7 Feb: Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland has been the target of a foreign interference campaign traced to a WeChat account linked to the Chinese government, according to Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE). The task force described the activity as “coordinated and malicious.”
Freeland responded to the revelations in a post on X, thanking Canada’s national security agencies for protecting the country’s democracy.
“I will not be intimidated by Chinese foreign interference,” she stated. “Having spent years confronting authoritarian regimes, I know firsthand the importance of defending our freedoms.”
SITE, which was established in 2019 to monitor electoral threats, revealed that the campaign originated from WeChat’s most popular news account—an anonymous blog previously linked by China Digital Times experts to the Chinese government. The operation led to significant engagement, with WeChat articles critical of Freeland receiving over 140,000 interactions between January 29 and February 3, 2025.
An estimated two to three million WeChat users were exposed to the campaign, which involved more than 30 news accounts on the platform. WeChat, a widely used Chinese social media and messaging app, has over a billion monthly active users.
Freeland, a Member of Parliament for University-Rosedale and a former cabinet minister, was briefed on the findings along with Liberal Party leadership. She is currently campaigning to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The SITE task force includes experts from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSE), Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
