Lawsuit Tests Source Disclosure in Canada

The Province, one of Postmedia Network's Vancouver, British Columbia, dailies, and one of its reporters — who refuses to name her sources — are among those being sued by a West Vancouver ex-member of parliament who claims to have been wronged by the paper and his political enemies.

Former Liberal MP Blair Wilson's attorney, Jay Straith, will ask the court to force reporter Elaine O'Connor to identify the source who supplied her with information regarding Wilson's alleged violation of Canada's Elections Act, which was used in a published story, according to an Oct. 1 report in North Shore News, Postmedia's North Vancouver paper.

Wilson also is suing Website operator Steve Janke, former provincial Member of the Legislative Assembly Judi Tyabji Wilson and Liberal organizer Mark Marissen for defamation.

Wilson claims Tyabji Wilson and Marissen plotted a smear campaign to harm him politically and financially — the former anonymously authoring a report alleging misconduct, and the latter passing it to O'Connor.

Though Marissen sought dismissal of claims against him, Justice Bruce Greyell ruled last week that he must await a decision on whether O'Connor can be forced to give up her sources — a hearing for which is scheduled for the end of October.

Straith said the issue matters because a test of a responsible-journalism defense under a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision is the reliability of a source, wrote North Shore News reporter Jane Seyd. "How can we figure that out if we don't know who the source is?" she quotes Straith saying. "It's a bit of a fresh area as far as the law is concerned."

After the story was published, the Liberal Party dropped Wilson, who then ran for the Green Party in 2008, losing to a Conservative.

Seyd reports that Elections Canada never charged Wilson after investigating him, although he would acknowledge bookkeeping errors in his 2006 election campaign.