Events Leading to Trial

After graduating from George Washington University in Washington DC, in 2010, the Canadian government Foreign Affairs ministry recruited Caylan as a senior policy advisor. 

 In 2015, while on maternity leave following the birth of her first child, she and her family moved to Toronto. Caylan began making feature documentary films related to human rights abuses in China, and commenced a second, part-time Master's degree in International Human Rights Law at Oxford. 

While living in Toronto, Caylan met and became a platonic friend of Karim Jivraj (Jivraj) through conservative political circles. They commenced to correspond via Facebook Messenger for about 6 months, during which they exchanged more  than 600 Messages.  Their communications were didactic and intellectual conversations about cultural, philosophical and political subjects.  

In the summer of 2017, after alienating himself from the conservative political establishment in Ontario, Jivraj moved to Caylan's hometown of Calgary. With Caylan's assistance, he obtained employment with a Calgary law firm. Although he had some legal education while formerly living in France, he was not qualified to practice law in Alberta or even to article with a law firm. He aspired to run for a seat in parliament in Calgary but was not warmly received by the political establishment. 

Caylan also returned home to Calgary in late 2017. She was working remotely for the Canadian foreign ministry and was expecting her second child. She joined the Alberta UCP party attracting the attention of Jason Kenney, the then-leader of the party.  Kenney encouraged her to seek a nomination and run as a candidate for the party.

While on maternity leave following the birth of her second child, Caylan sought the UCP nomination in the constituency of Calgary Mountainview  (Mountainview), where she had lived while attending university.  

When Jivraj learned about Caylan’s bid to enter the nomination contest to become the UCP candidate in the upcoming provincial election, he deliberately set out to sabotage her.  The sabotage began in the fall of 2018 when he told another political candidate, Phil, that Caylan had told others that that Phil had sexually harassed  her.    Phil, understandingly alarmed, called Caylan and learned that Jivraj had lied.  When confronted by Phil, Jivraj denied being the source, but a stream of texts confirmed he had spread the false rumours.  The three of them finally had a confrontational meeting in a restaurant, and phil produced the incriminating texts, and Jivraj finally admitted that he was the source, blamed it on alcoholism, and stated his intention to join AA.

Realizing that Caylan would be a candidate in the Mountainview riding, Jivraj purchased the internet domain name, caylanford.ca, preventing her from establishing a website under her own name. Jivraz refused to return the name and Caylan was forced to resort to a costly arbitration proceeding to recover the name, which she did. 

Jivraj then cunningly managed to become president of  the board of the UCP Mountainview Constituency Association, to frustrate her nomination efforts and seek her disqualification. He authored a letter suggesting that Caylan had misrepresented her residency qualifications and was a was a fraud.  He then duped 9 other members of the board into signing the letter and sent it to the press.  The allegations in the letter were not true.  Caylan asked the UCP party to conduct an investigation into the letter and disqualify Jivraj from the board.  After investigating, the Party published a public statement exonerating Caylan and confirming the legitimacy of her nomination bid.  Notwithstanding its falsity, the “residency fraud” letter or parts of it was repeatedly published by Press Progress (Broadbent Institute) and many others and continued to be a huge problem for Caylan. 

In November, Jivraj purchased numerous Google "attack ads" which appeared whenever anyone did a Google search of Caylan's name.  He purchased different forms of such ads and in one, he fabricated a quotation and falsely attributed it to her. The same month, he used a pseudonymous email return address to write a letter containing numerous false and disparaging statements about Caylan.  He sent the letter ~1,400 UCP electors in Mountainview, whose email addresses were confidential, but Jivraj was president of the Constituency Association and made unauthorized use of its mailing list to publish a letter derogatory of a party candidate.

Mr. Justice Graesser of the Court of King’s Bench  presided over a subsequent restraining order trial in another lawsuit between Caylan and Jivraz.  In his written judgment the Justice had these words to say about Jivraz:

Mr. Jivraj’s motives were based on jealousy and spite. His wish to harm Ms. Ford had nothing to do with the politics other than to destroy the political aspirations of a former friend who was finding success in contrast to Mr. Jivraj’s own failures.

Despite these challenges, in December 2018 Caylan won a heavily contested three-way nomination to become the UCP candidate.

Mountainview was considered a 'target' seat by each of Alberta's main political parties. It had no incumbent. Caylan was running against then-justice minister for the NDP (Kathleen Ganley) and the leader of Alberta Liberal Party (David Khan). She was widely regarded as a star candidate, her fundraising had been very successful, she had strong support from the board and over 100 campaign volunteers.  Internal voter identification clearly indicated that she was the likely winner in the riding. 

But 29 days before the election, Press Progress (Broadbent Institute) published an article accusing Caylan of sympathizing with white supremacist terrorists. They claimed that in a private online conversation years earlier, she “complained that white supremacist terrorists are treated unfairly,” “echoed white nationalist rhetoric,” and lamented that Western civilization would “collapse” as a result of immigration.  

The article was based on short, edited snippets picked from the many Messages exchanged between Caylan and Jivraj when they lived in Toronto, taken completely out of context. The full text of the conversation was never disclosed or made available for independent scrutiny. Jivraj was not named in the article and his identity was concealed. Caylan maintained that the characterizations of her views contained in the article were gross distortions, but she had deleted her copies of their Messenger conversations.  Being unable to find the Messages, Caylan had no resource with which to dispute the statements published by Press Progress.

Jivraj was the sole source of the edited, decontextualized quotes attributed to Caylan, and the only evidence he provided to Press Progress and the CBC to prove the veracity of the quotes were images on his phone.

Much later, in the course of the restraining order lawsuit, Cayla’s legal Counsel asked Jivraj for an undertaking to provide the complete Messages but Jivraj but he stated (falsely, and under oath) that he had deleted them. Caylan turned to Facebook, but Facebook would only release the Messages if Jivraj consented, and he would not consent.  Caylan then commenced a court action to have Facebook produce the records.to compel production.  Jivraj opposed the action but the court finally struck him out of the action for contempt of court, and Facebook then produced the Messages.  In late 2022, Caylan finally became capable of demonstrating the falsity of the Press Progress article.

The Press Progress article ignited a media storm that spread across Canada.  Articles based on the Press Progress story were featured in all forms of media and went viral on the internet.  Publications like Progress Alberta, the Toronto Star, and the CBC repeatedly published columns or stories based on the Press Progress narrative, often adding more inflammatory hyperbole and making the accusations more damning.  The NDP immediately wrote a press release demanding that Caylan be removed as a candidate.  The mayors of both Calgary and Edmonton made derogatory remarks about Caylan's moral fitness to stand for office. Political leaders chimed in, and internet trolls immediately launched savage attacks on Caylan, often laden with profanity.

In the other lawsuit between Caylan and Jivraj, Mr. Justice Graeser in his written judgment said the following about Jivraj:

After the media storm following the receipt of this letter Mr Jivraj sent a letter to his ‘Fellow Board Members’ referring to the letter as ‘a private complaint apparently filed by individuals who happened to be members’.  The letter then warns them ‘no internal party correspondence should be discussed outside the board’.  He cautioned them that they had a fiduciary duty to protect the Board’s and the Party’s interests.

Jivraj continued his campaign against Caylan.  In November, 2018, he sent an anonymous email using the email account ‘mountainviewconservatives’ and signed ‘Mountainview Grassroots Conservatives’ to all UCP members in the constituency.  It was entitled ‘Too Good to Live Here’ and made various complaints about Caylan, including fabricated comments  attributed to her disparaging the Mountainview area of Calgary.  The email encouraged voters to ‘vote for someone with integrity’.    [He was obviously not referring to Caylan.]

Jivraj also purchased attack ads on Google urging readers to reject Caylan’s candidacy.  The ads contained a hyperlink to the Press Progress article about the residency controversy. The ads would appear when anyone did an internet search of Caylan’s name.

When It was discovered that it was Jivraj that had authored the pseudonymous letter he was asked to resign his office as president of the riding association  He did so.

Ultimately, the UCP dismissed the residency complaint and accepted Caylan’s candidacy.  She was successful in winning the nomination  in Mountainview for the upcoming Provincial election.

Over 25 media publications will be a focus of the impending trial and Jivraj was the sole originating source for the Press Progress article, for the CBC and the Toronto Star articles, and for hundreds of other derogatory publications about Caylan.  Each of the media defendants concealed Jivraj’s identity as the source.

As a direct result of the Press Progress article Caylan was asked by the Party to resign as a candidate.   Caylan resigned on the day the writ was dropped.  Her political career was ruined and her personal life was devastated – because of a deliberate lie about which she could do nothing.

Caylan launched this lawsuit in 2020.  The Defendants raised many defense issues and Caylan fought interlocutory court battles (including an appeal to the Alberta Court of Appeal) which impeded and delayed the progress of the litigation.  The production of relevant documents and the interrogation of parties and parties’ representatives have taken years.  Caylan  also had a second lawsuit against Jivraj for a restraining order.

Caylan succeeded in all the previous court battles. 

Seven years after the event the biggest battle, the trial, has now begun. We are confident that justice will prevail.