As Canada’s election unfolds, fresh questions emerge over whether foreign interference has reached Parliament’s inner chambers.

A Canadian Parliamentarian assessed by national security officials to be part of a Toronto-based Chinese consulate election interference network was the subject of a high-profile foreign interference investigation into an alleged breach of Canada’s Senate, The Bureau has confirmed through multiple intelligence sources.

Sources said the investigation examined allegations that the Parliamentarian enabled a close associate—described as a female Chinese national—to bypass Senate security protocols.

A source familiar with the Senate breach allegation said the probe was triggered by a complaint from a sitting Canadian senator, who believed they had observed a troubling pattern of behavior involving the Parliamentarian and their Chinese companion. The concern, the source said, centered on the alleged bypassing of Senate security screening, unauthorized entry into the parliamentary precinct, and access to secure Government of Canada computer systems.

While The Bureau could not independently confirm whether the allegations were ultimately substantiated, the details align closely with broader risks outlined in NSICOP’s 2024 findings on foreign interference, which stated that CSIS’s investigations were valid, and that China—and other states, including India—had established deeply concerning relationships with Canadian lawmakers.

NSICOP warned that Parliamentarians across all parties are potential targets for interference by foreign states. The committee found that such operations may be overt or covert, and that members of both the House of Commons and the Senate are considered “high-value” targets. Foreign states, the report stated, “use traditional tradecraft to build relationships that can be used to influence, coerce or exploit.”

NSICOP concluded that during the period under review, Beijing “developed clandestine networks surrounding candidates and elected officials to gain undisclosed influence and leverage over nomination processes, elections, parliamentary business and government decision-making.”

Records indicate that the Parliamentarian in question has maintained longstanding ties to several diaspora organizations affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party—including the Jiangsu Commerce Council of Canada, a business group based in Markham linked to Beijing’s United Front Work Department, and now tied to a controversial meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney during his leadership campaign in January.

Specifically on Chinese interference, NSICOP’s explosive report stated: “The United Front Work Department… has established community organizations to facilitate influence operations against specific members of Parliament and infiltrated existing community associations to reorient them toward supporting CCP policies and narratives.”

In an interview with The Bureau, a sitting senator—who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter—was asked whether they believed NSICOP’s findings were valid and whether Chinese state actors had influenced the Senate.

“Without a doubt. Without a doubt,” the senator said. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Some speeches in the Senate of Canada—one would not be surprised if they had been written directly in the offices of the United Front in Beijing. Many of the senators, if you see the positions they articulate, the way they articulate and the way they vote, speaks volumes about who they stand with. But the one thing about being a public office holder—at some point in time, you’ve got to stand on your feet.”

Those observations are echoed by findings in the NSICOP report, which states: “Foreign states developed clandestine networks surrounding candidates and elected officials to gain undisclosed influence.”

The report also found that “some Parliamentarians are either semi-witting or witting participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in Canadian politics… including providing privileged information to foreign intelligence officers.”

However, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, in a contrary conclusion issued through her federal inquiry, assessed that “no evidence” had been presented of intentional wrongdoing by Parliamentarians implicated in CSIS foreign interference investigations. Instead, she concluded that some officials may have made “bad decisions.”

Still, specifics of the investigation into the Parliamentarian strongly resemble the broader findings of NSICOP—particularly if the allegation of providing inappropriate access to Canada’s Senate facilities to a Chinese national is substantiated.

In interviews conducted between 2022 and 2025, The Bureau’s sources—who requested anonymity due to fears of professional retribution—said they believe Canada’s national security agencies were inhibited from pursuing broader investigations into Parliamentarians and politicians across all levels of government. They described how CSIS agents’ efforts to advance foreign interference cases were at times delayed or obstructed by senior managers reluctant to scrutinize powerful political figures.

More broadly, the sources asserted that CSIS remains structurally constrained from effectively investigating senior officials and Parliamentarians. As a result, they warned, investigations into those broadly referenced in the 2024 NSICOP Special Report on Foreign Interference have not—and likely could not—produce meaningful deterrence against ongoing threats from China and other hostile foreign states.

The Bureau’s review of open-source records shows that the Parliamentarian at the center of the Senate allegations has, from the 2019 CSIS investigation to the present, maintained significant ties to multiple Canadian organizations linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department.

These include the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations, the Jiangsu Commerce Council of Canada, and a third British Columbia–based entity, which has documented connections to both the United Front and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference—an entity the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has identified as Beijing’s central united front body.

The matter has gained urgency in the context of Canada’s ongoing federal election, in which Mark Carney’s party has come under scrutiny following The Globe and Mail’s revelation of his campaign’s January 2025 meeting with JCCC leadership—a meeting Carney’s team later denied. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has also faced criticism over his 2022 leadership race, which, according to documents and interviews reviewed by The Bureau, was allegedly targeted by both Chinese foreign interference networks and individuals aligned with the Indian government.

As previously reported by The Bureau, during the pandemic, several Liberal Party officials were involved in a PPE shipment initiative coordinated with the JCCC and authorities tied to the Chinese Communist Party. Official CCP correspondence praised the JCCC’s donations to China, and the group’s response acknowledged its operations were “organized under the guidance” of the United Front Work Department and other Party-aligned bodies. One co-signer of that letter was a senior Liberal organizer who had also served as JCCC president.

Sam Cooper

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.”

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