Since early 2025—following former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he would step down as leader of the Liberal Party—former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has become a major target of disinformation. Much of this disinformation focuses on his past involvement with the World Economic Forum, accusing him of being part of a so-called “shady global elite” working to advance a “Green Genocide Agenda.”
Among the most aggressive examples of this disinformation are a series of fabricated images and stories attempting to link Mr. Carney to disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Two photographs have recently surfaced of Mr. Carney and his wife at a UK music festival alongside Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell (now jailed). However, these authentic images appear to be coincidental; there is no evidence of any relationship between Mr. Carney and either Epstein or Maxwell. The photos deployed as part of this campaign appear to be fakes.
One of these fake images, circulated widely on social media, shows Mr. Carney sitting with Ghislaine Maxwell and actor Tom Hanks on a beach (below). The original version of this image displayed a watermark indicating it was created using Elon Musk’s AI platform, GROK. In subsequent versions, individuals covered this watermark with a different icon, presumably to obscure evidence that it is a fabricated image. This and other artificially produced visuals—intended to support false claims about Mr. Carney’s alleged connections to Epstein—have been thoroughly debunked by fact-checking groups. Notably, these fake images have also been shared in French-language posts.
These fabricated materials are being used to bolster false narratives about Mr. Carney’s connections to Epstein and have spawned new conspiracy theories surrounding him. At an election rally Kitchener, Ontario, a heckler referenced the disinformation by asking, “How many kids did you molest with Jeffrey Epstein?” A video of this incident has been widely circulated, with some using it to lend further credibility to the false narrative. Carney, who was speaking in French, responded by saying “there’s diversity, then there’s diversity.”
We’ve got the first heckler of the LPC campaign.
A guy yelled at Carney, “How many kids did you molest with Jeffery Epstein?”
The crowd boo’d him, staff got him out of the room and Carney quipped “there’s diversity, then there’s diversity” #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/flUjXMli4Y
— Mackenzie Gray (@Gray_Mackenzie) March 26, 2025
A second video—an edited version of the same rally footage—has been shared by a U.S.-based “illiberal populist” influencer. The video falsely claims that Mr. Carney’s French-language response constitutes a “satanic chant,” and further alleges that rally participants were collectively engaging in “satanic chants.” Similar baseless accusations of “Satanism” have been made in the United States against senior Democratic officials, including John Podesta—Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager—feeding into the broader QAnon conspiracy theory alleging that members of a “global elite” kidnap children and drink their blood.
These false narratives appear to be metastasizing within far-right and far-left illiberal social media networks. On March 21, a video was posted to the Toronto-based platform Rumble by an account called “The People’s Voice,” which has over 100,000 followers. This video repeats the same false and defamatory claims made by the Quebec rally heckler and has been viewed nearly 100,000 times.
“The People’s Voice” was formerly known as “Punch News” and “Your News Wire,” which was identified in 2017 as one of the largest sources of misinformation on Facebook. While it’s based in Los Angeles, the outlet has also been identified as amplifying Kremlin aligned narratives. The platform recently published an article that amplified the false claim that Mr. Carney was chanting a “Satanic mantra” at the Kitchener, Ontario rally.
The involvement of a U.S.-based platform in producing and amplifying disinformation about a candidate in the Canadian federal election indicates a likely foreign effort to interfere in Canada’s electoral process.
