News Release

April 4, 2007

For Immediate Release:

Holland launches libel suit against Ezra Levant and Sun newspapers

Liberal MP Mark Holland today announced he is starting a libel suit against the Toronto and Calgary Sun newspapers and columnist Ezra Levant as a result of published statements by Levant that Holland calls “false and defamatory.”

Levant’s column published this week in the Calgary and Toronto Sun discusses a March 26 news conference where Holland and MP Marlene Jennings returned to the Prime Minister’s Office hundreds of confidential personnel files of Conservative staffers that were left behind when the Conservatives vacated the opposition leader’s office.

Levant, who was not at the news conference, claimed in his column that Holland “opened and read each one” of the files. He also claimed the personnel files were “boxed, sealed, and addressed to the Tories’ new offices.” Holland says both these statements are completely untrue and therefore the comments Levant makes are not based on fact.

“At no time did I read the contents of any of the personnel files,” says Holland. “In fact I had no contact whatsoever with those files other than at the news conference. I’m told the personnel files were found lying in drawers and that once researchers discovered what they were, they were put aside and not read.”

Holland says other non-personnel files were examined more closely by researchers. He has only seen copies of a few documents pertaining to payoffs to former Canadian Alliance MP Jim Hart to resign his seat so that then leader Stockwell Day could run. Holland immediately turned copies of these over to the RCMP, asking them to investigate whether such a payoff violated the Criminal Code.

“The real issue is that the Conservatives were so careless with people’s privacy that they left these files lying around,” says Holland. “This column is nothing more than an attempt to shift the blame and take attention off the Day-Hart affair.”

Levant was Day’s spokesperson at the time of the Hart payoff and he remains a close personal friend of Day’s family. His tendency to invent facts earned him mention in former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning’s book Think Big.

“… Ezra got us into trouble on several occasions (leading to lawsuits alleging defamation) because of difficulties discerning, in the heat of battle, that line between ‘the truth, the spin, and the lie,’” Manning wrote. (page 378) Elsewhere Manning described Levant’s communications as “completely over the top.” (page 388)

Levant and Conservative MP Rob Anders were both sued for libel by former Senator Ron Ghitter, and were forced to issue an apology and make an undisclosed payment in 2000.

Holland will not comment on the substance of the case due to impending litigation. 

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For further information:

Richard McGuire, Executive Assistant
Office of Mark Holland, M.P., Ajax-Pickering
(613) 995-8614