Security officials report 'repression' operation targeting Conservative candidate Joe Tay

Canadian security officials say they have spotted a foreign repression operation targeting a federal Conservative candidate opposed to Chinese government policies.

The operation features a mock "wanted" poster and disparaging headlines and comments about Joe Tay, the Conservative candidate for the suburban Toronto riding of Don Valley North.

Tay is known for his opposition to Chinese government policies.

Last last year, Hong Kong police issued arrest warrants for six activists based overseas — including Tay — with bounties set at about $185,000 for information leading to their arrests.

Federal officials told a media briefing Monday the operation is taking place on social media platforms where Chinese-speaking users in Canada are active, including Facebook, WeChat, TikTok, RedNote and Douyin, a sister app of TikTok for the Chinese market.

The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force says it saw two significant trends concerning Tay during the electoral writ period, according to Laurie-Anne Kempton, assistant secretary to the cabinet for communications.

The first trend involves what Kempton called "inauthentic and co-ordinated" amplification of content related to the Hong Kong bounty and an arrest warrant against Tay, as well as material about his competence to hold political office.

"We've seen that multiple accounts or platforms published or interacted with content at similar times and dates, sometimes within minutes or even seconds of each other," Kempton said.

This sort of activity increases the volume of online material, making it more likely that users of the platforms are exposed to the amplified content, she said.

Confirming the source of an online operation can often take significant time and analysis because malign actors go to great lengths to hide their tracks, Kempton said.

Intelligence reporting indicates that one of the Facebook accounts involved in the activity concerning Tay is historically connected to Chinese government authorities and pro-Beijing entities in Hong Kong, she told the briefing.

"This includes links to the central government liaison office in Hong Kong," she added.

The second trend was deliberate suppression of search terms, or keyword filtering, censoring Tay's name in simplified and traditional Chinese on certain China-based social media platforms used by Canadians.

"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.

Officials said a panel of senior bureaucrats that monitors elections has concluded that this online activity is not affecting Canada's ability to hold a free and fair vote, including in Don Valley North.

They said, however, that it's important for voters to be aware of this type of activity.

Kempton said officials briefed a security-cleared representative of the Conservative Party about the repression operation on April 6 and April 16.

Officials also have spoken to social media platforms "to inform them of our findings and flag where this operation may violate their terms of service," she added.