Did an authentic video document Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promoting a financial investment scheme in a video? No, that's not true: The video of Trudeau is altered to add audio of a Trudeau-like voice pitching a platform where large returns are promised on a small investment. The original video of Trudeau is from his visit to a company announcing a plan to build an EV battery separator plant. In that speech, Trudeau never mentioned an investment scheme. The audio mimicking his voice appears to be AI-generated or the work of a voice impersonator.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) where it was published on Facebook on June 20, 2024. The video opened with a voice sounding like Trudeau's saying:
Let's talk about what concerns 99 percent of people in our country: money
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jun 24 19:22:45 2024 UTC)
In the video, a voice that does not match the movement of Trudeau's mouth encourages people to register on a website after a phone call with a manager and make a minimum investment of $350 that will yield 100 times their investment.
There is no evidence that Trudeau ever made these remarks. A Google search of thousands of indexed websites for relevant keywords did not show any matching results. Had the prime minister of Canada made such remarks it would have been national and international news.
In the video Trudeau is standing in a building full of John Deere heavy equipment at a podium bearing a sign that read, "Strengthening Our EV Supply Chain." Using that and other elements, a Google search located unaltered video posted on YouTube (archived here) of the speech he gave on May 14, 2024. The caption on the video read:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces Asahi Kasei Corporation's plan to build an EV battery separator plant in Port Colborne, Ont. The prime minister is joined by federal ministers François-Philippe Champagne (industry) and Filomena Tassi (minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario), Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Vic Fedeli (Ontario's minister of economic development,) as well as Koshiro Kudo (president and representative director of Asahi Kasei Corporation), Kanji Yamanouchi (Japan's ambassador to Canada), and Bill Steele (mayor of Port Colborne).
A search of the transcript of the video for the phrase "Let's talk about what concerns 99 percent of people in our country money," does not return any matches. Trudeau never discusses a financial investment scheme in the original video of the EV battery event.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Trudeau can be found here.
