Wynne files $2 million libel suit against PCs

Premier Kathleen Wynne is suing Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, MPP Lisa MacLeod and the PC Party of Ontario for $2 million for allegations about her role in the gas-plants scandal.

Wynne has repeatedly asked for a retraction of alleged defamation on the PC Party website linking her to the wiping of computers that the OPP claims occurred in the final days of former premier Dalton McGuinty’s administration.

“Why would I say sorry for doing my job,” MacLeod, the Tory MPP for Nepean-Carleton, said Tuesday, adding she considered it a “frivolous lawsuit” that amounts to “libel chill.”

“We are going to get to the bottom of this $1.1-billion gas-plants scandal and the alleged coverup whether Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty like it or not,” she said.

Wynne’s statement of claim contends the defendants “have acted maliciously and caused damage to the plaintiff.” The Liberals say any money Wynne receives as a result of the lawsuit will be donated to charity.

The statement of claim in particular seized on a tweet from MacLeod in which she compared Wynne to the late disgraced U.S. president Richard Nixon. Police are investigating former McGuinty’s chief of staff, David Livingston, for breach of trust in allegedly passing a special computer password to a non-government employee who wiped hard drives clean in the days before Wynne came to power.