Although courts will very occasionally issue an injunction to stop defamation that has not yet occurred, almost all defamation cases involve one person suing another for damages from defamatory statements that have already been made. Defamation law is not about protecting pride it is about protecting reputation and offering restitution to people whose reputations have been wrongly damaged. One such limit is the civil tort of defamation.ĭefamation refers to harming another person’s reputation by making a false written or oral statement about that person to a third party. However, some limits on free expression in Canada have nothing to do with government restrictions or the right to free expression as defined in the Charter. The right to free expression is subject to “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Free expression crimes in Canada are constitutional issues, and the onus is on the government to prove that the infringement is justifiable. Some types of free expression in Canada are crimes, such as perjury, distributing obscene material, and hate speech. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication”, but this right, along with all rights guaranteed by The Charter, is not absolute.
