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Late last year, Hong Kong authorities announced a bounty for Tay’s arrest, along with five other democracy activists living around the world. According to the task force, there have been posts about that arrest warrant using mock wanted posters in Chinese language pages on several social media sites, including Facebook, WeChat, TikTok, RedNote, and Douyin, which is connected to TikTok.

One of the Facebook posts the task force highlighted warned that if Tay was successful in his election bid it would be a “disaster,” and warned it would make Canada a “fugitive’s paradise.”

The task force believes those posts are being inauthentically promoted, with multiple accounts posting identical content often within minutes or seconds of each other.

Chinese-based social media sites have also suppressed the ability of people to search for information on Tay, skewing results and making it difficult to find any information about him that doesn鈥檛 relate to the bounty.

Laurie-Anne Kempton, head of communications for the federal government, said at a press conference Monday that this is a multi-faceted effort targeting Tay.

鈥淭he transnational repression and its effect on the democratic process is not about a single act, but rather is about the accumulated impact of many acts designed to discredit a candidate, silence criticism and dissent, and manipulate the information that informs voters,鈥� she said.

The bounty on Tay came up earlier in this election when former Liberal candidate Paul Chiang told Chinese language media that people could claim it if they brought Tay to the Chinese consulate.

Chiang apologized for the comments, but initially planned to stay on as a candidate and received support from Liberal leader Mark Carney. Several days after the news came to light and with the possibility of an RCMP investigation about Chiang鈥檚 comments, he resigned.

The task force briefed the Conservative party before making the information public on Monday.听In a statement, Tay said he is not surprised the Chinese government is targeting him and he called on political parties to denounce it.听

“The information revealed today is, unfortunately, not new to me or my volunteers. We have seen these 鈥榳anted posters鈥� and other threats circulating throughout this campaign. They are consistent with the CCP tradecraft, similar to the other threats that have been made against me throughout this campaign,” he said. 鈥淚t is critical that all political parties and leaders take a clear stand against this foreign interference.鈥�

Kempton said the social media posts about the bounty have existed since it was put in place in December, but during the campaign they have ramped up.

鈥淲e’ve been monitoring this for a while, and until this point, the content has actually not generated high levels of engagement,鈥� she said.

The government also underlined Monday that voters should not have any concerns about their votes becoming public, emphasizing that ballots are confidential and not traceable to individual voters. While the social media targeting Tay has not included suggestions the Chinese government could discover who Canadians voted for,听Larisa Galadza, an assistant deputy minister with Global Affairs Canada, said that is always a concern when dealing with cases of transnational repression.听

“We understand how authoritarian regimes perpetrate transnational repression and that their goal is to, to silence criticism and deny people their rights by scaring them,” she said. “This reassurance that the vote is secret, that voters should not be intimidated is part of our mitigation efforts.”

This is second time the task force has flagged concerns about China during the election campaign. On April 14, it flagged an inauthentic campaign about Liberal Leader Mark Carney that included both negative and positive comments. The task force also detected a campaign targeting then Liberal leadership contender Chrystia Freeland during the leadership race.听

In previous elections, the task force made no public pronouncements, including during a similar misinformation campaign targeting then Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu in the 2021 election. Prior to this election, the SITE task force, only made a public announcement if it believed the interference risked Canada’s ability to have “free and fair” election.听

Kempton said the “free and fair” election standard was not breached in this case, but they still want the public to be aware.听The Hogue commission, which investigated foreign interference, found that standard was very high and recommended the government be more transparent about threats, even those at a lower level.听听