Altered clip of Pierre Poilievre spreads online

"Pierre poilievre shares, interesting historical fact about Jews," says the caption of a September 20, 2025 Instagram post.

It includes a video of Canada's Conservative leader appearing to say: "Have you ever wondered why our coins have these ridges around the edges? Well, the answer actually goes back hundreds of years to a time when coins were made of precious metals like gold and silver and Jewish people would attempt to chip, clip, snip, scratch and scrape the edges gradually off."

The clip has been circulating on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram since at least May 2025 where one post racked up more than 153,000 likes.

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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken September 29, 2025

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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken September 29, 2025

But Poilievre's media relations manager, Sam Lilly, said the clip spreading on social media "is quite obviously an altered video."

A keyword search for "Pierre Poilievre" and "coin clipping" reveals the original video the politician posted to his official YouTube channel on May 18, 2021 (archived here).

In the clip, Poilievre is discussing the history of coin clipping (archived here)  -- the illegal practice of shaving off a precious metal for profit -- but he does not ascribe the practice to Jewish people. Fourteen seconds into the video he says "people would attempt to chip, clip, snip, scratch and scrape the edges gradually off." 

The 9-minute-long clip, which principally discusses inflation, makes no mention of Jewish people.

Additionally, an analysis of the misleading social media video using the Hiya.com voice-cloning detection tool within the Verification Plugin reveals a spike at the 14-second-mark -- when the word "Jewish" is heard -- showing high confidence that the audio is inauthentic.

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Screenshot of the audio analysis results from Hiya in the InVID-WeVerify toolkit taken September 29, 2025

Rising antisemitism 

The posts promoting the manipulated clip also amplify antisemitic tropes linking Jewish people to control of monetary systems or alluding to the expulsion of Jews from 109 countries (archived here and here).

The Canadian government's handbook on antisemitism says: "Jews are frequently blamed for social and economic problems, even when there is no actual connection" (archived here).

The J7 annual report, put out by the Anti-Defamation League, highlighted dramatic rises in antisemitic incidents across the seven largest Jewish communities outside of Israel -- including Canada -- coinciding with the start of the war in Gaza following the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas (archived here and here).

In Canada, AFP has reported on shootings targeting Jewish schools, arson attacks against synagogues, and the non-fatal stabbing of a Jewish woman in Ottawa.

During Canada's election earlier this year, Poilievre said he would crack down on antisemitism by introducing legislation with tougher responses to religiously motivated attacks.

On September 29, he called attention to religion-based hate by focusing on arson at churches, incidents which have also triggered misinformation. 

Data from Statistics Canada shows that Jewish people faced the majority of police-reported hate crimes targeting a religion in 2023 and 2024 (archived here and here).

Find more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.