The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale is taking legal action against Rob Ford over the mayor’s apparent insinuation that he is a pedophile.
In an interview with Conrad Black that aired twice Monday night on Vision TV, Mayor Ford claimed that the reporter had been caught “in my backyard taking pictures” in May, 2012. “I have little kids. When a guy’s taking pictures of little kids, I don’t want to say that word but you start thinking what’s this guy all about?” he said.
A notice of libel served to Ford on Thursday calls Ford’s statement as “a vicious libel.”
“In its plain and ordinary meaning, Rob Ford is calling Mr. Dale a pedophile,” it says.
In a statement posted to the Star’s website, Dale explained that it was the mayor’s refusal to back down from his remarks and his reptition of similar statements on Thursday that convinced him to take action. He noted that at a press conference a day after the interview Ford told reporters, “I stand by every word I said with Mr. Black.” Then on an American sports radio show Thursday morning, the mayor again alleged that Dale had taken pictures of his property and claimed he had been scared for his children.
“It had become clear to me that, if I had done nothing, the mayor would make his smears some sort of political talking point. His comments to Black were no one-time slip they seemed to be the first shots in a bewildering campaign against my good name,” Dale’s statement said. “I can’t tolerate it. I won’t tolerate it.”
Dale, who is the Star’s acting City Hall bureau chief, intends to keep covering municipal politics while his legal action proceeds.
Dale has also served a libel notice to Vision TV. He is asking the mayor to “immediately retract the false insinuation that I am a pedophile and all of his false statements about my conduct.” He wants the station to apologize “publicly, abjectly, unreservedly and completely.”
Conrad Black, who has been criticized for failing to challenge Ford’s incendiary statements on-air, is not named in the notice. Black told CBC Radio on Wednesday that it was not his job to debate his interview subjects and he was “taking the mayor’s word for it.”
Ford was served with the notice late Thursday afternoon at his office. Dale’s lawyer Iris Fischer and a process server were initially denied entry because they refused to leave their phones outside and sign a document from Ford’s staff affirming they were not carrying recording devices. Fischer, who is with the prestigious firm of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, said the request was unusual and she’d never encountered anything like it.
The notice is a prerequisite to libel suit and does not yet mean the mayor has been sued. Dale has three months to take the next step, which would be to launch the suit by filing a statement of claim.
Fischer said that the notice gives the mayor and VisionTV a chance to apologize and retract the offending statements, but stressed doing so wouldn’t necessarily mean that Dale wouldn’t sue.
The incident the libel action centres around occured on May 2, 2012, when Dale went to the mayor’s neighbourhood to examine a piece of public parkland Ford was attempting to buy. The mayor confronted Dale in an area behind his house after a neighbour alerted him to the reporter’s presence.
Ford has admitted that he was angry and Dale recounted that he charged at him with a raised fist. Dale dropped his phone and fled, and the mayor called the police. They investigated but, with the help of security footage from the mayor’s house, determined there was no evidence Dale trespassed on Ford’s property or took any pictures of his home or family. He was not carrying a camera and the cops found no photos on his phone. No charges were laid.
Neither the mayor’s office nor his laywer immediately returned a request for comment Thursday and a spokesperson for ZoomerMedia, which owns Vision TV, could not be reached. Ford left his office shortly before 7 p.m. without responding to questions.
But his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, said the mayor had done nothing wrong and the lawsuit was unfounded. He repeated the claim, refuted by police, that Dale had been “hiding in the bushes taking pictures.”
When challenged by reporters about the discredited claim the councillor said: “At the end of the day he was behind there, he should be ashamed of himself.”
With files from Jonathan Goldsbie.
