CALGARY — Opening arguments are expected to be heard on Tuesday in Caylan Ford’s long-awaited defamation trial.The former UCP candidate’s $7.65-million lawsuit will take place at the Court of King’s Bench in Calgary, marking the start of what could possibly be one of the longest defamation trials on record in Canada, as it is set to run for three-and-a-half months.“I will have an opportunity that few ‘cancelled’ persons ever get: I will be putting my accusers on trial in what may be among the longest, most costly, and most consequential media defamation cases in Canadian history,” Ford wrote on her Substack. .Ford — who was nominated to run for the UCP in 2019 in the riding of Calgary-Mountain View — was the subject of a coordinated campaign that used out-of-context private Facebook Messenger conversations to portray her as a white supremacist — accusations that were picked up by multiple Canadian media outlets and which she says destroyed her political career as well as severely damaged her professional and personal life.Due to the campaign, the Oxford-educated mother of two went from a promising, high-profile candidate to a political pariah overnight.“The media conflagration destroyed my career and reputation, probably irredeemably, because the internet never forgets,” Ford wrote.“At 32, I became effectively unemployable — a stressful position for someone who is the primary breadwinner for a family of four. I was condemned to live as a kind of ghost: still conscious, seeing everything, feeling everything, yet no longer part of the world. The poet Ovid described exile as a living death, and I can do no better.”She has argued the case is about more than her own reputation, framing it as a stand against what she describes as socially destructive political tactics.“Beyond simple defamation, the case goes to core democratic rights and freedoms: privacy rights, the free exchange of ideas, and the integrity of the democratic process,” she said recently on X.The suit — originally filed in August 2020 — names a multitude of defendants..EXCLUSIVE: How a Conservative candidate worked with the NDP to bring down star UCP candidate.Among them are political activist and former federal Conservative candidate Karim Jivraj, the Broadbent Institute, Press Progress, the Alberta NDP, the CBC, the Toronto Star, Alberta lawyer Avnish Nanda, former Alberta premier Rachel Notley’s former chief of staff Jeremy Nolais, and former Alberta Liberal Party leader David Khan.Four defendants — including Progress Alberta, Duncan Kinney and NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi — have already settled out of court.According to Ford’s claim, the alleged defamatory conduct began in March 2018 and continued through September 2020.She alleges Jivraj approached media outlets with excerpts of years-old private Facebook Messenger conversations, claiming they showed she had expressed sympathy for white supremacy and supremacist views.Subsequent reporting described Ford as having made “white supremacist comments” and promoting “racist white supremacist talking points.”Ford maintains those characterizations were false and malicious and alleges the defendants acted with disregard for the truth and in a coordinated effort to pressure her to resign as a candidate.In addition to defamation, Ford is pursuing claims of intrusion upon seclusion — a privacy-related tort — and deliberate infliction of mental suffering.Ford says the case will examine “51 distinct publications, include 10 expert reports and hear from close to 50 witnesses.”On Substack, Ford reflected on the personal toll of the controversy.“Being publicly shamed and humiliated is a brutalizing psychological experience,” she wrote.“But the actual ‘cancellation’ — the casting out from society — can only be effected through an act of institutional capitulation. And no organization is more anxious or reactive than a political party on the eve of an election.”
