Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force on Friday said it has detected “coordinated and malicious activity” from accounts linked to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), directed against former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, a leading candidate from the Liberal Party of Canada to replace outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian foreign ministry, published a statement from SITE that said the “information operation targeting Chrystia Freeland” was traced to an anonymous blog on WeChat that “has been previously linked by experts at the China Digital Times to the People’s Republic of China.”
The task force “identified over 30 WeChat news accounts taking part in the campaign,” collectively harvesting “very high levels of engagement and views.”
According to the report, this WeChat network generated “over 140,000 interactions between January 29 and February 3, 2025,” with up to 3 million users worldwide seeing the material disseminated by the campaign.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa had no immediate comment on the report, but Freeland certainly did.
“I will not be intimidated by Chinese foreign interference. Having spent years confronting authoritarian regimes, I know firsthand the importance of defending our freedoms,” she wrote on X.
“Canada’s democracy is strong. My thanks to our national security agencies for protecting it,” she added.
Freeland is one of the top contenders among Liberals to replace Trudeau, whose downfall accelerated sharply in mid-December when he forced Freeland out of his cabinet. Previously one of Trudeau’s most loyal supporters – and his deputy prime minister – Freeland drew Trudeau’s ire by criticizing his irresponsible spending of government funds in a desperate bid to regain some popularity with Canadian voters.
Trudeau’s vote-buying plan failed and Freeland’s fiery letter of resignation in response to Trudeau attempting to force a humiliating demotion upon her became one of the final nails in his political coffin. Trudeau effectively resigned in early January, although he used a measure called “prorogation” to keep Parliament out of session until March, giving himself a few last months of power as a “caretaker” prime minister.
The Liberal Party has been scrambling to come up with a plausible candidate to succeed Trudeau, in the face of a sizable polling lead by Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre and a schism in the Liberal alliance with the New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada’s other major left-wing party.
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The race for prime minister appears to have tightened somewhat after Trudeau resigned and President Donald Trump threatened Canada with tariffs. Poilievre still leads by double digits, but NDP no longer seems a threat to overtake the Liberals as the leading left-wing party.
Freeland is one of five candidates who appear to have enough money and support for a serious shot at the top Liberal spot. The others are former central bank governor Mark Carney, Montreal businessman Frank Baylis, former member of parliament (MP) Ruby Dhalla, and current MP Karina Gould.
Dhalla is the candidate running furthest to the right, with a platform of deporting illegal immigrants, cracking down on human traffickers, and fighting drug abuse that seems closer to Poilievre’s agenda than her fellow Liberals. She also makes much of the fact that she is not a “career politician” and had little to do with the disastrous Trudeau administration.
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“I’ve been talking to real people, learning about all of their issues. Because I haven’t been in the Ottawa bubble, I have actually in this campaign been talking about issues that Canadians are facing on a day-to-day basis,” she said on Monday.
Freeland, on the other hand, is running on a musty left-wing platform of fighting inflation by putting price caps on groceries. Some Canadian pundits predict her stale proposals and lingering association with Trudeau will blow her out of the race, while others think she could be favored by stalwart Liberal voters who came to despise Trudeau and will empathize with her as the final victim of his bumbling leadership.
Getting targeted by an alleged Chinese influence operation might be just the thing Freeland needs to convince voters she is the candidate Canada’s adversaries fear the most. Carney quickly jumped in to express his support for Freeland after the “disturbing” SITE report.
“I am fully committed to defending the integrity of this race and stand firm against any attempts to undermine our democracy,” Carney wrote on social media platform X.
“My deepest gratitude to the national security and intelligence officials who lead this important work to sustain trust in our democratic process,” he added.
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