Fact File: Video spreads fake story about John Deere exiting Canada

By Canadian Press on November 20, 2025.

Rumours that farming equipment giant John Deere is leaving Canada spread this week on social media alongside a video claiming the company would be moving its factories to the United States.

In fact, John Deere hasn’t manufactured farm equipment in Canada since 2009 and the company says the claims in the video are false. The video comes from a YouTube channel that appears to use artificial intelligence to produce spam news content.

THE CLAIM

“John Deere didn’t quietly cut production. They packed up the future of Canadian manufacturing and moved it straight into the United States,” said the narrator in a 17-minute-long video posted to YouTube, where it reached more than 200,000 views in two days.

The video, titled “Canada ERUPTS as John Deere CUTS OFF Production – Carney EXPLODES As Factory Moves To U.S!,” links the supposed exit to policy decisions by the federal government and the trade war with the United States.

The video was reposted to the X platform, formerly Twitter, TikTok and Facebook, and the claim was spread without the video on X and Facebook.

THE FACTS

The claims in the video are false, a representative from John Deere told The Canadian Press in an email.

The company based in Moline, Ill., has a handful of parts distribution centres in Canada and a forestry equipment factory in Langley, B.C. Its farming equipment manufacturing plant in Welland, Ont., ceased operations in 2009. A Nisku, Alta., remanufacturing facility, which refurbished previously used or worn out parts, was shut down in 2021.

The video includes clips from news broadcasts that have been misleadingly edited to make it seem as if the segments are about Canada.

The first clip comes from “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” and features Paikin saying, “But recent plant closures and competitive challenges abroad have led to speculation that the sector could soon be faced with the end of the road.”

There is no date given for the clip, but the show aired its final episode on TVO in June. There is nothing to indicate Paikin was discussing agricultural equipment manufacturing and The Canadian Press could not find any recent segments from the show on the subject.

The next two clips are of news reports from Iowa and Arkansas about John Deere layoffs and struggles faced by farmers in those states. The agriculture economy in the United States has struggled over the past two years and the company has laid off thousands of workers and moved some operations to Mexico in response, prompting tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Most of the news clips included in the video are from reports out of the United States. There are sources listed in the bottom left corner of the video, but the content of the clips is never addressed by the narration.

The video uses half-truths to bolster its arguments.

For example, the narrator says, “Ottawa thought they were protecting farmers by pushing repair rights. Deere saw it as a government attacking their entire business model.” Canada passed two right-to-repair laws in November 2024, making it easier for people to fix products like cellphones, fridges and farm equipment. But that was years after the company stopped manufacturing in Canada, and Deere had previously expanded access to self-repair tools for customers in Canada.

The video also correctly mentions the Alberta remanufacturing plant was shut down in 2021, but implies 115 Canadian jobs were lost in 2025 at “Harvester Works.” While the company did announce layoffs affecting 115 workers at the Harvester Works factory in August, the facility is in East Moline, Ill.

SPAM NEWS

The video was posted by the channel “Canadian Hub,” which says it offers a “daily source for Canadian news and updates” and lists its location as the United States. The channel was created in 2016, but the oldest visible video was posted in September. An archive of the channel’s posts recorded by Filmot, a YouTube transcript search tool, shows now-deleted videos posted by the channel in 2016 and 2017 had titles written in Dutch and were unrelated to Canada.

The script shows signs it was written with the aid of AI, including repetitive phrasing and the use of negation – “It isn’t just a factory leaving. It’s a siren screaming that Canada is collapsing from the inside” – and over-the-top sensationalist language. AI-generation tools are also known to “hallucinate,” or make false statements backed by fake sources.

Awkward phrasing and unnatural pauses also suggest the voiceover is automated.

There is no disclaimer on the video or the channel that the account uses AI generation for content creation.

The channel’s video thumbnails feature AI-generated images of Prime Minister Mark Carney, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and others, and the content is similar to other spam news posts covered by The Canadian Press.

A keyword search found several videos making similar claims about John Deere leaving Canada posted around the same time from different spam news accounts.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 20, 2025.

Colleen Hale-Hodgson, The Canadian Press

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