ABSTRACT
The Supreme Court of Canada’s most recent pronouncement on defamation and anti-SLAPP law concerns allegations of bigotry. While the Court protected these allegations as valuable counterspeech, the case shows that anti-SLAPP laws can add complexity rather than simplifying. And while defamatory meaning wasn’t squarely at issue in Hansman, I argue that the case shows that courts continue to take an approach to defamatory meaning that is divorced from reputational harm. When properly grounded in the question of the effect of the words on reputation, many allegations of bigotry are not defamatory in meaning, regardless of whether they are also protected by fair comment.
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Hilary Young, Hansman v Neufeld: The Supreme Court of Canada protects counterspeech under anti-SLAPP law, but is it even defamatory?, Journal of Media Law, volume 15, 2023 – issue 2, pages 125-139. Published online: 7 December 2023.
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