Brett McKay/Local Journalism Initiative
Source: Investigative Journalism Foundation

A Canadian crime news Facebook page has spent thousands to grow its audience and boost its content during the election. While the ads themselves avoid partisan political activity, they are linked to prominent right-wing political influence group Canada Proud and a company that has done work for the federal Conservatives, an IJF investigation has found.

The Canadian Crime Watch Facebook page was created in 2023, but its activity surged after the election was called on March 23. In multiple posts a day, the page shares stories from various Canadian news sites primarily focused on violent crimes such as murder, stabbings and sexual assault, and criminals reoffending after being released.

Meta’s ad library shows the page has spent $46,471 on ads about social issues, elections, or politics since it was created, and 91 per cent, or $42,259, of that advertising budget was used on at least 53 ads between March 23 and April 21 this year.

The IJF identified the phone number used to place ads for Canadian Crime Watch as belonging to Noah Alter, senior digital strategist of Mobilize Media Group and director of Ontario Proud, an advocacy group linked to Canada Proud. Mobilize Media is a strategic communications company founded by former federal Conservative staffer Jeff Ballingall, who also founded Ontario Proud and Canada Proud.

The content from Canadian Crime Watch has also been frequently shared by Canada Proud and incorporated into its social media campaign to “defeat the Trudeau-Carney Liberals.”

Third parties that seek to influence elections and promote particular parties or candidates through advertising must register with Elections Canada. Neither Canadian Crime Watch nor Canada Proud is registered.

Mobilize Media’s strategic use of advertisements and content from the accounts it manages appears to be a “tactical approach to deploying financial resources to get the maximum benefit of a media campaign without putting yourself on the radar of Elections Canada or running afoul of elections law,” said Andrea Lawlor, associate professor of political science at McGill University.

Mobilize Media has been hired by the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) on a number of occasions, including working on the successful leadership campaigns of Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre. A spokesperson for the CPC said it is not currently working with Mobilize Media or Ballingall.

While Alter refused to be interviewed, Ballingall said Canadian Crime Watch is a “Mobilize Media initiative” that is trying to gain followers, and that Canada Proud and Canadian Crime Watch are “two separate entities. They’re not related to each other.”

Ballingall also denied that Canadian Crime Watch’s recent activity is related to the federal election.

“It has nothing to do with the election. It has everything to do with the fact that people are paying attention to the news and crime is exploding in this country, and we think there’s a market for people who are interested in crime news,” Ballingall said.

Mobilize Media is responsible for the Canada Proud Facebook page, according to the group’s profile.

In the weeks leading up to the writ drop, Canada Proud spent over $274,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads attacking Mark Carney, but stopped advertising once the election was called and strict rules around third-party advertising kicked in.

Though it is no longer running political ads, Ballingall said Canada Proud is “more active than ever.” A recent analysis from the New York Times found the Facebook page for Canada Proud has averaged almost 200,000 engagements a day during the election campaign period, often outperforming the pages for Canada’s top political party leaders.

Content from the Canadian Crime Watch page, which itself doesn’t include explicit political or partisan commentary, has featured prominently on Canada Proud’s feed during the election campaign, helping to reinforce its message that there is an out-of-control crime wave in Canada and promoting Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as the candidate best suited to stop it. Between April 1 and April 22, Canada Proud shared on average two posts a day from the crime page.

“Man out on parole for break and enters wanted for 8 new break and enters,” reads one of four stories shared by Canada Proud on April 10, reposted with the comment “Canada is a country where criminals are released time and again so that they can commit the exact same crimes.”

Later that day, Canada Proud posted that “Pierre has a REAL PLAN to deal with the Liberal crime disaster sweeping our country.”

On April 14, Canada Proud shared posts from Canadian Crime Watch about two men released on bail being arrested in Mississauga with loaded firearms and another suspect “out on release for firearms offences” arrested in Brampton and charged with two counts of attempted murder.

Posts from Canada Proud the same day state the “Liberals purposefully passed laws which allowed extremely violent criminals out of jail,” and “Mark Carney says that letting mass murderers out of jail is the ‘right thing to do.’”

An April 15 post from Canadian Crime Watch shows footage of a man allegedly lighting a Vancouver police officer on fire, and was shared by Canada Proud with the comment “Canada is a country where prolific offenders freely set police officers on fire.”

An hour later, Canada Proud posted that “Pierre stands for Canadians. Carney stands for criminals.”

Declining number of traditional third parties in elections

Election law is oriented toward ensuring spending restrictions are in place that contribute to a “fair, more egalitarian election environment,” Lawlor said. “Now, there’s been ample examples in the past of people, what we might call creatively working around some of these laws. And so, they are not breaking the law, but they might be working contrary to what we might consider the spirit of the law to be.”

Political advocacy groups are increasingly organizing in ways that create space for them to be politically involved outside the legal limitations and disclosure requirements placed on registered third parties during elections, and this change in behaviour has been most noticeable among those “primarily using digital strategy to get their message out,” Lawlor said.

In the 2019 federal election, 154 third parties registered with Elections Canada. There are only 99 third parties registered for the 2025 election so far, and less than half have submitted interim financial returns which disclose where their funding comes from and how it is being spent.

“I don’t think this is because people have lost interest,” she said, but “they can quite easily run an effective digital campaign which will reinforce the message that they want their voters to hear without getting into these regulatory entanglements.”

Robert Neubauer, assistant professor of communications at the University of Winnipeg, has researched the media strategies of organizations in Canada’s conservative movement ecosystem, and said Ballingall’s groups “have a history of peppering Facebook” with what he calls “front groups” or “satellite groups.”

A 2022 investigation by Canada’s National Observer found ads related to municipal politics from at least seven supposedly grassroots Facebook pages were linked to Canada Proud and Mobilize Media.

“My impression is that they use those sorts of groups in order to do under the table election campaigning in ways that don’t build scrutiny,” Neubauer said.

Neubauer said he thinks Canada Proud is campaigning on crime because it is a major issue “that the CPC sort of owns and is running on,” and one that Canada Proud itself has spent a lot of time promoting.

Poilievre’s promise to “stop the crime” is a key pillar of his platform, and one that resonates most with conservative voters. A Leger poll released on April 22 found 15 per cent of people who intend to vote for the Conservatives and 13 per cent of People’s Party of Canada voters named crime and public safety as the top issue influencing vote choice, while only three per cent of Liberal voters and one per cent of NDP voters said crime was a top issue influencing their vote choice.