Garden River councillor loses appeal in bid to sue First Nation for libel

A Garden River First Nation band councillor who launched a libel suit against her community and a pair of fellow council members last year over a motion to censure her — and subsequently lost — has come up short in her bid to have the lawsuit heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal. 

Karen Bell, who is also a sergeant with the Anishinabek Police Service, had her appeal dismissed during a June 8 court hearing, months after the libel suit was thrown out of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in October of last year.   

Bell originally filed a notice of libel against Garden River First Nation and fellow band councillors Brandi Nolan and Trevor Solomon in December 2021 after council passed a censure motion requiring Bell to remove a social media post stating she had “seen nothing” in terms of financial statements or a budget for the past year, and to acknowledge that her post on social media was false.

“During the last term I had requested a number of times our financial statements and a budget. For the last year we have seen nothing,” read the social media post in question, which was posted publicly to Bell's Facebook page in October of last year. 

Chief and council rescinded the censure motion the same month it went into effect. 

In the statement of claim that followed, Bell alleged that portions of the censure motion were defamatory in nature — an argument that her legal counsel doubled down on during last week’s appeal hearing.

That argument failed to hold water, however, and Bell’s bid to sue Garden River First Nation was dismissed by the Ontario Court of Appeal.     

“Despite counsel’s forceful submissions, we agree with the motion judge,” said the province's highest court in its written decision. “On a plain grammatical reading of the censure motion, the reference to information as ‘false’ and ‘very misleading' is a reference to the very information quoted immediately above and not to any broader information. 

“Properly read, the assertion in the censure motion that certain information in Ms. Bell’s Facebook post was false and misleading is a reference to the information quoted in the censure motion.” 

Garden River First Nation asked the court to order Bell to pay more than $21,000 in legal costs. The court ended up slashing that dollar figure down to $12,000. 

A statement provided to SooToday by Bell’s co-counsel, Mark Bourrie, said his client is looking forward to resuming her representation of the band members who elected her, adding that Bell has been forced by leadership to leave band council meetings once leadership became aware of the libel suit.

“I’m going to get caught up, which will be a lot of work, and I will work hard to be an effective representative of the community,” Bell said in the statement. “I will continue to push for transparency. It’s council’s job to ensure Garden River has an honest, effective, competent and transparent government. 

“I hope my loss of this case does not deter good people from coming forward and being active, vocal proponents of good government.”