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[Intelligence adviser Nathalie] Drouin said officials did see some attempts to interfere during the last election, such as an attempt by China to affect a Conservative candidate’s campaign, attempts by Russia to engage in foreign interference activities online and attempts to use the names of politicians to promote cryptocurrency and financial activities.
However, Drouin said the attempts officials detected did not reach a level that would have affected election results.
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However, Conservative MP Michael Cooper challenged Drouin and Morrison on that conclusion — pointing to the experience of Toronto-area candidate Joe Tay. Tay, a supporter of democracy in Hong Kong, has been targeted by Hong Kong authorities, who have put a bounty on his head.
Cooper said Tay and his supporters received threats during the campaign and Tay was advised not to campaign door-to-door for his own safety. Cooper said there was a drop in voter turnout in the riding and some of Tay’s supporters were summoned to the Chinese consulate.
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While much of the focus on potential foreign interference in Canadian elections has centred on countries like China and Russia, Liberal MP Elisabeth Brière asked whether attempts to interfere in Canada’s next election could come from the United States.
Drouin said officials will be watching for potential interference, regardless of where it comes from.
“Canada has expectations regarding all countries, including the United States, that there is … no damage to our domestic affairs including our elections,” she said.
“We will monitor the situation in an agnostic way — regardless of which country tries to engage in foreign interference.”
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Our last one did have AI interference.
If you’re just starting to plan for this you’re already 5 years too late.
On top of that, X/Twitter is pure foreign interference. Facebook, TikTok, Google News are also foreign interference. All are proprietary algorithms, with no usable audit trail, owned by foreign companies, and tightly connected to the White House.
TikTok would be the exception, but it’s regulated by the Chinese government in ways we cannot see or inspect.
How is Tiktok an exception? It’s the same as all the others, and China is quite famous for interference as the article also suggests.
Exception in being Chinese and not American (I.e.connected to the White House). That’s it. That’s all.
Yeah, but it’s good that Canada’s strategy is country agnostic, regardless of who tries to engage in foreign interference. It’s bad here and there I would say.
Canadians need to understand that it is advisable to modify the online services they use in order to avoid, as much as possible, using, for example, American social networks or listening platforms.
We should not rely on only one source of resources; we must diversify the sources of the services we use, giving priority to Canadian services first.
Job creation idea: farms of propaganda specialists flooding the standard social media algorithms with messaging to help people think more critically, move off of techbro propaganda streams, and counter the bullshit that will be coming through. Make part of elections Canada, and track for possible recruits to CSE and CSIS, as well as for public affairs officers.