Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch’s campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis admitted Monday night to sharing false information on Twitter, saying he did so to get a rise out of “the left.”

Amidst a growing and disturbing trend of creating and spreading fake information and false news, Kouvalis tweeted a list of “billions” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government had supposedly given in international aid in the last year.

Included on the list was $351 million for the designated terrorist group, Hamas.



After the tweet led first to confusion and then backlash, later Monday night Kouvalis admitted he tweeted the fake list to “make the left go nuts.”

Buzzfeed News’ Craig Silverman analysis, following the election of Donald Trump, showed that false news stories about the election created more engagement on Facebook than the top election stories from 19 major news outlets — combined.

Silverman’s analysis shows that during the most critical months of the campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and extreme partisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.

Maclean’s journalist Jason Markusoff was the first to point out that Kouvalis’ information was fake and has been circulating since at least 2013.

In January 2013, an American group call Government Gone Wild!, which describes itself as “dedicated to educating people about rampant wasteful government spending,” used the exact same data to criticize U.S. government spending.

Kouvalis served as campaign manager for the successful 2010 Toronto mayoral campaign of Rob Ford and a key strategist for the 2014 campaign of Mayor John Tory.

With files from BJ Siekierski