How Star reporters scrutinized claims by MPs

Team put five days of question period under the microscope The Star found Tory MP Michelle Rempel’s claim about social programs was false.

This story is part of the Star’s trust initiative, where, every week, we take readers behind the scenes of our journalism.

The Toronto Star’s running tally of the false claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump — compiled by Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Dale — is consistently among the most-read stories on thestar.com.

Dale’s list of Trump’s mistruths now numbers more than 1,800 since the real-estate tycoon became president.

Inspired by the popularity of Dale’s work, associate editor Lynn McAuley sought a way to assess the truthfulness of claims made by Canadian politicians.

A good place to start, she thought, was question period on Parliament Hill — a 45-minute session on weekdays in which Members of Parliament for opposition parties pose questions to the governing party (MPs representing the government are also allowed to ask the odd question). Why not fact-check the claims made by opposition parties in the framing of their questions, as well as the answers provided by the government, in order to get a sense of how honest our elected representatives are in the spotlight?

Each session is recorded in Hansard, the official transcript of Parliament.

Five days of question period in April and May were randomly chosen to be put under the microscope by Ottawa Bureau reporters Bruce Campion-Smith, Alex Ballingall, Alex Boutilier and Tonda MacCharles, along with reporters Brendan Kennedy and Marco Chown Oved in Toronto.

Question period can see upwards of 40 questions, producing some 9,000 words in one 45-minute session. That meant the team had to check about 45,000 words over the five days examined.

“We were helped that there was duplication from day to day as opposition parties hammered away at a particular topic, such as the carbon tax,” said Ottawa Bureau Chief Bruce Campion-Smith.

Every morning, a reporter in Ottawa shared the previous day’s question period transcript in a Google Doc, explained Kennedy. Subjects were divvied up randomly or according to previous experience or interest in a topic. Claims were assessed as true, false, a stretch or a dodge.

“We really sought to be fair in how we labelled questions and answers,” Campion-Smith said. “That meant a lot of research into a particular topic and evaluating the statements by MPs and cabinet ministers.”

To check the validity of MPs’ statements, the reporters consulted government budgets, parliamentary committee reports, statements by ministers and policies. In some cases, the reporters reached out to MPs’ offices to ask for the source of their information, and then sought verification through further research.

“The toughest claims to fact check were the vague or generalized assertions, and anything that was a borderline opinion,” Kennedy said. “If an MP stated an exact number, it was usually pretty easy to determine whether or not it was accurate. But if they said that something was ‘out of control’ or ‘chaotic,’ then it was a little trickier to make an assessment.”

For example, in a preamble to one of her questions on April 30, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel said that social programs across Canada are under “severe strain due to tens of thousands of unplanned immigrants” crossing the border illegally.

To check these claims, Kennedy searched news sources and government reports about social programs strained by an increase in irregular migrants. Only in Quebec, where most of the migrants arrived, and in Toronto, where many of them end up, did he find evidence of a strain on social services. To fortify this, he looked up the statistics for irregular border crossers and found that 93 per cent of the RCMP interceptions at the border since the beginning of 2017 have been in Quebec. In fact, seven provinces had a combined 21 irregular border crossings in all of 2017.

“Clearly, her claim that social programs were under severe strain ‘across Canada’ was false,” Kennedy said.

Overall, the reporters found that outright lies or false claims in question period were uncommon.

“However, that is offset by what we did find and that is the amount of dodges on the government side, the refusal to meaningfully answer a question,” Campion-Smith said. “The opposition parties are not blameless, either. On their side, there are a lot of exaggerations. So, I think people have a right to be cynical about the whole exercise when they say it’s largely driven by partisan motivations. But I think it’s also a very important part of our parliamentary democracy and the principle of holding a government to account.” Do you have any questions about how the Toronto Star does its journalism? What are some topics you’d like to read about? Send the Star’s Trust Project a note with your thoughts to