By Lee Greenberg, Ottawa Citizen
TORONTO — Three Ontario Crown attorneys have launched a $5-million defamation suit against provincial politicians Randy Hillier and John Yakabuski, claiming the two Conservatives harmed their reputations through a series of libellous statements.
The case stems from a workplace accident at an Eastern Ontario sawmill in 2007, where a worker broke his pelvis. Ministry of Labour investigators subsequently found the machine was inadequately guarded and the employee, Richard Hudder, insufficiently trained on its operation.
Prosecutors laid four charges against Gulick Forest Products Ltd. under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. After 16 months, at the surfacing of what they said was new information, prosecutors withdrew those charges.
A lawyer for the three government lawyers said his clients dropped the charges when the injured employee was deemed an unreliable witness.
“He changed his story,” said Tim Gleason. “And the Crown decided he was not a credible witness because he changed his story.”
That explanation didn’t sit well with Hillier and Yakabuski, who criticized the handling of the case by prosecutors, insisting the government lawyers unfairly hounded the family-run business in Palmer Rapids, Ont.
Yakabuski insisted, in the Ontario legislature, the four charges stemming from the accident — charges that carried as much as $2 million worth of penalties — were designed to scare Gulick Forest Products into pleading guilty and accepting a comparatively small $65,000 fine.
In a joint news release demanding an inquiry into the case, Hillier went one step further, accusing the unnamed Crown attorneys of breaking the law.
“It’s a problem when those who are supposed to enforce the law are the ones who break it,” Hillier said in the statement.
In court-filed documents, the three prosecutors — Linda Chen, Catherine Glaister and Daniel Kleiman — said they “have been made the subject of public odium, scandal and contempt” as a result of the publication of the accusations.
Under Canadian law, politicians’ speech inside legislatures is given blanket immunity from legal recourse. That so-called “absolute privilege” also applies to courtroom proceedings.
Yakabuski and Hillier’s lawyer Julian Porter is arguing his clients are also protected by “qualified privilege” — a less firm protection commonly associated with media reporting on official affairs.
“That will be an important argument,” Porter said in an interview. “There have been a number of western cases which emphasize the duty of a member of Parliament to ventilate issues of concern.”
The suit also names journalist Gerald Tracey, the editor and publisher of the small weekly paper the Eganville Leader. The Crown attorneys are arguing the newspaper failed in its duty to seek the prosecutors’ side of the story in reporting on Hillier’s and Yakabuski’s allegations.
Hillier said the $5-million lawsuit is “ludicrous.”
“I don’t believe they’ve been harmed whatsoever. They will have to demonstrate loss of income,” he said.
“I’m confident it will be a very, very dark day in our country when members of Parliament are not allowed to raise questions when there are clear allegations of inappropriate conduct,” Hillier said.
