“The Ottawa Citizen lost at trial and on appeal, but scored a huge victory on appeal by getting…”
Which means that judges do not agree or know what is defamation. We see that all the time in case after case, where lawyers see defamation and damages or do not see defamation and damages depending on who pays the lawyer (and sometime who pays the judge).

Then juries and judges disagree all the time, as in the current case where a court decisions is overturned.

This brings us to some very basic questions which I believe have never been answered:

- How are ordinary people, who have to speak and write without the time for and help of legal research (not that it would matter because of the disagreement as to what is defamation) to know of they can say what they want to say?

Surely the last person who consulted a lawyer before making a critical speech but wanted to make sure there was no possibility of a defamation lawsuit the answer from the lawyer was that no matter what was said in the speech the speech can provoke a lawsuit and who prevails in the lawsuit depends on who the lawyers (which depends on money) and the judge are or the mood of the judge.

- Or is speech or giving of opinions to be feared because there is a legal system business model out there that will exploit speech (twisting the facts if necessary) to make money and anyone can be the next victim?

- Why are laws and jurisprudence so complicated (in all areas of the law) that where one lawyer sees a defamation, another one doe not? Of course the answer is simple: lawyers are paid to see defamation or to not see it – and the higher paid lawyers have a better chance of prevailing.

Is time that the people (not the politicians influenced by lawyers and certainly not the lawyers themselves as they are the business model) decide if they want a legal system that goes after speech whenever that is profitable oe whenever the silencing of someone is wished.

It is time to end the exploitation of speech. Until then, FREE SPEECH DOES NOT EXISTS, and we should not fool ourselves.