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.

Canadian intelligence reported in 2021 that Beijing planned to interfere in Canada’s next federal election with disinformation suggesting the Conservatives “will follow the path of … Donald Trump”—a narrative now echoed in a clandestine dirty tricks operation exposed inside Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign.

A 2021 CSIS intelligence bulletin marked “Secret,” warned that Chinese consular officials planned to influence future Canadian elections by portraying Conservative politicians as “Trump-like” and hostile to immigrants. The document has been redacted by The Bureau.

The warning comes from a classified CSIS bulletin dated December 20, 2021 and marked Secret, distributed to Canadian departments including Global Affairs Canada, the Privy Council Office, the Communications Security Establishment, and Five Eyes intelligence partners. The report was based on information from Chinese consular officials in Canada.

According to the CSIS assessment, a consulate official in mid-November 2021 discussed how Chinese influence in federal ridings with large Chinese-Canadian populations had proven effective, and laid out a forward-looking strategy to shape future electoral outcomes. The official reportedly stated:

“Ethnic Chinese voters should be told that if the CPC wins a federal election, the CPC will follow the path of former United States President Donald Trump and ban Chinese students from certain universities or educational programs. This will threaten the future of the voters’ children.”

The consulate official also suggested that during Canada’s next federal election, the message should be circulated that the Conservative Party of Canada “is critical of the PRC and opposed to individuals from mainland China.” The remarks were made shortly after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a minority government in the fall of 2021.

CSIS concluded that PRC officials believed Chinese immigrants were relatively easy to influence toward Beijing’s geopolitical goals and could be mobilized to oppose Canada’s Conservative Party. The bulletin describes a broader context in which Chinese state actors sought to paint Canadian Conservatives as hostile to immigrants, aligned with Trump-style nationalism.

The Bureau’s analysis suggests that if Chinese state-linked actors intended to repeat this narrative in the 2025 federal campaign, they would find their narrative echoed by the Liberal Party’s own war room tactics.

Prime Minister Mark Carney this morning acknowledged wrongdoing inside his campaign, following revelations that Liberal operatives had planted fake political buttons at a major Conservative conference in an effort to smear Pierre Poilievre’s campaign as a Trump-style threat to Canada.

The Liberal Party has attempted to downplay the scandal, calling it an instance of overzealous political operatives getting “carried away.” But the parallels to Beijing’s 2021 disinformation strategy—as outlined in the CSIS bulletin—raise broader concerns over domestic political campaigns echoing or amplifying hostile state narratives.

The disinformation scandal was first exposed by CBC News on Sunday, April 13. According to the report, two Liberal staffers attended the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference last week. Observers have noted ticket prices for the event cost hundreds of dollars, suggesting the Liberal infiltration was well planned and resourced. They scattered buttons reading “Stop the Steal” along with buttons favouring Alberta secession movements and other political messages that would suggest Pierre Poilievre’s campaign is attracting MAGA-like extremists in Canada that may be open to Trump’s earlier jibes of turning Canada into a “51st State.”

The aim was to create the appearance of Trumpian division and election denialism within Poilievre’s camp.

Asked about the scandal at a press conference today, Prime Minister Carney said: “The responsible people have been reassigned within the campaign.”

But the half-apology has failed to quell public concern.

The concerns extend well beyond party politics, in The Bureau’s analysis. 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.

According to SITE, both posts were rapidly boosted by a coordinated cluster of 30 smaller WeChat accounts, garnering between 85,000 and 130,000 interactions and as many as three million views. SITE attributed the surge to a broader PRC information operation.

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.”

The official did not say whether SITE would investigate the Liberal Party’s role in the disinformation campaign.

In the same session, a National Post reporter asked SITE whether they were minimizing the implications of PRC-linked social media accounts appearing to promote Mark Carney.

“There was a lot of talk about the information that was put out,” the reporter said. “But there was also a fair amount of interpretation by many online that viewed the posts in question on WeChat as China endorsing Mark Carney or promoting the Liberals… trying to rig the election, or at the very least, push Chinese Canadians to vote for Mr. Carney.”

SITE responded by emphasizing its broader framing: “In our briefing, as you know, we cited both positive and negative posts. What was and remains important for us is that the Youli-Youmian account is linked to a foreign state, and the information it shared may be used to manipulate. That was what we felt was important to get across.”