China targeted Trudeau, dozens of lawmakers in ‘spamouflage’ campaign: Canada

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) – Beijing mounted a campaign targeting Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre and dozens of lawmakers to try to curb criticism of the communist regime, Global Affairs Canada said on Monday.

Labeled “spamoflauge,” the Chinese government used a bot network to leave thousands of comments on the social media accounts of Canadian politicians in August and September.

“Spamoflauge” is a tactic that uses networks of new or hijacked social media accounts to post and amplify propaganda messages across multiple platforms, Global Affairs said in a statement. The Chinese were caught by the government’s Rapid Response Mechanism that monitors disinformation endeavors by foreign governments.

The campaign also used “deepfake videos”, the statement said. Canada is a bilingual country and the disinformation comments were in both English and French.

Global Affairs said the same bot techniques were used to spread misinformation about a secret U.S. “weather weapon” to cause the Hawaiian wildfires and spread misinformation about the Japanese release of treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Global Affairs said the Chinese had two goals behind the disinformation campaign.

“First, it likely seeks to discredit and denigrate the targeted MPs through seemingly organic posts, alleging impropriety, by posting waves of social media posts and videos that call into question the political and ethical standards of the MPs (Members of Parliament), using a popular Chinese-speaking figure in Canada,“ said the report.

“Second, it likely seeks to silence criticism of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) by getting MPs to distance themselves from the critic and discouraging wider online communities from engaging with them.“

Monday’s statement did not mention what action the Canadian government planned in response to the "Spamouflage" campaign.