Guergis fights to keep defamation lawsuit alive 0
By Daniel Proussalidis, Parliamentary Bureau
Simcoe-Grey MP Helena Guergis breaks into tears during a news conference at her Collingwood, Ont., campaign office in 2011 as she addresses allegations about her in an RCMP report.
OTTAWA — Conservatives hope to mop the courtroom floor with former cabinet minister Helena Guergis’ $1.3-million lawsuit against them when the case goes before a judge this week.
A hearing on Wednesday in Ottawa will deal with five motions from all the defendants in the case to dismiss the former Simcoe-Grey MP’s claims that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party and others defamed her and conspired to “engage in unlawful acts” to kick her out of the party in 2010.
Guergis’s expulsion that April followed allegations about her personal behaviour, as well as allegations that her husband, former Edmonton Strathcona Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, was lobbying his former Conservative colleagues on behalf of a green energy firm he co-owned.
Back in May, the defendants asked the judge to dump Guergis’s “vexatious” complaints, arguing that her dismissal from cabinet is the prime minister’s prerogative and that the party has the right to drop her as a candidate.
On Thursday, Guergis fired back at the dismissal motions, arguing that the defendants “inaccurately summarized” her claims and are trying to get out of a lawsuit “without any defences having been delivered.”
There have been suggestions the weakest part of Guergis’s lawsuit is against the Conservative Party itself.
In its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the party argues it isn’t “a legal entity capable of being sued” in the case.
Lawyers for Guergis and several defendants declined comment.
Guergis was elected MP for the riding in 2004, and was re-elected in 2006 and 2008; in government, Guergis served in several minor cabinet roles, including as Secretary of State for Sport, Minister of State for Status of Women, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade.
Following her ouster from cabinet and the Conservative Party in 2010, Guergis served as an Independent MP until her defeat in the May, 2011 federal election.
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