Judge finds activist was defamed by People's Party of Canada, awards him $10K in damages

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 18, 2025 6:19 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

A justice has awarded a Winnipeg activistic $10,000 successful damages aft uncovering helium was defamed connected societal media by a People's Party of Canada worker during the 2019 national predetermination campaign.

Omar Kinnarath sued the PPC and respective radical successful October 2020, seeking much than a $1 million in damages successful total.

The suit was filed aft Kinnarath admittedly became "the catalyst" successful the cancellation of a PPC meet-and-greet lawsuit planned astatine a Winnipeg creation assemblage successful 2019, according to the determination rendered by Judge Sheldon W. Lanchbery of the Court of King's Bench.

Monique Choiselat, the erstwhile CEO of the PPC's Winnipeg Centre riding association, past called Kinnarath a "terrorist" successful 2 Facebook posts connected her idiosyncratic relationship and successful a tweet connected the PPC's Winnipeg Centre account, the determination says.

The posts included an representation of Kinnarath, a explanation of the connection terrorist, and Kinnarath's idiosyncratic interaction accusation — including his location address, which Lanchbery said was incorrect.

The posts besides implied that Kinnarath caused a occurrence that destroyed a gathering adjacent the creation assemblage wherever the cancelled lawsuit was to instrumentality place, the justice said.

Choiselat made the aforesaid station to Facebook doubly aft the societal media tract deleted the archetypal one, Lanchbery wrote. 

"The uncontroverted grounds is Ms. Choiselat instantly reposted the aforesaid defamatory accusation connected Facebook. At this stage, the lone tenable decision is [that] she published maliciously," the justice wrote.

The damages awarded to Kinnarath comprised $5,000 successful some wide and aggravated damages, according to Lanchbery.

The justice said Choiselat's usage of the connection "terrorist" and her accusations of arson against Kinnarath would "tend to little his estimation successful the eyes of a tenable person."

While Choiselat claimed her posts were important to the nationalist and factually correct, Lanchbery said accusing Kinnarath of coercion without immoderate grounds "defeats immoderate assertion of just comment."

The information that Choiselat ne'er apologized to Kinnarath was besides an aggravating factor, Lanchbery wrote.

"Five years aft her archetypal post, she maintains calling Mr. Kinnarath a terrorist," Lanchbery wrote. "Although I recovered the wide damages to beryllium minimal, Ms. Choiselat's actions necessitate maine to grant Mr. Kinnarath aggravated damages for her conduct."

Lanchbery besides said the grounds presented by Kinnarath shows that helium suffered minimal harm from Choiselat's posts, which is wherefore helium awarded the activistic "nominal" damages and did not contented immoderate punitive damages.

In summation to Choiselat, Kinnarath's suit besides named the PPC enactment and six different people, including PPC enactment candidates Yogi Henderson and Steven Fletcher.

The assertion against Fletcher was discontinued, and Lanchbery dismissed the 1 against Henderson. Kinnarath's claims against 2 unidentified defendants and an unidentified concern were besides dropped.

Lanchbery besides recovered that the PPC was not liable for Choiselat's posts connected the party's Twitter account, arsenic the posts violated the party's societal media policy.

A default judgement was besides ordered aft 2 radical — Todd McDougall and Derek Storie — did not amusement up to tribunal proceedings, Lanchbery wrote. Damages successful those cases volition beryllium determined astatine a aboriginal date.