Heard about AI?: PC candidate claims Doug Ford Greenbelt video is fake

A senior Progressive Conservative candidate has been caught on camera telling a potential voter that a widely-circulated 2018 video of Doug Ford promising to open the Greenbelt for development is “fake news” and was possibly created using artificial intelligence.

The comments by Todd McCarthy, who served as a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister between 2023 and 2025, were caught on a doorbell camera on Feb. 12 as the Durham candidate was door-knocking ahead of the election.

The video was sent to Global News and shows a short conversation between McCarthy and the resident about Ontario’s protected Greenbelt land.

At first, McCarthy defended the Progressive Conservatives’ record telling the voter that his party “strengthened the Greenbelt” with new legislation after party leader Doug Ford’s decision to open 7,400 acres of the land for housing development at the end of 2022.

Less than a year after opening the land for development, Ford was forced to apologize and …