Politicians Spinning the Truth? Send It to FactsCan

When Justin Trudeau says middle-class wages increased by only 15 per cent in the last 30 years, is he telling the truth?

Is the Conservative party's Child Tax Benefit the single biggest family benefit in Canadian history like it claims?

Was Elizabeth May really obligated by the MP rulebook to present that 9-11 Truthers petition in the House of Commons?

Separating fact from political spin is traditionally the media's job. But with the 24/7 news cycle, few journalists have the time to dig deep into an issue before another blunder, gaff, or grandiose statement sets us off running in another direction.

So it's surprising that Canada doesn't have a national fact-checking organization like Politifact in the United States, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its work on the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The United Kingdom has Full Fact. Australia has ABC Fact Check.

At least it surprised Jacob Schroeder, a recent cognitive systems grad from the University of British Columbia, when he went looking for a Canadian Politifact or Full Fact last fall, and couldn't find one.

Schroeder was inspired to take what he learned from his degree about how humans interact with artificial intelligence and apply it to how our biases can interfere with what we believe about politics. ''I started to appreciate some of the claims that were being made in politics in a different light,'' he said.

He knew he was far from the only one who struggles to determine if a politician is being honest, opinionated, or outright lying when speaking to the public.

''It's really difficult for any person to do the adequate amount of research… to confidently say one way or the other if [a statement] is true or not,'' Schroeder said. ''To really cover everything that's being said, nobody has enough time to do that.''

Not by themselves, anyway, which is why Schroeder teamed up with Ryerson University researcher Dana Wagner and former Democracy Watch coordinator Tyler Sommers to create FactsCan, Canada's first and only non-partisan, independent fact-checking organization.

Run entirely by volunteers, FactsCan aims to counter the relentless onslaught of politician-sourced stats, rumours, and opinions fired at us daily through social media, news media, and even our friends and family.

''Misinformation is starting to outpace [society's] ability to correct it,'' said Schroeder.

True, false, and so very farcical

Arriving on the scene in February with an IndieGoGo campaign to raise $5,000 to establish a website, FactsCan ended up raising more than $8,000 in one month from just 200-plus donors.

The website soft-launched in May and has started gaining more media, public, and political attention since the federal election campaign started last month.

In addition to ''true'' and ''false,'' FactsCan rates statements as ''misleading'' for being sort of true but not exactly as stated, or ''farcical'' for being so wrong, misleading, or frankly nutty that it defies logic.

There's also a ''withholding judgment'' category for statements without enough publicly available information to verify -- for example, when former minister for public safety Steven Blainey said in April that the recently passed Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act is ''basically allowing CSIS to keep doing what it's been doing for 30 years.''

The folks behind FactsCan pick ''facts'' they believe are most relevant to the political conversation, as well as those likely to be repeated until they're accepted as fact. They've loosely tied the number of facts checked per party to their share of the popular vote in the 2011 election but don't keep a strict quota.

One ''fact'' picked based on popularity alone was Prime Minister Stephen Harper's claim that ''1.2 million more Canadians working now than ever before.'' After contacting the Conservatives to find the evidence behind that claim and consulting with at least three outside ''experts,'' including academics and private sector sources, FactsCan determined the claim was false.

Fact-checking isn't about attacking the individual politician or party, which is why FactsCan reaches out to the claim-maker first. But the group has noticed parties are more responsive when asked to back up claims they've made about the opposition.

''In cases where we say, 'This could be misleading, could you please clarify,' or ask them for a response for something else, anecdotally it seems like they're not as forthcoming,'' Schroeder said. ''That's not unique to any party -- that's just the nature of the game.''

Fact-checking the fact-checkers

Schroeder is careful to remain non-partisan, refusing to draw conclusions on the truthfulness of the parties from the 50 to 60 facts FactsCan has checked so far. He notes that as a volunteer organization run by people with day jobs -- which range from journalist, to lawyer, to project manager -- the group hasn't checked nearly enough claims to declare the most and least truthful parties.

FactsCan is careful to remain as unbiased as possible: none of the volunteers is a current member of a political party, and the group clearly states whenever fact-checking includes assumptions on the part of the checker. But the group doesn't expect people to take its ''fact'' or ''false'' determination as final, either.

''We want people to basically come to FactsCan, see the evidence, and arrive at their own conclusion,'' he said.

And they have. Last week, West Coast Environmental Law, a B.C.-based environmental advocacy organization, posted an open letter disputing FactsCan's conclusion that the NDP made a misleading statement when it said ''Canada went from 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers, down to just 159 under the Conservatives.''

Schroeder said FactsCan hasn't yet had a chance to give the letter a thorough read, let alone an answer. But unlike most people whose work has been called out on the Internet, he's excited by the response.

''We find it pretty cool that there are people out there that are watching our work and holding us to account,'' he said.

The team hopes the future will bring enough money to enable it to hire a project manager and a writer to streamline the process -- its applying for grants and looking for funders. It also has yet to post its tips for the fact-checking layperson to spot political spin on their own, as promised as part of the IndieGoGo campaign because fact-checking has proven so time-consuming.

Schroeder, who just started law school at the University of Victoria, doesn't see FactsCan as a future full-time job for himself. Instead, he hopes eventually FactsCan won't depend entirely on its three co-founders to keep going.

If many of FactsCan's social media followers have anything to say, the site is doing a pretty good job. But with Election Day still weeks away, you're welcome to ''withhold judgment'' on that one.