Carney Says He Has ‘No Idea’ Why Beijing’s Information Operation Praised Him

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at a press conference at the Port of Montreal in Montreal, on March 28, 2025. Photo by ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP via Getty Images

Liberal Leader Mark Carney said he doesn’t know why an information operation linked to Beijing by security authorities would have sought to cast him in a positive light.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Carney said when taking questions from reporters on the matter during a campaign event in British Columbia on April 8. “I have absolutely no idea and I think I'll leave it at that.”

The previous day the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force provided an update on foreign interference issues and said it detected an online information operation spreading narratives about Carney on Chinese social media platform WeChat.

The election security body said it detected “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” promoting content from a blog called Youli-Youmian on WeChat. SITE officials said intelligence has linked the blog to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. This organ is in charge of overseeing the Chinese security apparatus.

“The SITE Task Force assesses that the foreign state-backed information operation was intended to influence Canadian-Chinese communities and look to mould perceptions about the candidate [Carney],” said Laurie-Anne Kempton, assistant secretary to the cabinet for communications with the Privy Council Office.

SITE officials said the campaign on Carney had amplified his stance towards the United States and targeted his experience and credentials.

“Because of a series of modern reforms to the traditional Bank of England, the British media called him a ‘rock star economist,’” one of the Youli-Youmian article says in reference to Carney heading the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020.

With the content on Carney published by Youli-Youmian appearing mostly positive, SITE officials were asked by reporters to clarify their observations.

“We monitored over the period of time specified and we saw positive and negative narratives,” said Larisa Galadza, associate assistant deputy minister of the International Security and Political Affairs Branch at Global Affairs Canada.

SITE officials said the same WeChat blog was behind the 2023 attacks on Conservative MP Michael Chong, who has been critical of Beijing’s rights abuses and has been targeted by Chinese intelligence, and on former Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal leadership contender Chrystia Freeland during the leadership race earlier this year.

Asked to comment on the Chinese information operation, Carney said he had taken steps as prime minister to review measures to protect the integrity of the election and counter foreign interference, without referring to China. He said SITE’s move to provide weekly public briefings had been approved by him.

“I felt it important that there was that transparency, and that transparency will continue,” he said. “I think It’s been a welcome development for Canadians, but also a warning to foreign actors that we are on top of these things.”

Chong, who is the Conservatives’ foreign affairs critic, said that the latest revelations from SITE show that Beijing is “engaging in a sophisticated campaign to interfere in Canada’s election with the aim of re-electing Mark Carney and the Liberals for a fourth term.”

“They know that for a decade the Liberals have turned a blind eye to Beijing’s interference in Canada’s democracy,” Chong said.

The Conservatives have also criticized Carney for his past business interactions with Chinese entities in late 2024, including meeting with Beijing’s mayor and pledging to expand Brookfield Asset Management’s business in the city when he was its board chair. Carney was also board chair of the investment firm when it secured a US$276 million loan from the state-owned Bank of China.

In response to this criticism, Carney has said he is “absolutely not” beholden to China. “I’m beholden to absolutely no one except to the Canadian people,” he said on March 26.

He also said Canada must diversify trade in Asia but only with partners who share Canada’s values, which he said doesn’t include China.

Previous Elections

On the Chinese information operation, Carney relayed the stance of the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol during his press conference. The protocol did not find the Chinese information operation has affected the ability to hold a free and fair election.

The protocol, also called the “Panel of Five,” is composed of top bureaucrats who are briefed by SITE and decide whether or not to warn the public about an incident during the election period. The panel never issued warnings during previous elections, even though it was aware of information on foreign interference events.

The panel did not intervene in the case of Chinese meddling in the 2019 Liberal nomination contest for candidate Han Dong in Don Valley North. The case fell outside the panel’s mandate, Nathalie Drouin told the Foreign Interference Commission in April 2024, but had been considered nonetheless since it could involve the “credibility of a process.” Drouin was deputy minister of justice at the time and now serves as the prime minister’s national security adviser.

Drouin said the threshold had not been met to issue a warning, and that the panel believed security authorities providing a briefing to the Liberal Party would mitigate the risks. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nonetheless approved the candidacy of Han Dong, who went on to be a two-term MP. Trudeau testified to the commission he believed the threshold had not been met to interfere in a democratic process. Dong later resigned from the party amid media reports about his contact with the Chinese consulate. He has denied any wrongdoing and launched legal action regarding the reporting.

In the case of a disinformation campaign on WeChat targeting then-Tory candidate in the 2021 election Kenny Chiu, who has been critical of China’s human rights violations, the panel also decided to stand back and not intervene. Its members told the Foreign Interference Commission it is difficult to attribute the activity to a foreign actor and believed Chiu’s public statements on the matter had “cleansed the information ecosystem,” according to the commission.

“I am not at all convinced by the idea of a self-cleansing media ecosystem,” Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue wrote in her final report about this event. “By the time that disinformation fades away, it may often be too late.”