A set of old photos from a joint military exercise between Canada and China is being falsely shared claiming in a recent exercise Canadian army has started training Chinese army to combat against India. The photos are viral with a false claim that the Canadian army is training soldiers from the People's Liberation Army in winter warfare.
BOOM found that three of the pictures are from a 2018 joint military drill and not recent while the other photo is from 2014 and shows an internal training exercise for Canadian soldiers.
The set of four photos are viral on the Facebook page Defence 360 claiming, "Important: Canadian Army giving winter warfare training to Chinese PLA to deal with Indian Army in Peaks & Mountains of LAC Post their failure to hold on to key Positions. CC: Ministry of Defence, Government of India"
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The first photo was also tweeted by the Twitter user (@captjasdeep) with the caption, "I hope our country knows that Canadian Army is giving winter warfare training to Chinese PLA in Canada."
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Viral on Facebook
On searching with the same text on Facebook, we found that the photos are being shared with the false claim.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral photos are unrelated and old and not from any recent Canada - China military exercise or winter warfare training as being falsely claimed.
Photo 1
A reverse image search using Google Images showed results from 2014. We found the same photo tweeted by the Joint Delegation of Canada to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) about Canadian soldiers were training in Canada's Arctic in February 2014.
Photos 2, 3, 4
We found that the other photos in the post are from a 2018 joint military drill conducted by China and Canada. The same three pictures were tweeted by the Canadian Army Twitter handle in February 2018 saying, "The Army deployed a team of four observers from the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Centre to China. The Chinese PLA accepted a reciprocal invitation from the CA to observe winter survival training in Petawawa."
We further checked for a recent military exercise between Canada and China and found no recent reports. On December 11, 2020, Canadian Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan told the House of Commons, "Canada is no longer training with the Chinese military". Canada's Department of Global Affairs, which is the country's foreign ministry had responded to the cancellation of the military exercises with China by stating, "Given the heightened scrutiny, any decision by Canada to reduce/cut ties should be carefully considered to avoid sending any unhelpful or unintended messages," reported The Week on December 10, 2020.
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