Conservatives believe 13 ridings were targeted by foreign interference in 2021 election

A Conservative source tells Global News the party has identified 13 ridings they believe were targeted by 'coordinated and sophisticated' foreign interference campaigns.

The Conservative Party has identified 13 federal ridings where they suspect their candidates were targeted by foreign influence campaigns in the recent federal election, Global News has learned.

The party was briefed by Canada’s two main intelligence agencies about potential foreign interventions against their candidates during the election, two party sources told Global News.

There is no smoking gun. But a senior party source and independent disinformation researchers suspect the Conservatives’ stance on China’s Communist regime made them a target.

“It certainly looks like there was some kind of orchestrated campaign by some entity that was probably not a (Canadian) political party,” said the source.

Global News is protecting the source’s identity to allow them to speak frankly about the party’s internal investigation.

“We’ve identified as many as 13 seats where something happened in. Most of them we were competitive in, but not all of them.… There’s suspicion of potential mail-in ballot fraud, we’ve heard cases of potential foreign government-paid campaign workers who were getting brown envelopes of cash to do stuff for other campaigns, we’ve heard of illegal advertising.”

The source said the party was also blasting out messaging on WeChat, a Chinese-language social media platform, and found that its content was quickly removed.

The party is not blaming its loss in the Sept. 20 election on foreign interference, the source said. Some of the 13 ridings identified by its officials could only be charitably described as long shots – such as Mississauga Centre, where Liberal cabinet minister Omar Alghabra won with 54 per cent of the vote.