Talk:Political libel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Are the Canadian cases political libel or just libel? Is Canadian libel law really more pro plaintiff than the libel law of England and Wales? The Canadian stuff looks like it needs an expert eye. Secretlondon 15:13, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Added "bias" template for just this reason. Revived 22:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Do Prime Ministers sue the Official Opposition in any other country using common law? No. The Harper case ought to settle the issue. The premise of the article that this an archaic curiosity that happens only in Canada seems to have been well validated by recent events. There are also a few other minor cases involving Gerard Kennedy and the National Post, many petty politicians suing each other in New Brunswick, and even the Premier of Saskatchewan, Brad Wall, filing such a suit that he quickly withdrew. It's difficult or impossible to represent the motives of any of these suits as other than political positioning. Certainly no provable damages are involved.

Read the references - the Canadian laws provide for only a very narrow exemption for comment within the legislature. Even when those exact comments are cited in a press release or press report, they are not priveleged, no matter how important the public issue nor how prominent the advocate nor how widespread the opinion. This is so much narrower an exemption than in any other common law country that it allows for libel suits to be used to political ends. If there are even one half as many such cases per capita in any other common law country then it might be possible to argue that there is no qualitative difference in the libel laws. However given the situation as it stands, the Harper case seems to settle the issue of whether or not there is any strange unique aspect to Canadian libel law. So the bias check tag will come off if there is no objection? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.78.212 (talk) 22:52, 6 May 2008 (UTC)