Day 4

Note:  I am a poor note-taker and these summaries will contain errors and omissions which will reflect my limitations.  My intention is to report on the facts as accurately as possible although a subconscious bias may creep in.  I can only provide glimpses into what I see as relevant and interesting events. My goal is to capture the essence of the day’s events rather than be comprehensive.

Read the reference documents: The Legal Case and Events Leading to Trial to obtain an understanding of the case and its history.  Names and terms are abbreviated and defined in  Glossary.

NB:  I now have the tape of the conversation between Caylan and Jivraj reported in my Day 3 summary.  It is the conversation in which she disclosed to him that she knew about his treachery concerning the Phil incident and he denied and obfuscated.  It is a 25-minute-long tape but clearly identifies the character of each of them.  If interested, start at the 4 minute mark.   [click HERE to listen]  Tab 110.

DAY 4

Caylan again took the stand and testified to the effect that:

·      Licia Corbella, a Calgary Herald journalist, interviewed Caylan at length, and on Oct 13, she published a flattering profile of Caylan in the Herald;

·      Mountainview riding maintained a highly-confidential email address list of UCP members who lived in the riding;

·      As president of the constituency association, Jivraz could access this list;

·      On November 25, an email was sent to about 1400 of those party members in the riding;

·      the email was entitled Caylan Ford: Too Good to Live Here; Tab 57, [click HERE to view]

·      the email contained a letter purportedly signed by ”Mountain Vew Grassroots Conservatives”;

·      The letter, written by Jivraj, contained many false and derogatory accusations about Caylan; 

·      The letter alleged that Caylan was deceptive and evasive, a liar, arrogant, that she refused  to be honest and transparent, was disdainful of Mountainview residents, that she had never had a job in Calgary, she was not trustworthy, and that she thought of Mountainview as a pit stop on the way to Ottawa;

Caylan introduced her letter called “A Response To Your Concerns” clearly identifying the falsehoods in the “Too Good” letter.  [It is a good read] [click HERE to view] Tab: A Response To Your Concerns

She then continued:

·      Caylan asked Janice Herrington, Executive Director of the UCP to conduct a formal investigation into the “Too Good” letter and to terminate Jivraj;

·      after investigating, the Party issued an official public statement totally exonerating Caylan of the accusations made in that letter;

·      Members of the constituency board became unhappy with Jivraj;

·      the UCP Party gave Jivraj the option of resigning or being forced out as president; he resigned.

·      Caylan spoke highly of two of her opponents in the nomination contest, Jeremy Wong and Becca Polak;

·      Hlady [identified in Glossary] was for a short while a candidate in the nomination contest; the Party subsequently disqualified him;

·      Hlady was a Jivraj ally and published false material concerning Caylan;

·      Caylan’s campaign was progressing well; her volunteers had put in thousands of hours of work; the campaign was confident of success, especially after Jivraj was removed from the board;

·      There was a massive turnout for the nomination vote which Caylan won with 501 votes; the closest opponent, Wong, received  371;

·      although she had been successful in the nomination contest, Caylan had foreboding about Jivraj because she knew he would not stop trying to destroy her;

·      Press Progress was trying to assassinate Caylan; their articles became increasingly defamatory as time progressed; versions of or extracts from them were published across Canada on the air, in the press, and became ubiquitous on social media;

·      Caylan wrote Press Progress 6 different times informing them that their allegations about her were false and explaining why; for an example, Tab 58 [click HERE to view].

·      Press Progress did not change their articles after being informed they were false; they never interviewed Caylan or asked for a statement from her;

·      In Jauary or February 2019, Jivraj gave Press Progress the quotes which were later to appear in the damaging Press Progress Article of March 18;

·      Jivraj and Press Progress collaborated to withhold publication until it would “do the most damage”; that date turned out to be March 18;

·      In January, 2019, screen shot images of content from the Messages exchanged between Caylan and Jivraj in 2017 began appearing on social media; Caylan knew that Jivraj was responsible and became worried he would do worse;

·      Caylan filed a police report against Jivraj after someone unknown entered her house;

·      Thomas Lukaszik, former deputy premier of Alberta turned anti-Conservative activist, posted a Jivraj screen shot making adverse inferences about Caylan;

·      Jivraj filed a police report about Caylan accusing her of assault after she had touched him on the shoulder at a café; Caylan heard nothing from the police and assumed that they considered it a vexatious report;

·     Jivraj claimed that she had been investigated by the police

·      Starting in January or February 2018, both CBC and Toronto Star received material from “Whistleblower” containing 6 pages of deranged, conspiratorial allegations against Caylan, including an allegation of corruption;

·      Toronto Star later received a subsequent document from Whistleblower, it was 8 pages long, suggesting inflammatory headlines for Toronto Star articles about Caylan;

·      Whistleblower was  Jivraj;

·      CBC and Toronto Star both “sat upon” the Whistleblower allegations from January or February until March 18;

·      Neither of them contacted Caylan or inquired about those allegations until March 19;

·      Caylan’s campaign was going well; phone surveys showed she had more support than any other candidate; they were prepared and organized, had an experienced campaign manager, and had over 100 volunteers, Caylan was growing confident of electoral success;

·      March 18 was the critical day; the writ was to be dropped the next day;

·      Caylan’s campaign had a “launch party” at party HQ attended by about 12 volunteers; she had received shipment of 1000s of lawn signs; they were making a distribution plan and the door-knocking campaign; it was busy;

·      At about 4:00 PM Caylan first saw an email from the Press Progress reporter Lebrun [identified in Glossary] containing quotes of statements allegedly written by Caylan, stating that Press Progress intended to publish an article about Caylan containing those quotes, then asking questions of Caylan and demanding a response by 6:00 PM;

[The email is a critical document, Tab TB1000144, [click HERE to view] Go to the bottom of the exhibit and then scroll up for sequence.]

·      Caylan couldn’t tell whether the quotes were authentic because she had deleted her copies of the Messages;

·      Caylan knew that Press Progress had already published 3 false and defamatory articles about her and had never corrected any of them when given the true facts;

·      The questions asked in the email were loaded with embedded assumptions about her beliefs and those embedded assumptions were  false;

·      The unfair questions could never be answered in 2 hours;

·      she knew that Press Progress would not give any meaningful opportunity to respond, that their objective was to elect her NDP opponent;

·      she knew that Jivraj was the source of the quotes;

·      she knew that Press Progress wanted to keep Jivraj anonymous because of his sordid reputation; they were trying to mask him with credibility;

·      Caylan did not respond to Press Progress.

Court adjourned.

Testimony about the Press Progress publication was to the effect that:

·      it was published at 6:45 PM;

·      it was immediately picked up every Canadian news organization, and started circulating broadly on the internet;

·      none of the news organizations contacted her before publishing;

·      the NDP immediately published a press release entitled “UCP Candidate Complained ‘White Supremacist Terrorists’ Are Treated Unfairly’, Leaked Messages Show”;

·      pressure on the Party intensified; around 11:00 PM on March 18th, the Party asked her to resign as a candidate within 10 minutes;

·      she resigned;

·      Her resignation letter explained her situation Tab 61 [click HERE to view];

·      Lebrun was the editor of Press Progress and author of the article;

·      he knew that Jivraj had been making up lies about Caylan for a year;

Comment

After Caylan had decisively won the nomination contest to become the UCP candidate her prospects for election looked excellent despite the ongoing attempts by Jivraj and Press Progress to sabotage her.

March 18th changed everything; her political career was shattered on that day.

Press Progress knew how dishonest and treacherous Jivraj was because of their history publishing his false materials;

CBC should have known how dishonest and treacherous Jivraj was, both from Caylan’s resignation letter and, particularly, from the taped conversation;

Jivraj and Press Progress, with the help of the CBC, had succeeded in destroying her political career. 

The worst was yet to come.