“To succeed in the tort of defamation the plaintiff must prove three things:
A plaintiff in a defamation action is required to prove three things to obtain judgment and an award of damages: (1) that the impugned words are defamatory, in the sense that they would tend to lower the plaintiff’s reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person; (2) that the words in fact referred to the plaintiff; and (3) that the words were published, meaning that they were communicated to at least one person other than the plaintiff. If these elements are established on a balance of probabilities, falsity and damages are presumed. The plaintiff is not required to show that the defendant intended to do harm, or even that the defendant was careless. The tort is thus one of strict liability. (Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61 (CanLII), [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640 at para. 28.)
Once the plaintiff proves the three essential elements on a balance of probabilities, the defendant can defend the claim by proving the defamatory words were true or that the words were part of a privileged communication absolute or qualified.
Qualified privilege was explained by the Supreme Court of Canada in Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, 1995 CanLII 59 (SCC), [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1130, [1995] S.C.J.:
143 Qualified privilege attaches to the occasion upon which the communication is made, and not to the communication itself. As Lord Atkinson explained in Adam v. Ward, [1917] A.C. 309 (H.L.), at p. 334:
. . . a privileged occasion is . . . an occasion where the person who makes a communication has an interest or a duty, legal, social, or moral, to make it to the person to whom it is made, and the person to whom it is so made has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it. This reciprocity is essential.”