Justice Abella's dissent on cabbie appeal

Jusice Abella has recorded a lone and material dissent to the Andre Arthur decision by her colleagues (see below). Part of the text: "Here, an ordinary person would conclude that the remarks were defamatory of the plaintiffs and therefore injurious. The talk show host accused Arab and Haitian taxi drivers of creating “Third World” public transportation in Montréal, of corruption, of incompetence and of keeping unsanitary cars. He said that neither Arab nor Haitian drivers knew their way around the city and that they could not communicate in either English or French. He denigrated Arab drivers as “fakirs” and the Creole language as “nigger”. The remarks were blatantly racist, highly stigmatizing, and vilified members of vulnerable communities. While the group targeted was large, it was not so diffuse as to be indeterminate. The comments were aimed at a group of individuals who were of particular racial backgrounds in a particular industry and in a particular city. The group was defined with sufficient precision and the comments were specific enough to raise, objectively, the clear possibility not only of harm to reputation, but also of harmful economic consequences from customers." Full decision linked at the headline.