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2025 Federal Election

China Election Interference – Parties Received Security Briefing Days Ago as SITE Monitors Threats to Conservative Candidate Joe Tay

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6 minute read

Sam Cooper

SITE says it is concerned about the Hong Kong bounty on Joe Tay and is monitoring the situation, but confirms intervention in the Chiang case is not within its powers

Canada’s election threat monitoring body has confirmed that national party leaders received a classified security briefing late last week, as public concerns mount over threats tied to transnational repression and a widening controversy involving Liberal MP Paul Chiang’s remarks about Conservative candidate Joe Tay.

The revelation came Monday during a public update by the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force. Allen Sutherland, a senior Privy Council Office official and SITE leader, confirmed the briefing referenced today by Prime Minister Mark Carney covered high-level threat assessments and involved security-cleared representatives from each political party. While SITE would not confirm whether Chiang’s remarks were specifically addressed, the timing suggests they may have been a factor.

“I can speak to a portion of it,” Sutherland said in response to a question from The Canadian Press. “Last week, political parties received a briefing — a security briefing — on threats at the classified level. These are the cleared party representatives of each of the parties. So that briefing took place late last week.”

CBC reporter also pressed SITE officials on whether they were concerned by Chiang’s comment suggesting Tay could be delivered to the Chinese Consulate to collect a bounty. “I would say SITE is concerned about the bounty placed by Hong Kong on Mr. Tay,” said Laurie Ann Kempton of SITE. “We are aware of the comments.”

Asked what candidates should do if they face similar threats, Kempton said: “They should contact police of local jurisdiction immediately. They are also able to contact SITE and the RCMP if they have other concerns, and we will look at it from there.”

Joe Tay has stated publicly that he fears for his safety and has contacted the RCMP. Asked if police have reached out to Tay proactively, SITE official Greg O’Hayon said: “I’d have to get back to you specifically on whether the RCMP has reached out to Mr. Tay.” He added: “If candidates feel under threat, either immediate or not, I would encourage them to reach out to their local police as well as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service so that we can have a combined response to real and perceived threats.”

SITE officials confirmed that the bounty placed on Tay — a Canadian citizen and pro-democracy activist wanted by Hong Kong authorities under Beijing’s National Security Law — is being tracked as a live case of transnational repression. Officials described the recirculation of bounty-related content online as a coercive tactic employed by Beijing to chill political participation in diaspora communities.

“Spreading the information about the bounty is precisely how malign foreign states seek to silence, harass and coerce,” one SITE official said.

Tay’s situation has quickly become a flashpoint in the 2025 federal election campaign. The Chiang controversy erupted after reports surfaced late last week, based on Ming Pao reporting, indicating that during a January meeting with Chinese-language journalists, Chiang said of Tay: “If you can take him to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, you can get the million-dollar reward.”

Chiang also told the exclusive gathering of Chinese journalists that Tay’s election to Parliament, while under a Beijing-issued arrest warrant, would cause a “great controversy.”

Chiang has since said his comment was made in jest and issued a social media apology. But Tay rejected the gesture in a press release Monday, calling it “unsolicited” and demanding that Liberal leader Mark Carney remove Chiang as a candidate.

“Threats like these are the tradecraft of the Chinese Communist Party,” Tay said. “They are intended to send a chilling signal to the entire community in order to force compliance to Beijing’s political goals. This situation has left me fearing for my safety.”

SITE also issued a broader warning on Monday: Canada is seeing a rise in both physical and digital transnational repression, including online harassment, smear campaigns, AI-generated deepfakes, and attempts to dox critics of authoritarian regimes.

“In 2023, we informed the public about a targeted online information operation… aimed at silencing critics of the Chinese Communist Party,” said the SITE representative from Global Affairs Canada. “Now, we’ve seen new operations using deepfake content, including sexually explicit images, to further that goal.”

Come back to The Bureau for updates on this rapidly evolving story.

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2025 Federal Election

POLL: Canadians want spending cuts

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By Gage Haubrich

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released Leger polling showing Canadians want the federal government to cut spending and shrink the size and cost of the bureaucracy.

“The poll shows most Canadians want the federal government to cut spending,” said Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie Director. “Canadians know they pay too much tax because the government wastes too much money.”

Between 2019 and 2024, federal government spending increased 26 per cent even after accounting for inflation. Leger asked Canadians what they think should happen to federal government spending in the next five years. Results of the poll show:

  • 43 per cent say reduce spending
  • 20 per cent say increase spending
  • 16 per cent say maintain spending
  • 20 per cent don’t know

The federal government added 108,000 bureaucrats and increased the cost of the bureaucracy 73 per cent since 2016. Leger asked Canadians what they think should happen to the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy. Results of the poll show:

  • 53 per cent say reduce
  • 24 per cent say maintain
  • 4 per cent say increase
  • 19 per cent don’t know

Liberal Leader Mark Carney promised to “balance the operating budget in three years.” Leger asked Canadians if they believed Carney’s promise to balance the budget. Results of the poll show:

  • 58 per cent are skeptical
  • 32 per cent are confident
  • 10 per cent don’t know

“Any politician that wants to fix the budget and cut taxes will need to shrink the size and cost of Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy,” Haubrich said. “The polls show Canadians want to put the federal government on a diet and they won’t trust promises about balancing the budget unless politicians present credible plans.”

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2025 Federal Election

How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

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Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.

Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.

Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.

The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.

Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.

It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.

The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status.  As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.

This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.

Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.

What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.

A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.

Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.

For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.

It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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