Former Canadian ambassador to Guatemala guilty of slandering film maker

When his nine-minute documentary on a Canadian company’s alleged human rights abuses in Guatemala was disparaged by Canada’s ambassador to that country, a York University filmmaker took the federal government to small claims court and won. After three years of chipping away at a federal “wall of silence,” Steven Schnoor emerged victorious Wednesday in a slander case against former ambassador Kenneth Cook. Justice Pamela Thomson said Cook was “reckless” and “should have known better” when he said Schnoor’s film was falsified. Thomson awarded the filmmaker $5,000 from Cook and $2,000 from the federal attorney general for not responding properly to Schnoor’s complaints.