Action4Canada - October 25, 2022


BC Anti-SLAPP Legislation Upended by LGBTQ Radicals


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

106.44498

Word count

414

Sentence count

23


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, and the legislative intent behind it is to stop people who are wealthy and in a position of power from exploiting the courts as a means by which to silence and punish critics.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 What happened, so various defamation claims started in the fall of 2018 and about six
00:00:15.520 months later, the BC government enacted this legislation.
00:00:21.720 We call it anti-SLAPP legislation.
00:00:25.320 And SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, and the legislative
00:00:33.880 intent behind it is to stop people who are wealthy and in a position of power, to stop
00:00:43.540 them from exploiting courts as a means by which to silence and punish critics.
00:00:48.420 You know, they can instigate litigation and drag people through the courts, and just the
00:00:53.440 consequences of that process can be very punitive and can have an effect on freedom of speech.
00:00:58.160 So the whole purpose of the SLAPP legislation is to prevent an abusive process in the courts.
00:01:06.560 Here what you've got is the president of one of the largest public sector unions, 45,000
00:01:12.900 some odd members, lined up with other large and powerful public sector unions, lined up
00:01:18.980 with the government of BC itself, a whole slew of special interest groups and well-funded
00:01:27.860 activists, all of whom are allied in an attempt to shut down any sort of debate about SOGI.
00:01:37.540 And they do this essentially by libeling those who speak out about SOGI.
00:01:46.680 So the whole SLAPP Act is being turned on its head here.
00:01:50.820 It's designed to protect people like Neufeld from being crushed in the courts.
00:01:58.100 And when he starts an action against Hansman, they turn that whole scheme on its head and
00:02:05.400 prevent Barry from having a day in court.
00:02:07.420 What happened was after Mr. Hansman filed his SLAPP application, Barry's libel case was
00:02:18.440 dismissed.
00:02:20.220 We then took it to appeal in the BC Court of Appeal, three judges at that level, set aside
00:02:26.180 the earlier decision and reinstated Barry's claim.
00:02:29.420 And then Mr. Hansman applied to the Supreme Court of Canada, which in a rather surprising
00:02:36.080 move, granted leave to appeal to Mr. Hansman.
00:02:40.880 And that appeal was heard last week in Ottawa.
00:02:44.840 And the issue, the issue here is simply whether Barry gets his day in court on a claim which
00:02:53.040 everyone agrees is meritorious.
00:02:55.100 There's no issue between the parties as to whether Barry's claim is valid.
00:03:01.280 It's just a question of whether Mr. Hansman can avoid a trial by way of this SLAPP legislation.
00:03:11.260 And the arguments that I tried to advance as best I could in Ottawa last week was that,
00:03:17.360 like I say, the whole SLAPP thing has been turned on its head.
00:03:21.820 Yeah.
00:03:25.100 .
00:03:25.600 .
00:03:46.860 .