Canada said that it has detected a disinformation campaign likely tied to China that has targeted dozens of its politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the media reported.

The “spamouflage” campaign used waves of online posts to discredit Canadian MPs, the BBC quoted the Foreign Ministry in Ottawa

It added that the campaign was carried out to silence criticism of Beijing.

China has previously denied any allegations of interference in Canadian affairs.

Global Affairs Canada said that its Rapid Response Mechanism, which was set up to monitor foreign state-sponsored disinformation efforts, detected in August a “spamouflage” campaign that is connected to Beijing, the BBC reported.

It said the campaign, which accelerated over the first weekend of September, featured a bot network that “left thousands of comments” in Canada’s two official languages — English and French — on the social media accounts of several Canadian politicians.

The comments claimed that a critic of the Chinese Communist Party in Canada had accused the various politicians of criminal and ethical breaches.