OTTAWA — The Chinese government is suspected of repressing the campaign of Toronto-area Conservative candidate Joe Tay, pushing a mock “wanted” poster of him online and boosting disparaging stories about the Hong Kong democracy activist while suppressing searches of his name on social media.
On Monday, Canada’s federal elections monitoring task force offered a sobering warning: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) appeared to be behind a transnational repression operation to undermine Tay, a Conservative candidate and vocal critic of the Chinese regime.
“(Transnational repression) is a particularly egregious form of foreign interference because it is used to suppress free speech and democratic rights,” Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force spokesperson Laurie-Anne Kempton said on Monday.
SITE members told reporters that efforts online to intimidate Tay peaked around December, when he was one of six people targeted by a HK$1 million bounty by Hong Kong police for information leading to his arrest as a critic of the PRC.
They said posts — including mock “wanted” posters — began appearing on various China-based social media platforms promoting the bounty against Tay and disparaging the democracy and civil rights activist.
“Since the bounty and arrest warrant were placed on Mr. Tay, members of the SITE task force have noticed a persistent information campaign on social media platforms where Chinese speaking users in Canada are very active,” Kempton said.
But the threatening online activity against Tay increased with the launch of the federal election, particularly in late March when he was announced as the Conservative candidate for Don Valley North, Kempton said.
Though the transnational repression operation bears all the hallmarks of traditional PRC-backed foreign interference tactics, task force members said they were still working on confirming who was behind it.
Kempton said confirming ties between a state and suspicious online activity can take “significant time and analysis”.
“The material that we’re seeing now is mostly linked to the bounty that was placed on Mr. Tay in December of 2024. We know who issued that bounty and what’s behind it,” added SITE member and Global Affairs Canada (GAC) executive Larisa Galadza in a thinly veiled reference to the PRC.
Kempton also told reporters the task force did not believe China’s efforts prevented voters in the riding or across the country from having a free and fair election.
“These activities are happening on a small scale. They have not reached the tipping point of threatening the integrity of our election, either at the national or the riding level,” Kempton said. “The threat actors have not succeeded.”
Tay was also the centre of attention early in the campaign after comments by Toronto Liberal candidate Paul Chiang in which he joked to an audience that they could earn bounty money if they turned in Tay to the Chinese consulate resurfaced.
Chiang eventually dropped out as a candidate
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Kempton told reporters SITE detected repressive activity against Tay on the biggest Chinese-based social media platforms such as WeChat, TikTok, RedNote and Douyin (TikTok’s sister app in China) as well as on Facebook.
To date, SITE members said intelligence only definitively tied the PRC to a Facebook account called “Today Review” but investigations into other accounts and platforms are ongoing.
The task force said the first part of the repression campaign was “inauthentic and coordinated” amplification of information relating to the bounty and arrest warrant against Tay.
For example, posts featuring a mock wanted poster of Tay appeared “en masse” online around the time the Conservative Party announced that Tay would be its candidate in Don Valley North.
Task force members, which includes GAC, CSIS, CSE, the RCMP and the Privy Council Office, said they also discovered that Joe Tay’s name was being suppressed in searches on Chinese-based platforms like WeChat, RedNote and Douyin.
They said that when Canadian users searched Joe Tay’s Chinese name on certain platforms, the only results that would appear related to the bounty or arrest warrant. The Canadian government has already said Hong Kong’s bounties were a form of transnational repression against Tay and other dissidents.
On many of those platforms, the task force also found that positive comments or posts about Tay on those platforms were hidden from users, while disparaging or negative content was promoted.
In a short statement, Tay said his campaign had been aware of the mock “wanted” posters and other online threats against him for a while now.
“It is critical that all political parties and leaders take a clear stand against this foreign interference,” he wrote.
SITE officials noted Monday that the suspicious anti-Tay content had not generated high levels of engagement (such as comments, shares or “likes”), but was spreading to an increasing number of platforms.
“The transnational repression and its effect on the democratic process is not about a single act, but rather about the accumulated impact of many acts designed to discredit a candidate, silence criticism and dissent and manipulate the information that informs voters,” Kempton said.
“There is a profound psychological impact on victims who experience (transnational repression). They might experience fear, anxiety and stress due to continuous surveillance and harassment,” she added.
National Post
cnardi@postmedia.com
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