Conservatives deny claim they are behind bot posts after Poilievre rally

The Conservatives say they have no connection to a rash of conspicuously similar social-media posts that flooded the X platform following a Pierre Poilievre event in northern Ontario last week.

The Conservatives say they have no connection to a rash of conspicuously similar social-media posts that flooded the X platform following a Pierre Poilievre event in northern Ontario last week.

The Conservative leader held a rally at a conference centre in Kirkland Lake on July 31, to what appears in a video to be a packed room of several hundred people.

Three days later the platform formerly known as Twitter was awash in hundreds of posts from individuals claiming they "just got back" from the rally and were "buzzing from the energy."

The posts came from accounts with less than five followers, many of which had joined the platform just this month. Very few listed a current location in Canada, and many had already been disabled by Tuesday morning.

NDP MP Charlie Angus, whose Timmins-James Bay riding includes the town of Kirkland Lake, says the deluge raises a question about whether the Conservatives hired an offshore bot farm to 'create a false impression of momentum" for Poilievre in the riding.

Sarah Fischer, the director of communications for the Conservatives, accused the NDP of "spreading baseless conspiracy theories."

"The CPC does not pay for bots and has no idea who is behind these accounts," Fischer said in a written statement. "We are seeking the support of actual Canadians, as witnessed by large in-person turnouts at our events."