Day 3

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.

Caylan again took the stand and continued testifying for the rest of the day.  She continued to explain that:

·      After she had learned of Jivraj’s dirty politics their friendship was severed, but she did occasionally communicate with him thereafter and tolerated his abusive ways because he had asked for her help and she tried to provide it;

·      When they ha been friends, Jivraj had told Caylan of a business in which he had been involved in the US that took money from customers but did not deliver as promised; he was concerned that his presence in Canada might become known to his victims;

·      In a later confrontational phone call between them, Jivraj accused her of being a traitor;

·      Jivraj moved to Calgary in May, 2017 and Caylan helped him find both employment and housing;

·      Jivraj ostensibly sought office as a Calgary federal MP candidate, and he raised funds from donors, but his supposed candidacy never appeared on any official party documents;

·      While on maternity leave Caylan was finishing her Masters thesis at Washington State U; the subject of the thesis was the crime of genocide;

·      She was also working on her Oxford degree in 2017 and tumultuous events were then occurring: the Syrian war and, in England, Brexit, immigration, immigrant criminal conduct, immigration backlash;

·      Caylan started thinking about returning to Calgary in 2016, she purchased a Calgary home in July 2017, took title to the home in October, and moved personal possessions to the house in December;

·      Caylan made 2 trips to Calgary in 2017, to coordinate renovations, to enroll her child in the Lycee, and to register with a midwifery as she was expecting her 2nd child;

·      To register for the midwifery Caylan needed to be an Alberta resident so she cancelled her Ontario drivers license and purchased an Alberta license; she considered herself an Alberta resident from that time forward;

·      Caylan developed an interest in becoming an electoral candidate in 2017, upon completing her move to Calgary in 2018, she talked to prominent Alberta Conservatives including Preston Manning;

·      Jason Kenney was then the leader of the UCP; Caylan attended an event at which he was speaking, asked questions in the Q and A, and talked with Kenney at the end of the meeting; the talk was about philosophy;

·      On a later date Caylan met with Kennedy and he encouraged her to seek a nomination to become a candidate; he told her that she would have to compete in a nomination contest to win the nomination; they discussed ridings and Caylan expressed a preference for Mountainview;

·      Caylan explained the candidate nomination process to the court and explained that it requires a majority vote of Party members in the constituency;

·      Caylan entered the nomination contest to become a candidate in Mountain;

·      Caylan read aloud an exhibit which was an email to her from Jivraj in which he stated that he was consumed by jealousy of Caylan and her accomplishments;

·      In March, 2018, Caylan attended a fund-raiser for the Party; Jivraj was present;

·      After the fundraiser, Alan Hallman (a power broker in UCP circles) invited some of those who had attended to an “after-party” at his house;

·      Both Caylan and Jivraj attended the after-party; he became drunk and asked Caylan to drive him home; during the drive home he told Caylan that those attending the after party hated her; she didn’t believe him;

·      Jivraj sent Caylan an email acknowledging that he was an asshole and apologizing; {click HERE to view]

·      Phil Schuman (“Phil”) was a Party nomination candidate in a different riding; he called Caylan and told her that he had heard rumours that she, Caylan, had accused him, Phil, of sexual harassment;

·      Caylan categorically denied the allegation and asked for his source; Phil disclosed that the source was Jivraj;

·      Phil then sent Caylan copies of the texts written by Jivraj saying that Caylan had made the allegations and Caylan realized that she had become a target of Jivraj;

·      Jivraj called Caylan and she, for the first and only time in her life, recorded the conversation;

·      The taped conversation was played aloud in court;

·      In the taped conversation, Caylan accused Jivraj of: making pernicious statements about her, disseminating vicious rumours, and having ulterior motives; she asked why he had said that she was a racist bigot and that people hated her;

·      Jivraj fervently denied Caylan’s accusations;

·      Caylan then told him that she had copies of the texts he had sent to Phil; she added that she didn’t want any part of him;

·      Caylan testied that Jivraj was a person of “habitual mendacity”;

·      Shortly thereafter, Phil suggested a meeting between the 3 of them and they agreed to meet at Merchants restaurant; Jivraj showed up late and drunk and offered Caylan a gift which she refused;

·      When confronted with the evidence, Jivraj asked all of them to put their phones on the table so there would be no recording;

·      Jivraj then explained that his malfeasance was a result of his alcoholism and acknowledged that he had been the source of the rumour about Caylan, he said that he was intending to go to AA and that Caylan had been the only person that had been kind to him;

·      Jivraj continued drinking through the meeting, incurred about $70 in alcohol expense and refused to pay at the end of the meeting;

·      After the meeting, at about 3:00 AM, Jivraj sent Caylan a stream of abusive texts accusing her of being a traitor and demanding that she delete the string of Messages they had exchanged;

·      Caylan did delete all of the Messages, and blocked Jivraj;

·      Later in March, Jivraj called Caylan and asked her to attend an AA meeting with him; she declined and recommended that he get a sponsor;

·      Caylan was obliged to inform her employer, the federal government, if she would be engaging in partisan politics, and she did so;

·      Caylan’s second baby was born;

·      Caylan developed a friendship with Sadiq, who was experienced in managing political campaigns and owned a polling company;

·      With the help of Sadiq and other volunteers Caylan developed and organized a campaign;

·      Caylan started door knocking and through the course of the campaign knocked on many thousand doors, more than any other candidate;

·      Caylan intended to use the domain name caylanford.ca for her campaign website;

·      She learned on May 2 that someone had purchased the domain name caylanford.ca  

·      After spending $1,000 investigating, she learned that it was Jivraj that had purchased the domain name;

·      She communicated with Jivraj and asked him to relinquish the name; he refused;

·      Caylan started a costly arbitration proceeding to get the domain name and ultimately Jivraj agreed to let her use her own name;

·      To enter the nomination contest Caylan needed 100 signatures from Party members in Mountainview; she started door knocking and selling memberships and obtained the necessary signatures;

·      She became a nomination candidate; raised $18K in campaign funds, recruited a strong volunteer team; printed campaign literature;

·      Caylan didn’t see Jivraj from late April until July, when he invited her to his campaign launch at Pete Club. She declined and wished him well.

·      A friend who had become involved in Jivraj’s campaign told Caylan that Jivraj was going to take over the Mountainview constituency board and destroy her;

·      The Mountainview constituency was a new constituency for the Party and had to become organized;

·      A Mountainview inauguration meeting was held and Jivraj was there with Hlady (see Glossary) who had once been an MLA in the riding and had some support;

·      Jivraj and Hlady “packed” the inauguration meeting and managed to elect Jivraj as a director and as president of Caylan’s Mountainview constituency board of directors; 

·      Jivraj then wrote a letter and then duped 9 members of the constituency board into signing it;

·      The letter is a key exhibit which can be viewed; {click HERE to view]

·      Later one of the duped board members wrote to Caylan, explaining that he was duped, apologizing, and telling of his suspicions of Jivraj; {click HERE to view]

·      The letter is a “Formal Conduct Complaint” and “Request for Investigation” into Caylan as a nomination candidate;

·      Both the letter and the Membership Application attached to it misstate the UCP eligibility rules

·      The letter then states that if both the misstated rules, and the facts stated about Caylan were correct,Caylan deliberately misrepresented herself to the Party and attempted to fraudulently circumvent Party rules; referred to Caylan as a “parachute candidate”;

·      The letter then goes on to pose a series of questions based on the assumption that the former statements about Caylan were true;

·      The letter is signed by the 9 members of the board but was not signed by Jivraj;

·      Jivraj widely circulated the letter on social media and arranged for its publication in Press Progress;

·      Caylan testified at length itemizing the falsehoods in the letter;

·      She explained that Jivraj’s statement of party rules was wrong;

·      The statement about her residency was wrong;

·      The term “parachute candidate” has 3 constituent elements which she stated

·      She did not have any of the 3 constituent elements;

·      Jivraj sent the letter to Press Progress, to the Calgary Herald, and to the CBC;

·      Press Progress published the letter but neither the Herald nor the CBC published it;

·      A Herald reporter talked to Caylan and she explained the falsity of the letter and the Herald did not publish

·      Caylan investigated and learned that Press Progress was in fact the Broadbent Institute, committed to the election of “progressive” (NDP) candidates;

·      Press Progress never identified the authors of its publications; never stated that the allegations were unproven; in articles about Caylan, they identified Caylan with disqualified candidates, suggesting that she should be disqualified;

·      Press Progress published the letter on October 13; they lighlighted  certain portions for emphasis;

·      No indication in Press Progress article that allegations were unproven;

·      The Press Progress article is still live on the Press Progress website;

Caylan introduced into evidence many derogatory publications about her; one of the many trial exhibits is at Tab 4: {click HERE to view].

Another: Tab 5 {click HERE to view].  

·      Caylan went thru the letter paragraph by paragraph and identified each of the many false statements or innuendos it contained; she told why they false;

·      Caylan wrote to the Party requesting an investigation about the letter and asking for the public removal of Jivraj as president and a member of the board;

·      The Party, after investigation, wholly cleared Caylan and confirmed that she was a legitimate candidate, but they did not remove Jivraj because the Party had due process requirements to remove constituency board members and those requirements could not be satisfied;

·      Also on Oct. 13, Lucia Corbella, a Herald columnist, wrote a very favorable profile of Caylan.

Court adjourned.

Comment

·      The taped conversation played aloud in court was shocking; it clearly demonstrated that Jivraj was a liar;

·      The day’s testimony was a compelling story of treachery.

Day 2

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.

Richard Harrison (“Richard”), who is Caylan’s Counsel, commenced his opening statement which lasted almost 3 hours.  He explained Caylan’s case, detailed the grievous conduct of each Defendant in turn, and gave reasons why the defences to defamation were not available to the Defendants.  He stated that:

·      The case dwarfs all prior defamation cases in Canada’s legal history because of both the severity of the defamations and the broad national scope of their publication;

·      Caylan had been described as a terrorist, a white supremist, a racist, homophobic, a bozo;

·      She is none of those things;

·      Caylan’s life and career were ruined by events which occurred in a period of a few hours on March 18, 2019;

·      Caylan became unemployable, became a social pariah, she lost friends and her marriage ended;

·      To make Caylan’s case he needed only to prove defamation, legally defined as anything that “lowered the reputation” of Caylan;

·      The Defendants had to defend by proving one of the 5 legal defences to defamation;

·      None of the legal defences were available to any of the Defendants and he explained why the none of those defences was available;

·      He would call 4 expert witnesses to testify of the mental distress and psychological damage suffered by Caylan;

Richard described Caylan in glowing terms and gave details of her education and many accomplishments.

Richard stated that he could and would prove that:

·      Jivraj was the sole source of the defamatory material;

·      Jivraj was “a unique individual in the worst connotation”; he was conniving, obsessive, deceitful, manipulative, Machiavellian;

·      The Defendants gave anonymity to Jivraj although they knew of his bad character;

·      None of the individuals responsible for the publications believed what they were publishing about Caylan;

·      Press Progress was guilty of “yellow journalism”, which he defined;

·      Both Broadbent Institute and CBC knew that Jivraj had “an axe to grind” against Caylan;

·      Press Progress had received the defamatory materials from Jivraj months before, but withheld publication until the eve of the election because Jivraj told them that it would then “do the most damage”;

·      CBC and Broadbent Institute were guilty of malice;

·      CBC lied to Caylan on 5 different occasions; Richard provided details of each such occasion;

·      The Toronto Star “piled on”, widely published 13 defamatory articles with large photos of Caylan, characterized Caylan as “promoting white supremacy”, but never explained exactly why that was the case;

·      journalist Defendant Emma McIntosh and Defendant lawyer Avnish Nanda (who wrote a piece for the Edmonton Journal and made multiple social media posts) echoed one another online to amplify defamatory statements about Caylan;

·       there was sheer recklessness in how Nanda operated; 

·       McIntosh’s comments were driven by rage,

·       Nanda published roughly 70 individual social media posts in which he repeatedly called Caylan a white supremacist.

·       Nanda never spoke to Ford before publishing any of the materials; Caylan asked to meet him for coffee for a dialogue but he declined;

Richard told of the witnesses he would call and what their testimony would be about and concluded his opening statement with the following quotation from Mr. Justice Strekaf’s decision in the Alberta lawsuit Kent v. Martin:

These cases involve the law of defamation.  Defamation is a tort that reflects a balancing of some important values in Canadian society, including the fundamental right to freedom of expression and an individual’s right to their reputation.  Also at play in these cases is the public interest in receiving fair and accurate information about candidates during an election campaign in a democratic society

Perry Mack, KC - defence Counsel for The Broadbent Institute then delivered an opening statement in which he first identified the legal defences to defamation and then stated that:

·      the main defence of Broadbent Institute was that a person, “cannot be defamed by your own words”, and that what Press Progress (Broadbent Institute) did was publish Caylan’s words;

·      Caylan had refused to explain the words she used after being asked to do so;

·      the subject publications were matters of public interest;

·      when Caylan became a political candidate she had no right to complain about publications in the public interest;

·      Jivraj was granted anonymity on legitimate grounds of “source privilege”;

·      Caylan’s words were not decontextualized; Caylan and Jivraj were “philosophical soulmates”;

·      The “fraudulent candidate” letter was signed by the board of Caylan’s constituency association;

·      Jivraj swore and provided to Broadbent Institute an affidavit in which he stated that the material he provided was true;

·      Broadbent employee Lebrun wrote to Caylan asking her to answer questions before the pp article was printed and she did not respond;

·      The Press Progress article was just a “list of quotations” and he read each quote;

·      defamation would not have occurred if Caylan had explained her words;

·      Jivraj was only a conduit;

·      The media had the right and duty to report on statements by persons seeking public office.

Mr. Mack’s opening statement was then concluded.

BREAK

Caylan took the stand and was sworn in.  She described her early life, (including that she quit drinking forever when she was 15 year old) how she became interested in politics, how her philosophical views evolved, how she became an activist involved with marginalized communities, particularly Falun Dafa, and the persecution of that sect by the Chinese Communist regime.  She continued her testimony to explain:

·       how she became a target of Chinese authority, how they watched and harassed her and tried to impede her activities, and of her experiences with the Chinese Consulate in Calgary;

·       how and where she obtained her graduate degree and 2 post-graduate degrees;

·       her activities with Congressional committees while living in Washington, DC and her activity on behalf of prisoners of conscience and the persecuted;

·       that “having a good time” to her meant engaging in dialectical conversations, learning about opposing views;

·       that upon graduating with her first Masters degree she was recruited by the Canadian government as a senior policy advisor in the Foreign Affairs ministry, and moved to Ottawa;

·       her role as senior policy advisor and some of her activities in that role;

·       that while expecting her first child she enrolled in Oxford to obtain a Masters degree in human rights law;

·       why she and her husband moved to Toronto after 5 years in Ottawa; that she continued to work with Foreign Affairs;

·       that she became involved in film making and became co-producer of Letter from Masanjia (2018),  which was about a hidden SOS note smuggled out of a labour camp in China, and which won an award for documentaries at the Calgary International Film Festival, and a co-writer of Ask No Questions (2020) which is about a Chinese religious minority framed for a suicide;

·       that she had decided to move to Calgary to raise her children, bought a house in Calgary in July 2017, got title in October, moved some goods into the house in December, and moved permanently into the house in April, 2018;

·       BREAK

·       How she met Jivraj at a political event while living in Toronto, was impressed by his interest in philosophy,  culture, and politics, became his Facebook friend, and how she commenced an extensive Facebook Messenger conversation with him, exchanging more than 600 Messages over a short period of time;

·       Talked about Tab 1 of Exhibits, which contains all the Messages exchanged; they completely fill a 3-inch binder;

·       it was from the ~600 tab 1 communications that Jivraj extracted snippets of conversation;

·       that she had to resort to a court proceeding to obtain the Messages because Jivraj would not consent to their release;

·       that she only obtained the Messages in 2022, and only then became able to defend herself;

·       that she learned how devious Jivraj was when he published false derogatory statements about a political personality and then re-published the same statements anonymously.

Comment

·       In my opinion Richard’s opening was very powerful;

·       Caylan has a huge vocabulary and expresses herself clearly and eloquently;

·       The defence that “no man can be defamed by his own words” is a legal principle, but is subject to many qualifications and exceptions;

·       If a defamation is published, the damage is done; posing questions to the victim hours before publication does not undo the damage;

·       Caylan was wise to not respond to the questions asked of her by Press Progress hours before the defamatory article was published; they were loaded questions about Caylan’s alleged philosophy, which was not at all her philosophy;

·       If a defamation is published the damage is done and asking for an explanation later does not undo that damage;

·       The “residency fraud” letter alleged by Broadbent Institute to have been signed “by the board” of Caylan’s constituency letter was in fact signed by 9 of the 26 members of that board;

·       Caylan is providing a great deal of detail, the importance of which may become important as the trial unfolds.

Day 1

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. 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.

The first day of the trial was fully taken up by preliminary evidentiary objections made by the Defendants.  Because the objections were preliminary in nature, the trial could not start until they had been heard. Madam Justice ultimately ruled on many of the objections, of which a few were sustained; most were dismissed, and a few were reserved.  These proceedings took up the whole day.

The Court adjourned for the day.

Comment
Not an interesting day. It was largely taken up with technical legal arguments mostly concerning the admissibility of evidence.