Officials from a task force monitoring threats to the federal election campaign are asking Canadians to be on the lookout for disinformation this week, as they are expecting increased online political activity because of the coming leaders’ debates.

Senior officials with the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force shared the warning during one of their regular briefings with reporters on Monday. They said they would continue to monitor for any attempts at foreign interference after the debates and throughout the campaign until the April 28 vote.

The Privy Council Office’s Laurie-Anne Kempton said that the task force expects there will be significant online activity during the debates, with most of it legitimate political discussion.

“In 2021, the leaders’ debates took place on September 8th and 9th. Those days saw exceptionally concentrated discussion of Canadian politics in both languages, particularly on Twitter, which is now known as X,” she said.

The French debate is taking place this Wednesday, while the English one is taking place on Thursday. Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Co-Leader Jonathan Pedneault will be on stage.

Increased political content and attention to politics during the debates make it an opportunity for malign actors to manipulate information and spread disinformation, Ms. Kempton said. Sometimes they spread disinformation to support a specific agenda, she said, but in other cases the point is just to sow division with hot-button topics.

There are several ways to do this, including deep fakes, using bots to inauthentically amplify content, and paying social influencers to spread the disinformation, she added.

Larisa Galadza, a director-general at Global Affairs Canada who leads Canada’s Rapid Response Mechanism, said malicious actors often focus on a debate that is already happening to polarize people. In Canada, that could be immigration issues for example, she said.

“A foreign actor would see the opportunity to polarize by throwing extreme opinions into the mix on comment pages and then potentially using the technology that they have to amplify that rapidly inauthentically,” she said.

Canadian Centre for Cyber Security associate head Bridget Walshe said that during this election campaign, organizations such as Elections Canada and political parties are more susceptible to cyber threats from malicious actors. Specifically, she said Canadian politicians and political parties are likely to be targeted by hackers.

Over all, she said that the People’s Republic of China, Russia and Iran remain the greatest strategic cyber threats to Canada during this campaign.

Last week, the SITE Task Force officials said they had found an information operation linked to the People’s Republic of China that was trying to shape what Chinese Canadians thought about Mr. Carney. It took place on Chinese-language social-media platform WeChat and through Youli-Youmian, WeChat’s most popular news account.

Ms. Galadza said they had a good follow-up conversation with Tencent, the parent company of WeChat. She said they flagged the content of concern and asked them to evaluate it against their own terms of service. The company undertook to do that and asked for additional information, she said, adding officials are sharing as much of that information as they can.

As well, the Privy Council Office’s Allen Sutherland said there are candidates who are using the private security services provided through the Candidate Security Program introduced for this election campaign. While he couldn’t give specific details, he said applications are coming in and public servants are making sure the requests are processed quickly.