A federal department monitoring foreign interference has detected an “information operation” targeting Michael Chong, Wellington-Halton Hills MP, with China’s involvement as “highly probable.”
Global Affairs Canada (GAC) revealed in a report on Wednesday while it was monitoring the “digital information ecosystem” for the June 19 byelections, its rapid response mechanism discovered this operation against Chong on the social media platform WeChat in May 2023.
While GAC stated nothing observed represented a threat to the safety of Chong and his family, a coordinated network of WeChat’s news accounts shared and a large volume of false or misleading narratives about Chong including his identity, claims about his background, political stances and family’s heritage.
An analysis of the data concluded it was “highly probable” China was involved but wasn’t able to pinpoint with absolute certainty due to the nature of social media networks. One third of this network was found to be known state-media outlets and accounts and two-thirds were found to be anonymous accounts that had not previously published news stories about Canadian politics previously.
In an emailed statement, Chong said this recent plot is another example of “the communist government in Beijing attempting to interfere in our democracy by targeting elected officials.” The GAC report said Chong was briefed on this incident on Wednesday.
Chong, the Conservative’s shadow minister for foreign affairs, has been a vocal critic of the People’s Republic of China, particularly the treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Chong was among Canadian politicians sanctioned by China after voting to declare the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims as a genocide.
This is not the first time Chong has been targeted. In June, the acting commissioner of the RCMP told a federal committee it was investigating a plot of alleged foreign interference and intimidation of the Wellington-Halton Hills MP by China after it was publicly revealed by a May Globe and Mail article.
This led to Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei being expelled from Canada.
Chong said this also shows a failure of the Trudeau government to take action and proves the need for an open and independent public inquiry into foreign interference.
“They have failed to introduce a foreign influence registry for those being paid to act on behalf of hostile foreign governments. They have failed to give our intelligence and law enforcement agencies the resources and tools they need to do their jobs,” Chong said.
