Privy Council Office staff said they considered 2021 WeChat misinformation different because it wasn’t a character attack and was in Mandarin, not English
The country’s top civil servant asked Facebook to remove a “false and inflammatory” story about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election campaign, but bureaucrats did not make a similar request of WeChat, which published inflammatory misinformation about Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and MP Kenny Chiu in the 2021 election, the public inquiry into foreign interference heard Friday.
Erin O'Toole speaks to reporters after appearing as a witness at the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa on April 3, 2024.“The content might have gained significant attention were it amplified, and therefore risked threatening the integrity of the election. At the direction of then Clerk of the Privy Council Ian Shugart, Mr. Sutherland asked Facebook to remove the article,” the summary said. “Facebook complied.
“In addition, the Buffalo Chronicle article presented false and inflammatory information directly targeting the Prime Minister’s character, whereas the WeChat postings discussed substantive policy issues, albeit also in an inflammatory manner,” the summary stated. The inquiry heard testimony this week that the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force, known as SITE and composed of senior civil servants, did not share intelligence with Mr. O’Toole’s party outlining Beijing-directed efforts to spread disinformation against the Conservatives over the party’s hawkish campaign platform against China.
A document tabled with the inquiry showed that, in the week before the 2021 election, a unit with the Department of Global Affairs assigned to detect foreign state-sponsored disinformation observed “what may be a Chinese Communist Party information operation that aims to discourage Canadians of Chinese heritage from voting for the Conservative Party of Canada.” There is no indication Mr. O’Toole was informed of this.
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