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WHOSE SPEECH IS IT ANYWAY?
First in Observer — “We need to make sure Ontarians know when they’re watching the show,” PC MPP SILVIA GUALTIERI told the House during debate on her motion calling for the disclosure of artificial intelligence use in advertising.
As it turns out, Pangram flagged every word of her opening and closing remarks as AI-generated.
Her statement was one of hundreds I put through the same AI detector The Economist used to examine parliamentary speeches. Their analysis showed Canadian MPs were the second-highest users of AI, behind only Australia.
So, I ran the numbers at Queen’s Park. I took nearly 400,000 words spoken by MPPs using Hansard transcripts from the first seven sitting days of the fall session (October 27 to November 5) and plugged them into Pangram.
The result: It flagged an estimated 14.8 per cent — just over one in seven words — as AI or likely AI.
Before we dig into the most prolific AI-using MPPs, here’s how I analyzed the tallies: First, I established a baseline by running Hansard for seven sitting days from the fall of 2022. In every instance, Pangram detected 0% AI. Then, I tested the 2026 remarks by party and weighted each result by the total number of words scanned. To see which MPPs may have used AI the most, I separately analyzed hundreds of individual statements.
A caveat: Pangram can misclassify text. Its scores can’t tell us who drafted a speech or how AI may have been used, whether it wrote the whole spiel or just polished it.
Now that that’s out of the way…
By the numbers: 51 MPPs had at least one statement that Pangram scored at five per cent AI or higher.
Of the MPP remarks I tested individually, New Democrat JENNIE STEVENS led with about 4,800 words seemingly written with the help of AI. One speech did most of the heavy lifting — Pangram highlighted 99 per cent of Stevens’s remarks re: Bill 119, the government’s Protecting Ontario’s Streets and Communities Act, as AI.
“A bill is not a substitute for strategy, an announcement is not a substitute for implementation and a promise is not a substitute for the results,” she told the Legislature.
In second and third: Liberals LUCILLE COLLARD and KAREN McCRIMMON. Here are the top 10 ranked according to how many AI words Pangram detected:
The percentages tell a different story. Some MPPs spoke fewer words, but had a higher score. Take PC MICHAEL TIBOLLO. The checker identified 100 per cent of his speech about Romanian Heritage Week as AI, which put him at the front of the pack by percentage, but at 985 words, he ranked 14th by volume.
One line from his speech: “The story of Romania is also the story of its remarkable diaspora.”
The PCs dominated the top 10 in the percentage ranking:
Across the parties: Overall, the PCs came out on top with 21 per cent of words flagged, followed by the Grits at 15 per cent and New Democrats at eight per cent. The Greens’ scan came back at zero. Pangram also tagged 40 per cent of the 1,056 words tested from Independent BOBBI ANN BRADY.
Most MPPs I reached out to for this story didn’t respond, while a handful that did flat out denied that they or their staff use AI.
“MPP [WILL] BOUMA and his team have never yet used AI to generate any speeches or statements,” said one spokesperson.
Others said they might have used it to double-check facts or figures, such as statistics for Remembrance Day or municipal election results. Some suggested Hansard might not pick up on all the nuance and cadence in the House, or the rote nature of some speeches, which could set off the AI alarm. Still, Microsoft Copilot is available for MPPs and staff through the Leg.
“I thought we were pretty original,” one politician’s staffer said with a laugh. They were surprised at how much AI was detected for their MPP.
The NDP provided a caucus-wide response, noting the party is working with its staff union to develop internal guidelines on proper and ethical AI use. They declined to speak on individual cases, but said “we do know that AI is here and proliferating workflows across all sectors” so it’s important to have “safe, practical, and sensible guidelines that protect workers and ensures our work remains authentic and factual.”
“AI will never replace workers in the NDP,” they added.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most organic moments in the chamber happen during Question Period. One opposition staffer dared me to test those transcripts for AI — after all, they’re the one writing most of the questions, they said.
So I did. Pangram flagged just 4 per cent of the morning debates overall. Six days came in at 5 per cent or less AI, while October 28 was the exception at 10 per cent. In the QP transcripts I reviewed, almost all the AI markers were “friendly” questions — when a government backbencher lobs softballs to a minister.
Former political speechwriter KEVIN HURREN, who ghost-wrote for then-premier KATHLEEN WYNNE and ex-federal Finance minister BILL MORNEAU, and now works as a TV producer in Toronto, was surprised the figure I put to him wasn’t higher.
“The amount of text that political writers and communication staff are expected to generate is actually wild,” he told me. There’s always another event to attend, another community to recognize and another clip to post.
Hurren understands the temptation. But he also knows what can get lost. “It doesn’t surprise me that more and more staff and politicians are turning to something like AI and ChatGPT…[But] ChatGPT will not be able to reflect how you specifically relate to an issue, or how you personally feel about an issue, because it is a generalization and a collection of what everyone else is saying about this topic, synthesized into a product for you.”
“AI is nowhere close to capturing true quality and authenticity.”
