{"id":63355,"date":"2019-04-22T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T18:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=63355"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:37:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:37:30","slug":"trudeau-scheer-libel-threat","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/trudeau-scheer-libel-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Trudeau\u2019s libel threat against Scheer: A great Canadian political tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Trudeau\u2019s libel threat against Scheer: A great Canadian political tradition\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s threatened defamation suit<\/a> against Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer over the SNC-Lavalin affair is just the latest in a rapidly growing list of Canadian political mud-slinging matches that have taken a litigious turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scheer had already employed some overheated rhetoric at earlier stages of the controversy, accusing Trudeau of exerting \u201cfrankly illegal pressure\u201d<\/a> on former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould over the prosecution of the Qu\u00e9bec-based company on bribery and corruption charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in late March, the Tory leader\u2019s vague smears morphed into a more specific and unsubstantiated charge of criminality, the most severe kind of malfeasance in the political arena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A statement by Scheer \u2014 circulated via Twitter and Facebook, beyond the robust legal protections afforded by Parliamentary privilege \u2014 said Trudeau\u2019s actions in the affair amounted to \u201ccorruption on top of corruption.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A letter from Trudeau\u2019s lawyer highlighted the \u201ccorruption\u201d claim<\/a> against the prime minister as particularly egregious because it painted him as the perpetrator of \u201cthe worst political conduct possible, being corruption, which is deserving of a criminal penalty of up to 14 years\u2019 incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Following the playbook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In serving that notice of libel, Trudeau was following the playbook of modern Canadian political leaders. In fact, each of the country\u2019s three previous prime ministers got lawyers involved when their main political rivals stepped over the rhetorical line between vigorous debate and alleged slander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 1998, then-prime minister Jean Chr\u00e9tien threatened to sue Preston Manning and other Reform MPs if they repeated \u2014 outside of the House of Commons \u2014 an accusation that newly appointed B.C. Senator Ross Fitzpatrick was the beneficiary of a Senate \u201cseat sale\u201d after Chr\u00e9tien had benefited financially years earlier from a Fitzpatrick stock tip. Manning moderated his attacks and the threatened lawsuit never materialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November 2005, former Liberal PM Paul Martin\u2019s legal team issued a libel warning to Stephen Harper after the then-opposition leader (under the protection of Parliament) accused Martin of heading a party that broke \u201cevery conceivable law in the province of Qu\u00e9bec with the help of organized crime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
\n Stephen Harper (left) was threatened with a lawsuit by then prime minister Paul Martin (right) in 2005. A few months later, the threatened lawsuit was seemingly forgotten and Harper was elected prime minister. (THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Tom Hanson<\/span>)<\/span>
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Laws were broken and perpetrators were eventually jailed in the post-1995 referendum sponsorship scandal, but there was never any evidence that organized crime was involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forgotten threats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In media statements and a shot-across-the-bow lawyer\u2019s letter to Harper demanding an apology, the Liberals warned the Conservative leader that if he uttered the same \u201cfalse smear\u201d outside the Commons, he\u2019d be facing a defamation suit. But a few months later, with no apology offered and the threatened lawsuit seemingly forgotten, Harper was elected prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Conservatives had dismissed Martin\u2019s lawsuit threat as pure bluster and an attempt to gag critics, Harper as PM took the same legal route in March 2008<\/a> after then-Liberal leader St\u00e9phane Dion accused the prime minister of knowing about an alleged 2005 \u201cConservative bribery\u201d attempt to manipulate independent MP Chuck Cadman, dying of cancer at the time, in a crucial House of Commons vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no proof that Harper knew about the nature of the dealings with Cadman. He said the suit was necessary to safeguard his honour: \u201cI have every right, as does my family, to defend our reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suit against Harper fizzled<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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To Dion, Harper was wielding the defamation threat to \u201cbully\u201d his Liberal opponents into silence on the matter. The lawsuit fizzled and was dismissed without costs in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trudeau \u2014 like Martin in 2005 and Harper in 2008 \u2014 was just months away from a federal election when he threatened his chief opponent with court action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s no wonder critics see such libel notices as primarily aimed at slapping a lid on damaging accusations at a time when voters are about to pass judgment on a government. But it\u2019s no surprise, either, that opposition rhetoric gets amped up to legally risky levels when all parties are girding for an election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accusations of defamation have become almost routine in Canadian politics in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, for example, filed lawsuits<\/a> against successive provincial Progressive Conservative leaders Tim Hudak and Patrick Brown over their inflammatory attacks, respectively, that she \u201coversaw and possibly ordered the criminal destruction of documents\u201d (no such evidence) and was \u201con trial\u201d in a case of alleged bribery (she was, in fact, called to court as a witness).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extracted apology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The Hudak suit was settled or withdrawn in 2015; the Brown suit appears to have been dropped. In September 2017, Wynne did extract an immediate apology from Conservative MPP Bill Walker after threatening to sue him for falsely saying she was under investigation for bribery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n Former Ontario Conservative leader Patrick Brown was sued by then premier Kathleen Wynne, but the case never made it to court. Brown was also later sued by a former caucus colleague. (THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Peter Power<\/span>)<\/span>
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Brown, in turn, was recently sued<\/a> by his ex-ally \u2014 Ontario Finance Minister Vic Fedeli \u2014 over statements in Brown\u2019s new book alleging scurrilous behaviour by Fedeli before and during the 2018 upheaval among Ontario Tories that put Doug Ford on the path to becoming premier (and Brown en route to the mayoralty of Brampton.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Guelph political scientist Byron Sheldrick argued last year in a Maclean\u2019s<\/em> article<\/a> that the sharp rise in politically motivated defamation battles could lead to the stifling of constructive political debate in Canada. He has urged a SLAPP-type testing of defamation claims in the political arena <\/a>to weed out strategic lawsuits launched to smother harsh criticism from those cases in which genuine reputational harm seems to have been inflicted by a partisan rival\u2019s reckless words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not a new idea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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If the idea gains traction, the recent upward trend in political defamation claims could be curbed. But it\u2019s unlikely to end a phenomenon as old as Canadian politics itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1878, during Sir John A. Macdonald\u2019s years in the opposition wilderness, the notoriously heavy drinker was spotted passed out in the House of Commons and being discreetly carried to an antechamber by fellow Tories. Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie described the scene in a note to fellow Liberal titan George Brown \u2014 a Grit senator, publisher of the staunchly partisan Globe<\/em> newspaper and for decades Macdonald\u2019s arch nemesis \u2014 who printed an editorial condemning Sir John A.\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n Canada\u2019s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, threatened several lawsuits in 1878 after his political opponents accused him of being drunk in the House of Commons. (THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Adrian Wyld<\/span>)<\/span>
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\u201cTo say that Sir John Macdonald was on Friday night somewhat under the influence of liquor would be a grossly inadequate representation of fact,\u201d the Globe<\/em> stated. \u201cHe was simply drunk in the plain ordinary sense of the word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The accusation was widely republished in the Liberal press, and a flurry of threatened lawsuits from Macdonald followed, none of which was acted upon \u2014 perhaps because truth is an absolute defence against a charge of libel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Macdonald reclaimed the prime ministership in the 1878 election and \u2014 occasional bouts of drunkenness and defamation notwithstanding \u2014 kept it until his death in 1891.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Carleton University is a member of this unique digital journalism platform that launched in June 2017 to boost visibility of Canada\u2019s academic faculty and researchers. Interested in writing a piece? Please contact Steven Reid<\/a> or sign up to become an author<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All photos provided by The Conversation from various sources.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—
\nCarleton Newsroom<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s threatened defamation suit against Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer over the SNC-Lavalin affair is just the latest in a rapidly growing list of Canadian political mud-slinging matches that have taken a litigious turn. Scheer had already employed some overheated rhetoric at earlier stages of the controversy, accusing Trudeau of exerting \u201cfrankly illegal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":63356,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[1623],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-63355","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-expert-perspectives"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/63355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/63355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63358,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/63355\/revisions\/63358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=63355"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=63355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}