Mark Carney has refuted claims that he met with the Jiangsu Commerce Council of Canada.
The pro-Beijing group has since, at the behest of the Liberal Party, deleted its post claiming high-ranking representatives had an "in-depth meeting" with him.
"Why did you meet with this pro-Beijing group?" a female Globe and Mail reporter asked him at a press conference in Brampton, Ontario on Thursday, citing her colleagues' story.
Carney responded by saying, "sorry, but you can't believe everything you read in the Globe and Mail."
"In the article in question, you said I had a meeting with ... a Beijing group," he continued. "I've never heard of this group, certainly didn't have a set-up meeting with this group."
Carney went on to argue that as a politician, he sees "thousands" of people at his events, and that simply being photographed with someone doesn't constitute a "meeting."
In a post on their website from March 14, the day Carney was sworn in as prime minister, the JCCC claimed that high-level representatives had "recently" held an "in-depth meeting" with the Liberal leader.
The group wrote that, "Xu Xiaoguang, President of the Jiangsu International Chamber of Commerce in Canada, and Jiang Rui, Honorary President, and other chamber of commerce representatives had an in-depth meeting with the soon-to-be-appointed prime minister."
Later on in the post, it is referred to as an "in-depth exchange," suggesting that the representatives could have simply met Carney at an event and spoken with him as strangers.
The JCCC added that Carney "highly praised the pioneering role of the Chinese business community in emerging fields such as clean technology, digital trade and financial technology.
"The web post referenced in the Globe and Mail article is inaccurate, as is the suggestion that Mr. Carney had any such in-depth discussion," a Liberal Party spokesperson said in a statement after the story went viral. "We have reached out to the organization correcting the record and asked that they remove such claims immediately."
As of Thursday evening, the URL that had led to the story instead resulted in a 404 error.
