“To succeed on a claim for defamation, the plaintiff must prove that:
(i) The words complained of were published, meaning that they were communicated to at least one person other than the plaintiff;
(ii) The words complained of referred to the plaintiff; and
(iii) The impugned words were defamatory, in the sense that they would tend to lower the plaintiff’s reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person: Bent v. Platnick, 2020 SCC 23, at para. 92 (citing Grant, at para. 28 and P.A. Downard, The Law of Libel in Canada (4th 2018), at paras. 1.2 to 1.14).
A defamatory statement is one that causes the plaintiff “to be regarded with feelings of hatred, contempt, ridicule, fear, dislike, or disesteem”: Vander Zalm v. Times Publishers, 1980 CanLII 389 (B.C.C.A.), at para. 4.