebacked and to uh to ensure that that Canadians are informed that is
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happening is there something you looked at i think people said it all but uh to echo um uh
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the people's republic of China is uh largely party agnostic in terms of its approach and certainly as um the
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information ecosystem is changing then that can account for positive narratives in one instance and negative in the
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other thank you we'll we'll turn to our phone lines to two questioners um Steven Chase
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Globe and Mail hi Steve here can you hear me yes
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okay i just wanted to ask um if you could give us a copy of these articles that were uh provide copies to the media
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of these articles that were circulating so we could uh further analyze them because as Chris said they seem to be
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largely uh promotional uh and positive towards Mr carney so um I'd like to ask
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you as well to explain what you mean by in layman's language amplifying
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narratives in a coordinated and inauthentic way what does that mean in layman's language
19:49
sure um so you can imagine uh how you behave on social media you see something
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you like it you write a comment on it and over time uh over time a story can
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spread if it's popular or if it doesn't it dies um we're all familiar with the
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concept of something going viral something spreading very very fast and uh through digital analysis uh we can
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see what is the mechanism of that speed of spread what is who is doing the
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spreading and so when we talk about coordinated and inauthentic behavior uh
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we see things for instance like the same headline appearing across multiple media
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sources foreign media sources usually uh using the exact same uh headline uh and
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uh and being posted within uh minutes if not seconds of each other um so that's
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not uh that's not a typical organic kind of spread of of information um the other
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thing that we can do is look at who the account owners are who are undertake who
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are spreading who are reposting um and uh and we can tell from digital
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footprint and and mapping uh the networks uh whether these are likely to
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be uh real people or in fact um a mechanism like my colleague Bridget
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spoke about today um bot farms or uh AI
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uh generated uh spread um so that is that's a that's a couple of examples of
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what we would call um coordinated and inauthentic uh behavior
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uh my follow-up question is you keep repeating that phrase about how the PRC is is party agnostic but the the next
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part of that often repeated maxim is that it picks candidates it thinks will promote its vision and it it will
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promote those candidates so in this case uh the information you've given us talks about a responsible and decent Mark
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Carney a tough prime minister from Canada all these things are you saying that when you say tell us that this was
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intended to influence Chinese Canadian communities in Canada and mold perceptions about him that you can't
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determine if they were positive perceptions or negative perceptions you don't have that ability
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Vanessa or Lissa so I think we want to be careful uh to
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emphasize the point of sharing this information with Canadians as Lissa mentioned and in Bridget's remarks the
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important part of information that we're sharing with you today is to be clear with Canadians that the account that has
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made these posts is linked to the People's Republic of China and to the Chinese Communist Party in particular
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and that intelligence has provided that there is a concerted effort behind that
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entity within the Communist Party to spread and manipulate the narrative that Canadians are seeing and so we should
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all keep in mind that a hallmark of democracy is to be able to have such a debate during an election period and it
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is for Canadians to have that debate unfettered by the influence of a foreign state
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i'll squeeze in the last question palac Mangad uh parliament today
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hi I'm hoping you can hear me okay yes yeah um I take your point about this
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kind of being nuanced judgment but you said it's not likely sorry in saying that it's not likely to impact the
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ability for a free and fair election can you just be a little bit more specific in what makes you confident in saying
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that even and you know is there even is there thought to how this could impact the results of the specific riding or is
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that just out of sight Bailey Wick here i think maybe I'd start with um so part
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of it is that it is contained to a very specific uh social media platform um and
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that uh Canadians have the ability to uh get information have their uh get
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information about their vote from a variety of sources so it's not kind of a monolithic
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uh approach and so the panel felt that it was important uh and as did site that
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we come forward and share this information both because of the level of engagement on this one platform but also as Vanessa had said the link of this
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particular account uh to the PRC that being said there's no evidence
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to suggest at the moment that it has any uh impact on how um people may choose to
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cast their vote lissa and and I think even less of an impact now that we are
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shining a light on it and that's that's an important uh important thing to take away from today's briefing
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as a followup are there any other incidents on on sites uh radar involving
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other party leaders and where are those at um and being addressed and what types
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of recourse might they have so a site remains committed to sharing
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information that we believe Canadians need to have in order to defend themselves against uh disinformation um
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that as my colleagues have said is a way that we are equipping Canadians through these briefings but also through the
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products that are available on the Democratic Institutions website to be able to assess for themselves
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information in the ecosystem um uh if we observe other things that uh in a um
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regardless of the party we will come forward uh where we can share that information with Canadians to help them
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confidently cast their votes thank uh Jennis McGregor CBC
25:46
good morning everyone um I want to ask a question about the kind of briefings that your group uh is involved with with
25:52
the particular parties i mean you gave us an example of one that happened I guess it was just yesterday about this
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particular attack that you're reporting today but I'm curious whether this information exchange also concerns uh
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intelligence information that uh may have been collected about particular candidates i'll give you an example last
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week there was a conservative candidate in Atobbico North um that was removed
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and there's information in the public domain that this individual has ties to the BJP um I is this something that
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would have been discussed with the Conservative Party as an exchange of information in the context of election
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safety related briefings when you see who the nominated candidates are that
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are running if your agencies have information about them that is raising a
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national security flag is that something that is discussed then with the political parties during during these
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information exchanges thanks i'll start and then I'll uh turn it over to Vanessa so the decision as to who stands as a
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candidate uh in any general election is the perview of the party entirely vanessa is there anything you'd like to
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add certainly so thank you for the question so as we've mentioned at these briefings before the site task force all
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of the members are very much committed to making sure that we share with all of the parties in a very nonpartisan way
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information that can be relevant to them in terms of the intents and activities of foreign actors with regards to this
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democratic process that being said site is not in the um the the business or
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line of activity of vetting candidates and so as Laurianne said the choices of
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any of the parties to put forward their nominees is entirely within their domain
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um and the briefings that we have had with them are have been related to the threat landscape in general of the
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foreign state actors as well as helping those um parties and candidates to
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protect themselves in terms of potential threats for violent extremist groups uh and that relates to the candidate
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security program that we also spoke about last week thank you okay so not not about um those matters um my other
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question is just more about a a comparison uh between uh what we learned
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subsequently at the inquiry about um the the previous election and
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orchestrated attacks against I believe it was particular conservative writings last time that sort of concerns came out
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eventually uh um after the fact about um the 2021 election uh versus this time
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now if if you had to consider uh how things unfolded in the last election
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versus now um how safe is our vote this time so far
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vanessa do you want to start with that sure i think there's a number of things to keep in mind that are different from
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uh the first the last couple of general elections and now um and one is these briefings so the fact that we're coming
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before you every week to talk to you about the various tactics and techniques that um could be used during the general
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election is a huge part of how we're equipping Canadians to be able to for
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example as Rea just spoke about assess the information ecosystem and be able to
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identify in particular disinformation campaigns um again the role of site has
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significantly evolved since the last two general elections um as you're aware we have been uh stood up for bi-elections
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uh since 2023 a total of 12 bi-elections so far so in each of those instances we
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have had an enhanced monitoring which allows us to be alert to the types of activities that could happen during this
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election and that's why you saw such a um robust discussion in our first tech
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briefing of the threat threat landscape and what we expected to see and why the themes in these briefings have been uh
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over the types of activities in a range of domains that we might be concerned about during this general election maybe
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if I Vanessa if I could build off of that i mean one of the things that we
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has been talked about in in the briefings and this week and in past weeks is that you know adversaries
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tactics change over time i think it's also important to know and to realize that Canada's tactics change over time
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too they change because we learn from our allies and they change from the substantial amount of evaluation that's
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gone on we really benefited from the foreign interference inquiry we benefited from the reviews that have
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occurred after each election of the critical election incident public protocol techniques also improve from
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the site task members so all these things I think together along with new instruments such
30:50
as these weekly tech briefings improved briefings of political parties better
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engagement of the social media companies all contribute to I think um good
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reasons for Canadians to have confidence in their elections
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