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Canadian defamation law refers to defamation law as it stands in both common law and civil law jurisdictions in Canada. As with most Commonwealth jurisdictions, Canada follows English law on defamation issues (except in the province of Quebec where private law is derived from French civil law).
By the early 1990s, Canada was the second largest exporter of audiovisual products after the United States. The Canadian Statute of 1968 added to the obligations of broadcasters that Canadian broadcasting should promote national unity, and that broadcasters must obey the laws respecting libel, obscenity, etc. [22]: 95
R v Lucas is the leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the criminal offence of defamatory libel. [2] The Court held that the Criminal Code offence of defamatory libel infringed the constitutional protection of freedom of expression under Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the offence was a reasonable limit prescribed by law under Section 1 of the Charter.
According to the OSCE official report on defamation laws issued in 2005, 57 persons in Canada were accused of defamation, libel and insult, among which 23 were convicted – 9 to prison sentences, 19 to probation and one to a fine. The average period in prison was 270 days, and the maximum sentence was four years of imprisonment.
(Under the law prior to this decision any false statement could, if found to be defamatory, be grounds for damages.) Instead it raises the question of whether factual errors were made in good faith. "Actual malice" means then that the defendant intentionally made false statements of alleged facts, or recklessly failed to verify alleged facts ...
Criminal libel is a legal term, of English origin, which may be used with one of two distinct meanings, in those common law jurisdictions where it is still used.. It is an alternative name for the common law offence which is also known (in order to distinguish it from other offences of libel) as "defamatory libel" [1] or, occasionally, as "criminal defamatory libel".
2 S.C.R. 1130 was a libel case against the Church of Scientology, in which the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted Ontario's libel law in relation to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. After consideration, the Supreme Court of Canada determined that it would not follow the actual malice standard set forth in the famous United States ...
In R v Keegstra, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the criminal prohibition on hate propaganda, while in R v Lucas it upheld the offence of defamatory libel. The Supreme Court has upheld the prohibition on hate publications in human rights laws in two cases, Canada (Human Rights Commission) v.