Elections Canada Says Spring Election Saw Higher ‘Volume’ of Disinformation Than Previous Years

Elections Canada CEO Stéphane Perrault says there was a higher volume of disinformation and misinformation in the 2025 federal election compared to previous years.

Perrault made the comments on Sept. 15 while presenting Elections Canada’s post-election report on the 45th general election.

“What we saw in this election was just more volume across more channels,” Perrault said in Ottawa when asked by reporters about instances of misinformation and disinformation during the April 28, 2025, election.

Perrault said he did not have information about new trends compared to previous elections, but that it was “widespread across many different channels.” Perrault also said that he witnessed “familiar themes” of misinformation playing out during the election, such as that pencils were being given to voters as a way to supposedly later erase their votes, or that non-citizens were being allowed to vote. 

“False claims, particularly those related to ballot security, the use of pencils to mark ballots, and voter registration, received widespread attention,” says the Elections Canada’s report.

“These narratives contributed to growing public skepticism about the integrity of the election and the reliability of the voting process.”

Elections Canada noted it intensified its public communications to pre-empt these narratives to ensure Canadians received accurate information.

The report added that while many “false or misleading narratives” arose during the last election period, neither the agency nor the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) detected any evidence of foreign interference, criminal activity, cyber security incident or coordinated disinformation campaign impacting the administration of the event.

SITE officials had warned prior to the election that Joe Tay, the Conservative candidate for the Toronto riding of Don Valley North, was being targeted by a transnational repression operation linked to Beijing. SITE said Tay, an outspoken activist for democracy in Hong Kong, was targeted via a campaign on Chinese social media. There was no evidence his loss to the Liberal candidate by nearly 5,000 votes was due to the repression campaign.

The Foreign Interference Commission noted that in 2019, there were “irregularities” in the Liberal nomination contest in the Don Valley North riding. Intelligence documents said international students were bused to the riding to take part in the nomination vote, given fake documents by a known People’s Republic of China (PRC) proxy agent, and coerced into supporting then-Liberal candidate Han Dong’s nomination.

The commission also noted that during the 2021 election, then-Conservative Leader Erin O‘Toole and Tory MP Kenny Chiu, who were vocal in criticizing Beijing’s aggressions, were targeted by inaccurate reports circulated by Chinese language media outlets with ties to Beijing.

The Foreign Interference Commission, which detailed the interference when it released its report in January, said it found no evidence that the overall election results in 2019 or 2021 were impacted by foreign interference. 

The latest Elections Canada report said no incidents of foreign interference were found to have impacted the administration of the 2025 federal election. Additionally, the report said there were 44 security incidents reported during the election, which was a decrease of more than 50 percent compared to the 44th election, when 102 incidents were reported.

During the press conference, Perrault was also asked about the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, where the Liberals won by a single vote following a judicial recount. Elections Canada had revealed issues with mail-in ballots in the riding, including votes that were received late or not returned because of errors. 

Perrault said Elections Canada will be holding a “general” review of its  training control mechanisms and processes in response.

“We’ve seen some other errors in this election … So we really have to look at the controls in place to make sure that they are sufficient, and where improvements are possible to make,” he said.

Elections Canada also estimated that the 2025 federal election cost $570 million, compared with the $574.2 million it cost to hold the 2021 election. Perrault said this was because Elections Canada had a “much longer readiness period” for the recent election.