One-fifth of the words spoken in the House of Commons by MPs in the past year were written with the help of AI, an analysis by the Economist magazine has found.

The study using Pangram, a tool for detecting text written by artificial intelligence, found that Canadian MPs were the second-highest users of AI to write speeches in parliamentary debates, after Australia.

Twenty per cent of verbal contributions by Canadian MPs were written with the help of AI compared with 21 per cent for Australian MPs, according to the Economist analysis in this week’s edition. Ottawa’s use was more prevalent than among elected representatives in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the U.S. and New Zealand.

The study, which analyzed speeches made in the year since September, 2025, in selected English-speaking legislatures, found that Canadian MPs used AI tools to craft speeches, ask and reply to questions and make other verbal interventions.

The use of AI is not prohibited under parliamentary rules in Ottawa and the Speaker of the House of Commons declined to comment on its prolific use.

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But former NDP MP Charlie Angus, who was known for his fiery oratory, said “on first glance it just shows how mediocre we have become in that we have to ask Claude or ChatGPT what they think first.”

“Canadian MPs are asking Claude how to ask a dumb 30-second question to the minister, and how to get their zingers on tax policy.” But MPs and ministers are failing to address the dangers potentially posed by AI to humanity, he said.

Mr. Angus, who has been writing articles about the potential threats posed by superintelligent AI, said “red lights are flashing everywhere about threats posed by AI” and “yet you have dead silence in the Canadian Parliament” about the risks posed.

Former NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, who is now an associate professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy, said he was not worried by the prolific use of AI by Canadian MPs.

Mr. Stewart, who studies AI use in government, said Canadian MPs seemed far more bound to talking points issued by party managers than MPs in other parliaments.

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He said support staff often write speeches for MPs, or party officials provide talking points. So the use of AI is not a great departure, as many MPs have not been writing their own scripts for some time, he said.

He said the culture in Canada, where MPs often read from pieces of paper, lends itself to the use of AI.

“When I watch the British House of Commons, I see it is a kind of rite of passage that MPs are spouting their own thoughts. They are not reading off a piece of paper,” he said. “I would say that party discipline is more a concern to me than AI use. I would take MPs using AI to support their writing over the party-generated talking points any day.”

Mr. Stewart said Canadian MPs can sit at desks in the Commons chamber and use laptops and tablets, unlike in Britain where they sit on benches. He said this may lend itself to a greater use of AI in the chamber.

“I think the days of the grand orator are long gone. Magical speakers are a rarity,” he said. “That culture has been dying a death for a long time, so I don’t worry so much about AI.”

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AI detection tools are trained on massive amounts of text to spot its use. The analysis by the Economist found an exponential rise in the use of AI to write speeches among British MPs since 2024, when hardly any MPs used it at Westminster.

Now about one in 10 words spoken in Britain’s parliamentary debates, in the House of Commons and House of Lords, are drafted by AI. The House of Lords, where many members are more than 80, counterintuitively uses more AI than the British House of Commons.

The study by the Economist found that although more than half of British MPs hardly ever use AI for speeches, some are avid users of the technology to generate text.

But among front benchers and party leaders including Andy Burnham, the British Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage, Leader of Reform UK, the technology was rarely used.