Township's lawsuit casts chill over free speech Resident's complaint a 'wilful vilification' of fire service, lawsuit argues An Eastern Ontario township is suing one of its citizens for defamation in a rare lawsuit the national civil liberties movement is condemning as a chilling attempt for a government to muzzle free speech. Donald Page has been a thorn in the side of Montague Township for almost a year for complaining to the Ontario fire marshal and a community newspaper about the shoddy performance of the volunteer fire department in a blaze that left a woman dead. The case raises the virtually untested question of when, or even if, governments can sue citizens who speak out. "It has never raised its head in Canada until now," said Mr. Page, a retired engineer and public servant. "If they succeed, then any elected body in Canada will be free to do this." The township, just north of Smiths Falls, is seeking $50,000 from Mr. Page for mounting "a campaign of wilful vilification" in an attempt to damage the reputations of the township, its reeve, council, senior fire services management and firefighters, says a statement of claim in the Ontario Superior Court. "This is about volunteer firefighters who work for nothing ... and they have been accused of things which are totally unacceptable and untrue," said township lawyer Timothy Rae. "You tell me how the right of a free society permits someone to go around saying things like that without being held accountable?" Mr. Page and his wife, Jean, were driving to town for Christmas shopping last December when they spotted the fire, Mr. Page said in an interview. The Pages rescued a dog from the blaze, but then left matters to volunteer firefighters who had arrived on the scene. But Mr. Page said they were ill-equipped to enter a burning house and did not attempt to venture inside for about 20 minutes. "We need assurances that our Montague firefighters will be required to undergo the training which, as we observed, they lack," Mr. Page wrote in a complaint to the Ontario fire marshal last January. "We also expect that the senior management of the Montague fire service will be held accountable for this lack of training." Soon after, Mr. Page said he received a letter from the township reeve threatening a defamation lawsuit unless he withdrew his letter to the fire marshal. The township alleges in court documents the written complaint contained false information and "innuendo" the "members of the Montague fire service were poorly trained, ill-equipped to carry out their duties, and in fact, on the occasion of the Riceville (Road) fire were responsible for a fatality, all of which is false." Over the next few months, both sides refused to back down and Mr. Page wrote a letter to the the Smiths Falls Record News, complaining of a "rogue fire department" and "extremely poor leadership, both within the fire service and in the township council." He appeared at a township meeting saying a councillor had tried to bully him into silence. The town filed its lawsuit in August in the Ontario Superior Court. Representatives from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, alerted by the local ratepayers association, hopped a train from Toronto to Montague yesterday to warn the town council against filing lawsuits against citizens "It's a highly dubious thing to do," said Alan Borovoy, the association's general counsel. "You can imagine that citizens who have critical comments to make about the functioning of their municipal governments, a lot of them are going to be chilled out of making them when they hear somebody is being sued for it." Mr. Page's lawyer, Paul Leaman, will appear in court on Dec. 22 in an attempt to have the lawsuit declared meritless and thrown out of court. For a defamation suit to succeed, a plaintiff must show an intent to damage a person's reputation. However, the fact a statement is true is a defence that has been established in Canadian courts. Mr. Leaman said governments in some countries are banned from suing citizens.
In 1993, for instance, the British House of Lords declared it is in the
public interest for governments to be open to uninhibited criticism, regardless
of its merits. |