No, Pierre Poilievre's net worth is not $25M, despite what dubious AI-generated articles say
CBC
In the run up to the federal election, many Canadians want to know more about the personal finances of the party leaders vying to be prime minister. But those who search for answers about this topic online will often find only misinformation and unsubstantiated claims promoted by AI chatbots.
Welcome to the first Canadian federal election of the generative AI age.
This is the story about how an obscure website featuring little-read articles that appear to be AI-generated became one of the most influential sources of information on the web when it comes to Canadian party leaders' personal finances.
Over the past couple of weeks, angry comments have surfaced on social media. Some Canadian voters are convinced that the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), Pierre Poilievre, has accumulated a vast personal fortune worth $25 million.
"How is this possible? If Poilievre is asking about Carney's wealth, I want to know how [Poilievre] amassed $25 million on an MP's salary," wrote a user in a Facebook group dedicated to Canadian politics.
"The only job Poilievre ever had was MP, minister and opposition leader. Despite that, he's worth 25 million," wrote another, in French, on X, (formerly Twitter).
Not only are some Canadians convinced that Poilievre's net worth is $25 million, but there are also those who think they know the net worth of Liberal Leader Mark Carney, which they place at $6.97 million.
"Pierre Poilievre's net worth after being a career politician is 4x greater than Mark Carney's, who worked for Goldman Sachs. I have questions," wrote yet another person, this time on Meta's Threads.
To be clear, no one knows how much Poilievre or Carney are worth. This information is not public.
Getting clear answers about party leaders' personal finances is not currently possible because politicians typically do not disclose this information in Canada.
So how have so many Canadians come to believe these made up numbers?
The culprit appears to be a website called Pierre Poilievre News, which claims to be "Your Trusted Source for News on the Conservative Canadian Party and Pierre Poilievre's Vision for Canada."
The site was created in January, according to whois records, a public database of domain name registrations. The articles on the site bear all the hallmarks of being AI-generated, such as formatting, syntax and structure typical of what AI chatbots write. Radio-Canada tested the articles using GPT Zero, a tool that helps detect AI text, which determined that they have a 99 per cent chance of being AI-generated.
The records revealed that the creator of the Pierre Poilievre News site is an Alberta man named Derek Rucki. Radio-Canada reached out to Rucki via email for comment on this story, but didn't receive a response.
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