Incumbent MP Blair Wilson, the Green Party candidate in the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country riding, has named numerous people in a legal action defending his reputation.Wilson filed a statement of defence and counterclaim on September 24 that addresses an action launched by his father-in-law, William Lougheed. Wilson names the Vancouver Province newspaper, reporter Elaine O'Connor and Canwest Media for a series of articles alleging that Wilson filed misleading paperwork about his campaign expenses, as well as blogger Steve Janke, who posted an anonymous letter to Elections Canada on his website.The counterclaim also names former Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji Wilson and Mark Marissen, who was then an employee of the Liberal Party of Canada, and alleges they colluded with Lougheed to orchestrate a media attack on Wilson. The document alleges that Lougheed gave Tyabji Wilson $185,000 to finance activities to further his wish to cause damage to Wilson's political career. Wilson was elected as a Liberal Party candidate in the 2006 federal election.The document also alleges that Tyabji Wilson wrote the anonymous letter to Elections Canada that alleged Wilson misled Elections Canada on his statement of campaign expenses.Tyabji Wilson said the only people who have seen the court document are the media. "No one I've talked to who has been named has been served," she said. "And yet, every media outlet, as far as I'm concerned, has a copy. I think that should give people a pretty good idea of what he's doing."Tyabji Wilson also said there is nothing which she has seen in the media that is accurate. "I've never written to Elections Canada," she said. "I've never written to them anonymously. . . I don't have time to be running around writing letters. All I know is that as a Liberal I was pretty upset about all of the court cases he had been involved in and I took the information to the correct authorities in the party. They went through the correct internal process."Jay Straith is Wilson's lawyer and also his official agent in the current federal election campaign. "Our position is really clear," he said. "The law is you can't run around and throw out groundless financial allegations, particularly in the newspaper. No serious journalist publishes articles based on anonymous letters. The law is, you make a criminal allegation in a newspaper based on an anonymous letter, you own it."When asked about the timing of the counterclaim, Straith said he and Wilson wanted to hold off filing the document in court until after the election, but couldn't. "I got to do it now because we no longer follow paper trails, but we follow Ethernet trails," he said. "Our forensic people who do the computer work, they said people can throw their Blackberries in the Ottawa River, but it stays on the server for at least a year. After a year, they're not so sure."Wilson did not respond to a request for an interview.In a story published on October 3, editor-in-chief Wayne Moriarty said he stands by the stories the Province published. "If this suit goes anywhere, and based on the claims it shouldn't, we will vigorously defend the veracity of our stories, which were impeccably researched and reported," he said.Readers can visit www.prpeak.com for a copy of the statement of defence and counterclaim.
