Judge orders Ezra Levant to pay $25,000

The National Post:

A judge has ordered free speech activist Ezra Levant to pay $25,000 to Giacomo Vigna, a Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer, for libelling him with "reckless indifference" to the truth in blog posts about a major hate speech case.

By accusing Mr. Vigna -- who once represented the CHRC in the prosecution of Freedomsite.orgwebmaster Marc Lemire -- of lying to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, switching critical evidence, failing to honour a promise to the Tribunal chair, and being fired, Mr. Levant "spoke in reckless disregard of the truth and for an ulterior purpose of denormalizing the Human Rights Commission across Canada which makes his statements malicious in that sense." Mr. Justice Robert Smith also ordered Mr. Levant to remove the libellous materials from his website within 15 days. They remained there Friday night, and Mr. Levant said he is getting advice from his lawyers about an appeal.

Mr. Levant's failure to check his facts or seek Mr. Vigna's side of the story meant that he could not claim the new libel defence of "responsible communication on a matter of public interest," introduced this year by the Supreme Court of Canada.

"While the transcripts are a reliable source, Levant did not read the ... transcripts in a diligent manner, but rather chose to extract only one part of the exchange which was taken out of context," the judge wrote. "Given the total lack of urgency, Levant should have sought Vigna's side of the story before publishing the defamatory statements.

"He did not want to check the facts as a responsible journalist would have done because this would interfere with his opportunity to ridicule the Human Rights Commission," Mr. Justice Smith ruled.

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