The $44 million lawsuit against the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the government, and banks failed to show any evidence of CAHN involvement in a (non-existent) wide-ranging conspiracy.
Editorial
Evan Balgord
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, 2022. Source: Peter Smith
Last spring, twenty so-called “Freedom Convoy” supporters or family members teamed up to prove that there had been a secret plan to discredit the convoy, justify the Emergencies Act, and have their bank accounts frozen. They were going to drag their enemies to court and take us all down.
According to their lawsuit, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network’s (CAHN) role in this conspiracy was to lie about the convoy and paint everyone involved as dangerous, far-right extremists. Never mind that we were simply watching the organizers, collecting what they were saying, and reporting it. Never mind that all our work could be verified and repeated.
We wanted to put an end to this disinformation quickly and definitively, so we filed a motion to dismiss the bogus lawsuit as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP).
The lawsuit claimed that we defamed each of the 20 plaintiffs, even though we only knew one of them, and only by reputation. Tom Quiggin, who attached himself to this convoy group, is a “self-described researcher” who deals in Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
The government’s controversial invocation of the Emergencies Act prompted law enforcement to end the month-long convoy protest, and caused banks to temporarily freeze the bank accounts of several participants.
The convoy plaintiffs claimed that there was a conspiracy between us, the government, politicians, as well as various banks and credit unions in the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
“The plaintiffs plead the CAHN defendants provided false information to other defendants and media organizations designed to harm the plaintiffs,” the decision reads. “The plaintiffs also plead the CAHN defendants or their proxies provided false or highly exaggerated information to the various Crown defendants and police defendants in support of the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the enactment of the impugned regulations.”
Their lawsuit, however, didn’t provide any specific statements or articles by CAHN that would be “defamatory” to back up their claims. When they dismissed the case, the Ontario Superior court judge ruled that the claims of defamation against CAHN were made up of “only several bald allegations that amount to no more than a fishing expedition.”
“The plaintiffs have not met their burden under the merits-based hurdle or under the public interest hurdle. The action against the CAHN defendants is dismissed, with costs,” Justice Robyn Ryan Bell wrote in her decision.
In other words, the convoy supporters wanted their conspiracy theories to be true but failed to provide any evidence. Case dismissed.
We would like to thank our lawyers Jeff Saikaley and Albert Brunet from Caza Saikaley for their diligence and efficacy.
Leaders were not able to take questions from journalists after last night’s debate because of incidents involving Rebel Media and Ezra Levant.
Six of the 17 reporters who asked questions came from Rebel News, True North, or Juno News.
Around 200 people protested against candidate Andrew Lawton for what an organizer called his “history with Islamophobia, racism, homophobia, and misogyny.”