The confrontation between freedom of expression and protection of individual reputation by the law of defamation is as good an example of interminable global legal trench warfare as any. (Well, except in the United States, where one battle proved largely decisive in favour of free speech.) In Canada, freedom of expression has made some gains since the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the protection of reputation has proven quite resilient, even scoring a rhetorical victory of its own when the Supreme Court dubbed it a “quasi-constitutional” right ― whatever that means ― last year in Éditions Écosociété Inc. v. Banro Corp., 2012 SCC 18, [2012] 1 S.C.R. 636. Another battle of this war was recently fought in British Columbia, where the province’s Supreme Court, in Northwest Organics, Limited Partnership v. Maguire, 2013 BCSC 1328 rejected an attempt by defendants to impose additional burdens on plaintiffs for their defamation lawsuits to go forward.
The plaintiffs in Northwest Organics are a group of companies developing a composting facility. The defendants are a group of concerned local residents and activists, who have been campaigning against the building of the facility. The plaintiffs say the reports, pamphlets, and internet materials they have distributed as part of that campaign are defamatory. The defendants say the suit against them is a SLAPP ― strategic litigation against public participation ― intended to silence them.
The defendants sought to have the action dismissed, notably by asking that the Court apply a new test to defamation actions in which the defendant claims there is no genuine issue to be tried. In such cases, the defendants argued, interpreting the rules of civil procedure or the inherent powers of the court in accordance with the Charter value of freedom of expression should lead courts to require plaintiffs to show that the action is worth pursuing, despite the chilling effect it will have on the defendants’ freedom of expression, instead of defendants having to demonstrate that the case is frivolous or that there is no genuine issue to be tried (as is normally the case when a defendant seeks to have an action against dismissed). Plaintiffs could discharge this burden by showing that their claim “(a) is to compensate a significant injury to reputation; (b) has a significant likelihood of success, and (c) is the only practicable response to the alleged defamatory speech” (par. 28), a requirement which the defendants later abandoned.
Justice Savage refused to interpret the Supreme Court Civil Rules or the court’s inherent power in this way. Although, as all parties accepted, they had indeed to be interpreted in accordance with Charter values, such interpretation could not have the effect of changing substantive law. The Rules were enacted pursuant to a delegation of power to make rules with respect to procedure and evidence. A provision that dealt with substantive law would be ultra vires. Similarly, the superior courts’ inherent jurisdiction is meant to safeguard the integrity of the judicial process, but cannot be used to change substantive law. And that is precisely what the defendants were asking the court to do:
… [T]he defendants are proposing a substantive change to the law of defamation, not simply a change in the rules of civil practice. The substantive law, as it now stands, is that once the plaintiff commences its claim by asserting the publication of a defamatory statement, the onus shifts to the defendant to prove truth, to prove fair comment, to prove qualified privilege or to prove responsible publication. If the defendant pleads fair comment, then the burden lies on the plaintiff to prove malice. What the defendants are proposing are not changes to procedural rules that would apply only in the case of SLAPP lawsuits, but changes to the substantive law of defamation that go to the merits of those claims. (Par. 76).
In reality, the defendants seek to get rid of the presumptions of falsity and damage that have been part of the common law of defamation for centuries. “This,” says Justice Savage, “is not so much an incremental change to the common law as a wholesale change, something normally undertaken by the legislature or by higher courts with a full evidentiary record” (par. 80). It is too much for a court to read into the rules of procedure, and in the context of a motion without a full factual record to boot.
I think that Justice Savage is absolutely right. The presumptions that any person deserves a good reputation and is deprived of that right by defamatory publications are crucial to the way in which the law protects reputation ― a “quasi-constitutional” right, according to the Supreme Court’s latest pronouncement on the issue. To get rid of them, or to allow defendants to circumvent them by shouting “SLAPP!”, would effectively destroy the law of defamation ― an outcome which the Supreme Court has diligently (if not always elegantly) laboured to avoid. Indeed, one wonders if it is not precisely because they know this that the defendants here have sought to disguise frontal attack on the law of defamation as a mere procedural skirmish.
The law of defamation survives to fight another battle. But the grinding war between freedom of expression and the protection of reputations is certain to go on.
Double Aspect 