OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party ran a series of fundraising ads targeting American and U.K. audiences on Facebook despite it being illegal to accept donations from foreign citizens.

The party used its official Facebook account, as well as Trudeau’s, to solicit donations from the U.S. and U.K. for a week in March — advertising party official Braeden Caley says was an error. Caley said no money was collected from foreign citizens through the ad campaign.

“A limited set of grassroots fundraising ads on Facebook inadvertently ran briefly both inside and outside of Canada, when that wasn’t the intention here,” said Caley, a spokesperson for the Liberal party, in a statement to the Star.

“The ads were removed by the following week. (The Liberal party) has also been reviewing with Facebook how the ads were able to extend into the other places that you’ve referenced.”

By law, Canadian political parties can only accept donations from Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

Facebook is one of the world’s most powerful advertising platforms, allowing companies and organizations to drill down on micro-targeted audiences to get their message across. It is heavily used by both the Liberal party and the Conservative party in Canada.

Read more:

Facebook refuses to remove false content during Canadian election

Liberals allege Jagmeet Singh’s Facebook campaign ads violate election rules

Bots, hackers and trolls: How the digital misinformation war is being waged ahead of the federal election

The platform allows you to target demographics, networks of people, specific types of behaviour or interests, and location. Typically, the target location is entered by an advertiser via a drop-down menu when placing the advertisement.

But Facebook also offers a “custom audience” and “look-alike audience” feature — allowing advertisers to upload email lists or website traffic to build a custom audience, and then targeting similar “look-alike” Facebook audiences.

It’s not clear if the Liberals were using those features for the U.S. and U.K. advertisements — the party did not immediately respond to that question.

“I think it points to an emergent set of issues that we have to deal with,” said Lisa Young, a professor at the University of Calgary studying election law and digital issues.

“We’re increasingly setting up our election law to be very conscious of borders and avoiding foreign interference … But what this points to is that in the digital world, borders don’t matter. It’s this very amorphous things and the boundaries between the domestic and the international are unclear in many respects.”

“So it’s paradoxical that at the same time we’re trying to be that much more rigorous about drawing lines, it’s harder and harder to draw the lines themselves because the digital world is so global.”

Michelle Laliberté, a spokesperson for elections commissioner Yves Côté, said federal election law does not prohibit parties from seeking donations outside Canada’s borders — but that any donor must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident living abroad.

Laliberté said that parties should take the extra step of requiring potential donors to affirm their eligibility.

“From our standpoint, in order to demonstrate that (parties) acted with due diligence to avoid accepting illegal contributions, it would be a good practice for the online form on the party website … to ask the donor to check a box that states that they are a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada,” Laliberté wrote in a statement Friday, adding the Liberals’ online form does include that function.

Canadian political parties are increasingly turning to Facebook to blast out their partisan messaging. In recent months, the Liberal government and the opposition Conservatives have been particularly active.

In May, the Liberals were pushing an advertisement trying to link Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to Ontario Premier Doug Ford suggesting Scheer would cut “vital services at the expense of everyday Canadians.” In June the Liberals shifted to promoting their climate plan, social policies, and economic record.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The Conservatives, meanwhile, split the last two months between attacking Trudeau over recent scandals and promoting Scheer’s pocketbook message. The opposition party also took shots at the Bloc Québécois in French-language Facebook ads.

Facebook is expected to publicly launch an advertisement library by the end of June, collecting all political and issues-based advertising in the lead up to the federal election later this year. The registry is required under a new law brought in by the Liberals last year for any platform publishing political advertisements during the election period.

Google, Facebook’s main competitor in the advertising business, opted to refuse Canadian political advertising in the run up to the election.

Read more about: