Inside Buttongate: How the Liberal Swamp Tried to Smear the Conservative Movement — and Got Exposed

Two staffers bragged about their op in an Ottawa bar. No one got fired. Liberal party denies involvement.

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s not sanitize this. Let’s not call it a “prank” or a “gag gone too far.” This wasn’t some intern-run-amok moment of political comedy.

This was a coordinated smear campaign. And it tells you everything you need to know about the people running the Liberal Party of Canada under Mark Carney.

Here’s what actually happened — not the spin, not the statement, not the sugarcoating.

On Friday night, in Ottawa — the beating heart of the Canadian political swamp — Two Liberal Party staffers — highly-paid operatives, not summer interns fetching lattes — snuck into a conservative political conference, the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference. What did they do? Did they show up to learn something? Ask questions? Challenge policy?

No. They planted buttons. Buttons. Little propaganda trinkets designed to mock Pierre Poilievre and his supporters — and to equate everyday conservatives with American-style insurrectionists.

Why? Because that’s all the Liberal brain trust can come up with in 2025. That’s their campaign strategy: petty sabotage with novelty pins and hope the press catches wind.

This wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t accidental. They distributed these buttons in places they knew attendees would find them. It was brazen political sabotage. And then — here’s the kicker — they went to a bar, D’Arcy McGee’s, just a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill, and bragged about it.

This wasn’t behind closed doors. It wasn’t whispered in secret. It was out loud, at a public bar, with other Liberal staffers — including war room personnel — present. One of the staffers involved even identified himself as part of the opposition research team. He said it, plainly, within earshot of a journalist.

He knew he was talking to the press. He didn’t care. Because this is the kind of culture that now exists inside the Liberal Party — smug, unaccountable, totally convinced the rules don’t apply to them.

And what happened when he realized CBC was going to report it?

He backtracked. He lied. He denied it. Because that’s the second half of the Liberal playbook: if exposed, deny everything. Gaslight the public. Blame the other side. And hope the media plays along.

But — to CBC’s credit — they didn’t this time. For once, they did their job.

So what did the Liberal Party do?

Statement From Bryan Passifiume @BryanPassifiume

Let’s not waste time pretending this statement is anything other than what it is: a prewritten excuse for premeditated political sabotage — dressed up in hollow slogans about “positive campaigning.”

“This is the most important election in a generation…”

Yes, and your response to that historic moment is to sneak into your opponent’s conference and scatter cheap smear buttons like you’re running a middle school prank war. They invoke the economy as if that justifies juvenile political sabotage. What does placing fake “Stop the Steal” buttons at a conservative event do to lower grocery prices or stop carbon taxes from hollowing out rural communities?

Answer: nothing.

“It’s been reported that Liberal campaigners had created buttons poking fun… which regrettably got carried away.”

Hold it right there.

Let’s not pretend this was spontaneous. These buttons didn’t magically appear in the hands of two bored staffers looking for something to do. They had to be designed, produced, and delivered. That takes time. That takes planning. That takes sign-off from someone higher up. This wasn’t some joke that “got carried away” — it was a deliberate, coordinated, premeditated attack.

This is not what “regrettably got carried away” looks like. This is what an organized political dirty trick looks like.

“While it is worth noting that many materials being shown online have nothing to do with members of our team…”

Nothing to do with members of our team… Did they really just run with that. Beacuse this didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in Ottawa, the swampiest part of Canada, where everyone knows everyone. The press, the staffers, the strategists, the spin doctors — they all eat at the same bars. They all go to the same parties. They all protect each other when it counts.

So when the CBC says, “a Liberal staffer identified himself,” let’s be real: they already knew who he was. That’s how it works in Ottawa. If you’re in the bubble, you’re protected. Unless — like now — it becomes politically impossible to ignore.

To the CBC’s credit, they did report it. And for that, they deserve a rare tip of the hat. But let’s not pretend this was some anonymous tip they had to dig for. This scandal practically unfolded over cocktails in front of their own reporters. This wasn’t Woodward and Bernstein. This was a Liberal staffer too arrogant to realize he was caught.

And still, after all that, the Liberal Party thinks you’re dumb enough to buy their story.

That you’ll believe this was all just a “prank.”
That no one at the top knew.
That the campaign of Mark Carney — the man selling himself as the adult in the room — is shocked, just shocked, that his team would stoop to this.

This was premeditated. This was planned. And the only reason it’s “regrettable” now is because they got caught.

So I’ll ask the question again: Do you think we can do better than this?

Because the answer is yes. And come April 28, Canadians might finally show the Liberal Party what accountability actually looks like.

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Related Topics:#DanKnight 2025FederalElection Buttongate CarneyCampaignSmearsConservatives LiberalStaffers"Prank"OppositionNewsNetwork

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AI-Driven Election Interference from China, Russia, and Iran Expected, Canadian Security Officials Warn

Published on April 15, 2025

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Sam Cooper

Canada’s election monitoring agency is warning that foreign powers, led by the People’s Republic of China, are expected to target Canadian politicians and political parties in the coming weeks using increasingly convincing AI-generated cyberattacks—part of a broad set of malign strategies that could be impacting the 2025 federal election.

The warning came Monday from the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force, whose officials detailed how foreign state actors, including China, Russia, and Iran, are likely to use so-called “hack-and-leak” operations, generative AI, and social engineering to undermine confidence in Canada’s democratic process.

“Canadian politicians and political parties are likely to be targeted by threat actors attempting to hack into their systems, steal information, and leak that information,” said an official from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, a branch of the Communications Security Establishment. “We assess that AI is making social engineering attacks more personalized, pervasive, and harder to detect.”

Officials cited a 2024 U.S. Department of Justice indictment that charged Iranian-linked cyber actors with stealing and leaking campaign material belonging to U.S. political figures, including to rival campaigns. The case, SITE said, was emblematic of an evolving threat model now being deployed globally.

“Increasingly, nation states are incorporating AI into their cyber operations,” SITE warned. “Generative AI tools enable cyber threat actors to create realistic audio and video content impersonating trusted individuals or deepfakes.”

These tools, SITE added, are being used to craft emails that mimic natural human writing, using convincing grammar and tone to fool even seasoned professionals—including campaign staff, journalists, and elected officials.

SITE said that the cyber programs of China, Russia, and Iran represent the greatest strategic cyber threats to Canadian democracy during the current election. Among them, the PRC was flagged as the most persistent in targeting Canadian political figures, public officials, and institutions.

“The PRC regularly targets Canadian government networks and public officials to acquire information that will advance its strategic economic and diplomatic interests,” an official said. “This information is likely also used to support the PRC’s malign influence and interference activities against Canada’s democratic processes.”

SITE linked these activities to broader campaigns of transnational repression. Chinese cyber actors have been publicly tied to operations targeting Uyghur activists in Canada, as well as journalists and dissidents from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The tactics include spyware, phishing campaigns, and digital tracking.

“PRC actors very likely facilitate transnational repression by monitoring and harassing these groups online,” an official added, noting that Beijing has labeled Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, and pro-democracy advocates among its so-called ‘five poisons.’

Russia and pro-Russian non-state actors were described as the most aggressive actors globally over the past two years in targeting elections, using cyberattacks and information warfare to influence outcomes and undermine faith in democratic institutions.

SITE officials emphasized that the task force is actively monitoring signals intelligence, cyber intrusion attempts, and online manipulation in real-time — and will issue public alerts if they identify specific incidents linked to foreign actors.

But the challenge, they said, is that these operations increasingly blend foreign state capabilities with domestic narratives and influencers, making detection and attribution more difficult.

“The environment is rapidly evolving,” the official concluded. “We are asking everyone — from parties to voters — to be vigilant in the face of increasingly deceptive and technologically sophisticated foreign interference.”

Two weeks ago, Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force identified a sophisticated PRC information campaign targeting Chinese-language social media in Canada. On March 10 and March 25, the WeChat account Youli-Youmian, linked to Chinese Communist Party propaganda efforts, shared widely amplified posts portraying Mark Carney in a highly favorable light.

One post, titled “The US encounters a ‘tough guy’ Prime Minister,” framed Carney as standing up to Donald Trump’s tariff threats.

At the SITE briefing Monday, The Bureau questioned whether the task force would investigate the Carney campaign’s “ButtonGate” scandal as potential domestic election interference—especially given the operation echoed a PRC disinformation playbook from 2021 that falsely depicted the Conservatives as Trump-style extremists. The question also raised whether SITE had the capacity to examine any crossover between this Liberal narrative and a broader foreign campaign.

A SITE spokesperson replied cautiously: “National security agencies take any attempt to undermine our democracy really seriously… Not all disinformation is foreign-backed… but SITE is committed to informing Canadians when emerging issues can be linked to foreign state actors.”

Alongside its public briefing Monday, the SITE Task Force released a visual guide warning Canadians about how disinformation spreads during elections.

The schematic emphasizes vigilance, encouraging Canadians to scrutinize domain names, design inconsistencies, and suspicious endorsements. It also urges users to verify sources, use fact-checking tools, and avoid sharing unverified content.

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