A former Alberta justice minister claims videos of him are 'fake.' Not everyone agrees

Near the end of September, a series of videos were posted to social media that purported to show some familiar figures in Calgary's political and legal worlds taking turns performing racist Indigenous caricatures.

One video appeared to take place at a barbecue, and another around a table with open bottles of alcohol and empty plates. The men purportedly pictured were Jonathan Denis, Alberta's former justice minister under the Progressive Conservative government from 2012 to 2015, and Calgary-based businessman and political activist Craig Chandler. 

The videos spread quickly through social media to the point where Denis felt compelled to respond. 

At the time, he offered an apology with a caveat. Later, he would claim the videos were fakes, and the duo would submit what they called proof of that claim. 

But experts say claims of falsity in situations like this are hard to prove because the technology is debatable, even unreliable — and hints at a more significant problem to come.

After the four videos floated around social media for some time, Denis sent a statement to local media outlets, writing that while he had no recollection of the events, it was possible they took place years ago while he was under the influence of alcohol. He said he apologized unreservedly to anyone he offended — if they depicted "real events." It would be his sole statement on the matter at the time.

Chandler, meanwhile, agreed to an interview with CBC News. He said the video of the barbecue was taken during a private function with his close friends. He said he was trying to cheer his friend Denis up by joking about Brocket 99, a fake radio show produced in Lethbridge, Alta., in the late 1980s, which was based on racist stereotypes of First Nations people.

It was ridiculous, Chandler said, that this had become an issue — that he was apparently not allowed to joke about an issue within the confines of his own home at a private barbecue. It was the same thing Dave Chappelle had to go through, he said, this "cancel culture."

But Chandler would say something else during that interview. He said Denis had a contact in Hollywood who had done an audit of the video. That contact, Chandler said, had determined that though the video was "correct," and the words had been said, the Indigenous accent had been "manipulated" and "exaggerated."

"Were the words said? Yeah. Was the accent there? Don't know," Chandler said at the time.

Exactly a month later, it was Calgary Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean who broadly apologized for "mistakes in the past" after other videos surfaced, purportedly involving McLean along with Chandler and Denis, which also included racist mockery of Indigenous people. He would later step back from council committees and boards and sit with a circle of Indigenous elders to "learn to grow, change and be better." 

But though McLean was apologizing and stepping back, Denis' law firm Guardian Law Firm was taking a different position: that the videos were fake. The firm told the Calgary Herald and the Western Standard that it had evidence the videos had been doctored and added that the police were engaged in the matter. 

Three days after McLean stepped down from city council committees, a new email landed in news agency inboxes, sent by Chandler. The subject line declared: "Videos reviewed by independent agency prove videos are fake."

He forwarded the results of an analysis done by Reality Defender, a "deepfake" detection platform headquartered in New York which was incubated by the AI Foundation and launched as a corporation in February. The platform doesn't involve human analysis, instead utilizing a tool that detects for manipulated media.