'Defamed' father can't understand judge's ruling
A B.C. fathers' rights advocate has lost a defamation suit over a report he said portrayed him as "hate-monger."
By The Vancouver Sun March 14, 2008
A B.C. fathers' rights advocate has lost a defamation suit over a report he said portrayed him as "hate-monger."
Ken Wiebe sued a Quebec academic, her two research assistants and the federal minister for the Status of Women after a graphic taken from his website was included as an example of hate propaganda in the government-funded publication.
While the judge in the case agreed that Wiebe had been defamed, he dismissed the suit in a ruling released Wednesday, saying the authors' views were fair comment.
Wiebe, 52, a Victoria father of six from two marriages, said he was baffled by the ruling.
"I don't know what to say about the judgment," he said in an e-mail to Canwest News Service. "It confuses me. How can a supposedly 'scientific report' be both defamatory and 'fair comment'? I'm not a lawyer, but I don't get it."
Wiebe's name, along with a link to his website www.fathers.bc.ca, appeared in a 145-page research paper titled School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse, Policy Research.
The report, originally printed in French in 2003 and later translated into English, was funded by Status of Women Canada, a federal agency.
In his statement of claim, Wiebe listed various examples from the report which he said identified him "as a hate-monger and a danger to women" associated him "with racists, extremists, pedophiles, pornographers and terrorists" and asserted he had "committed criminal offences."
Wiebe also said he thinks the report likely cost him a government contract.
One of the examples Wiebe cited was a cartoon pulled from his website with a swastika with the bars altered to look like Fs atop a baby gesturing with its middle finger captioned: "We are all tired of feminaziism. So stop it, OK?"
In the report, the cartoon is called "a barely veiled threat by the authors of the site," a statement Wiebe said that, when combined with other comments in the report, was defamatory.
While B.C. Supreme Court Justice Nathan Smith supported that view in his ruling, he wrote that the defendants' statements represented "their honestly held opinion(s)."
A spokeswoman for Status of Women Canada wouldn't comment on the ruling, pending appeal.
But Pierrette Bouchard, a professor at Laval University in Montreal and the report's main author, said Thursday she was satisfied with the decision.
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