Once again, shades of Trump-style politics are surfacing in Alberta, this time with a scattergun defamation lawsuit against the media and others filed by a former political candidate. 

More than six years after Caylan Ford resigned as a United Conservative Party candidate in Alberta’s 2019 election, she is forging ahead with a $7 million dollar suit against media outlets, individual journalists, sources and even the provincial NDP who published, contributed to or amplified stories that caused her to drop out. A number of parties have settled with Ford. But the case is proceeding against the Toronto Star, CBC, the NDP and the media outlet that broke the story, Press Progress.

Ford had been one of former UCP leader Jason Kenney’s star candidates and might have had a shot at winning Calgary’s Mountain View riding. But after stories ran questioning whether she met UCP’s residency requirements and citing controversial comments she made about race, immigration and white-supremacist terrorism she stepped down and the riding flipped to the New Democrats. 

Ford says excerpts from a private conversation were leaked to Press Progress, a left-leaning online media outlet, by a political enemy and taken wildly out of context. “I did have a lengthy dialectical conversation about how best to combat far-right........

© National Observer