A trial date has been set for Caylan Ford's $7.65 million defamation lawsuit.On March 2, 2026, the former political candidate will finally go to court against the fourteen defendants whose allegations and coverage turned her life upside down..EXCLUSIVE: How a Conservative candidate worked with the NDP to bring down star UCP candidate.Ford, who had been tapped to run for Alberta's United Conservative Party in 2019, was the subject of a targeted campaign that used out-of-context text messages to, among other things, paint her as a white supremacist. The claims were picked up by numerous news outlets, causing lasting professional and personal harm. Seemingly overnight, the Oxford-educated mother-of-two went from star candidate to politically untouchable."I think there should be consequences for people who wield career- and potentially life-destroying accusations frivolously and dishonestly for their own advantage," Ford wrote. "There should be consequences for deepening ideological polarization, and for eroding our capacity for openness and honest dialogue. It’s important that we impose costs on those who use these tactics — not by playing their socially destructive game, subjecting them to retributive humiliation, or unleashing a mob against them, but by holding them accountable for their actions under the law.".Her suit, filed in August 2020, lists fourteen defendants. Chief among them are political activist and former federal Conservative candidate Karim Jivraj, the Broadbent Institute and employees of its far-left subsidiary Press Progress, the NDP, the CBC, the Toronto Star, Alberta lawyer Avnish Nanda, Rachel Notley's former chief of staff Jeremy Nolais, and David Khan of the Alberta Liberal Party.Four defendants, including Progress Alberta, Duncan Kinney, and NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi, have already settled out of court.."No defamation claim of this magnitude and complexity has gone to trial in Canada before," Ford wrote in a post on X. "It involves three different torts, the publication of ~25 defamatory news articles and press releases, dozens of social media publications, evidence of extraordinary media malfeasance, and some of the most serious libelous statements that can be made."Ford, the sole breadwinner for herchildren, pointed out that as a result of the defamation, she had been "virtually unemployable" until she built an organization for herself."I can see no plausible path to victory for the defendants," she continued. "I have a very strong legal claim and a compelling reason to persevere. The principles at stake are worth fighting for, and the purveyors of 'cancel culture' need to be held accountable for the damage they so recklessly caused.".According to Ford, the instances of defamation began in March 2018 and continued until September 2020. Jivraj is said to have gone to the aforementioned media outlets claiming that Ford had "expressed sympathy for white supremacist terrorists" in private Facebook Messenger conversations years earlier.The CBC wrote that she had made "white supremacist comments," The Star claimed she'd "promoted racist white supremacist talking points," and others said she believed ethnic minorities were inferior."All of these statements are false," Ford declared. "Many were made with express malice, with a willful or reckless disregard for their truth, and with knowledge that the effect of those statements would be to cause significant and lasting reputational, professional, and psychological harm ... Jivraj, the NDP, Press Progress, and agents thereof, were acting in a coordinated and pre-meditated fashion to force my resignation as an election candidate through the publication and promotion of the defamatory statements."In addition to defamation, Ford has also invoked the torts of "intrusion against seclusion," which is a violation of privacy rights, and "deliberate infliction of mental suffering."
