Here’s what I learned in one month fact-checking Trudeau, O’Toole, Singh and Paul
Most of the time, Canadian politicians tell the truth.
About a month ago, the Star launched its federal election fact check to see if Canadian leaders lied and stretched the truth anywhere close to as often as politicians like former U.S. president Donald Trump.
Now, I can tell you that they don't.
That's not to say Canadian politicians are always honest, all of the time, but after observing our four federal leaders over almost 1,000 minutes of public appearances, I can tell you that they don't often outright lie, fib and undermine facts. Some of their false claims were simply errors or misspeaks and on at least a couple of occasions, their parties corrected immediately.
I focused on one party leader each week, beginning with the one defending the fewest seats, Green Leader Annamie Paul, and ending with the incumbent, Liberal Justin Trudeau. Over the five days I checked each of them, I'd tune in to all the leader's public appearances, including announcements, press conferences, town halls and campaign stops. I'd note down every statement of fact they made, then I'd do whatever I could to verify it: checking StatCan data, reading reports and analyses on issues, and calling many, many experts.
I soon realized that most things aren't black and white. Unlike Trump, the Canadian leaders did not make things up out of thin air. It was rare that a leader said something that was entirely false. There were very few claims that had no connection to the truth; instead, I saw exaggerations, simplifications, or mischaracterizations of reality. I factored that nuance into my check, adding necessary context and explaining any opposing perspectives.
I was generous. If I found evidence to support the leaders' claims, I wouldn't automatically mark them false if other evidence disagreed. Likewise, I gave latitude for statements expressing the leaders' opinions or a value judgments. But I did explain these caveats.
The crowd was evenly matched. The record for fewest false claims in a week was Paul with four, and O'Toole came out on top (or rather, bottom) with seven. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh stretched the truth the most - I counted 13 times in the week I checked him, twice as many as the runners-up O'Toole and Trudeau.
For comparison's sake, former Star fact-checker Daniel Dale counted 60 false claims in just one two-hour speech by Trump.
I also tracked each leader's dishonesty density": their rate of false claims by speaking time. Trudeau scored best with one false claim every 50 minutes, Singh's was one every 46 minutes, Paul's was one every 47 and O'Toole made one false claim every 30 minutes.
Because the leaders' made relatively few false claims, it only took one or two to shift the dishonesty density significantly. All in all, there was not a lot between the leaders. I didn't go into this project expecting one to stand out as more or less honest than the others, and I didn't discover that, either.
Three of Paul's four false claims were repeated blips that greenhouse gas emissions have gone up every year Justin Trudeau's Liberals have been in power, when, in fact, they dipped in 2016, his first full year.
Her biggest gaffe was calling for an emergency recall" of Parliament to debate the crisis in Afghanistan, citing a non-existent section of the federal Emergencies Act. Constitutional experts note it's not possible to recall Parliament once it's already been dissolved.
Most of Singh's five false claims were misspeaks - like his repeated assertion that a foreign company had purchased a large amount of Canadian real estate, when it was a domestic firm - but he stretched the truth more than the other leaders. For example, he frequently took credit for pandemic aid measures, which, as an opposition leader, he may well have influenced but wouldn't have been able to do unilaterally.
He also made ideologically-rooted statements - like that Amazon pays virtually no taxes in Canada" - that didn't give the whole picture (While Amazon may pay very little corporate taxes, it surely pays other taxes in Canada, like property taxes, consumption taxes, and excise taxes).
Trudeau got himself in trouble when speaking about what he's accomplished over the past six years, or explaining why he wasn't able to deliver on promises, like when he claimed he had moved forward concretely" with a national universal pharmacare" deal with P.E.I. Universal pharmacare was a central part of the Liberals' 2019 platform that they ultimately haven't made much progress on; the P.E.I. deal only covers people already on the public plan, making it neither national nor universal.
He also denied a charge by Singh in the English debate that his government is taking Indigenous kids to court." His government is, in fact, challenging in federal court a decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that requires Ottawa to compensate Indigenous children who ended up in foster care as a result of systemically underfunded health care. The government says it's committed to compensating these children and believes it has legitimate reasons to take the case to court - but Singh's claim was not wrong.
O'Toole's false claims - the most out of any leader by a slim margin - were largely misrepresentations of Trudeau and his record. O'Toole made a couple of unsubstantiated accusations of Liberal cover-ups," mischaracterized policies like the $10-a-day child care agreement, and falsely stated that Trudeau has reduced penalties for firearm offences, when, in fact, the Liberals' bill to eliminate some mandatory minimum sentences has only gone as far as second reading.
O'Toole's biggest distortion took place outside of the week I checked him, when he posted a French video on Twitter recycling a Scheer-era false claim that thousands of asylum seekers have crossed the border illegally" at Roxham Road, an unofficial entry point at the Quebec-New York border. Not only is it perfectly legal to cross the Canada-U.S. border at an informal crossing for the purposes of seeking refugee protection, but insinuating that such asylum seekers were cutting ahead of families waiting to immigrate promotes harmful anti-refugee myths," Canadian refugee and immigration lawyer Maureen Silcoff told me.
As a fact-checker, I focused on interrogating the leaders' exact claims as they said them. That sometimes meant steering clear of a broader debate on the issue surrounding the claim - that drew some criticism from readers, but the scope of a project was to look at the facts, as spoken.
Another big component of the leaders' honesty which I couldn't fact-check in a traditional sense was their ability to answer a journalist's question clearly and as asked. While I couldn't factor these into my dishonesty density calculations, I saw some big dodges this election campaign.
O'Toole, a few weeks ago, on guns, when he refused to clarify for days a confusing pledge he made in the French debate to maintain Trudeau's ban on assault weapons, a statement at odds with his own platform.
O'Toole, on Thursday, when he dodged question after question from reporters in a press conference about whether he stands by his endorsement of Alberta premier Jason Kenney's handling of the pandemic as the province was forced to declare a state of public health emergency amid surging infections, just months after all restrictions were dropped.
Singh, on whether he would prop up a minority Conservative government - something he told the Star earlier this year he'd never do but refused to reiterate on the campaign trail.
Perhaps the biggest question this election campaign was why there was an election campaign at all, and while Trudeau gave vague answers like Canadians deserve a choice," many political observers contend he never offered a plausible or genuine answer.
Honesty is not a given. Just because politicians were largely truthful in this campaign, doesn't mean they will be the next. Canada is still vulnerable to so-called post-truth politics," where the facts are secondary to appeals to political dispositions and emotions.
The right-wing populist People's Party of Canada's popularity boost over the course of this election campaign is a reminder of this. I didn't include PPC Leader Maxime Bernier in my fact-check because his party was polling under four per cent at the beginning of the campaign, below the threshold for inclusion in the TV debates.
Since then, support for the party has grown significantly - the latest Vox Pop Labs poll put it at 6.5 per cent nationally, above the Green and the Bloc Quebecois - and Bernier has an (unlikely) shot of winning his own seat.
Trump won a national election with the support of 46 per cent of voters, and Bernier's party is not nearly on that track this election - but any look at the impact of Trump-style politics can't ignore the PPC.
Like Trump, Bernier and his party have become popular with the anti-vax crowd. On Thursday, Torstar reported at least 20 per cent of PPC candidates in Ontario have participated in hostile anti-vax protests. More than half of Ontario PPC candidates have shared vaccine disinformation and opposition to vaccine mandates and passports.
Had I rigorously fact-checked Bernier, my findings on the honesty of Canadian politicians may have been different. After all, his party claims there are uncertainties over the scientific basis of global warming." (That's false.)
When I started this project, the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy's Janice Stein told me that while facts are essential for reasoned debate, much more important than the facts is the interpretation people give to the facts."
During this election campaign, as I watched thousands protest vaccination mandates outside of hospitals while health care workers cared for critically ill unvaccinated COVID-19 patients inside, I realized how right she was. Yes, there are some who deny the epidemiological facts. But there are also others who accept that, say, lockdowns work but see the perceived constraints on personal freedoms as too high a price to pay for the public health benefits. Facts alone cannot determine our political choices; they must be interpreted through a moral lens.
But facts are a prerequisite for democracy. Our leaders seem to understand that. Truth still matters in Canadian politics and most (major) leaders stick to it. But that doesn't make fact-checking any less worthwhile. Canadian leaders may not lie or stretch the truth as much as politicians like Trump, but even occasional distortions or blips count as misinformation that can lead voters astray and hurt democracy.
Lex Harvey is a Toronto-based newsletter producer for the Star and author of the First Up newsletter. Follow her on Twitter: @lexharvs