A year and a half ago, I was on my way to winning a seat in the Alberta legislature. Today, thanks to a concerted campaign of defamation by the New Democratic Party and its allies, I am borderline unemployable.

In Alberta’s 2019 provincial election, I was one of the faces of my party. I was a young mother, a former advisor at the Canadian foreign ministry, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and an Oxford-educated international human rights advocate. I was featured prominently in campaign ads and was described as part of the next generation of conservative leadership. Although I was running in a swing seat—my main opponent was the NDP’s then-justice minister—our polling showed that I was on track to win.

Then, less than a month before election day, an NDP-affiliated website published an anonymous claim that I had “echoed white nationalist rhetoric” in a private conversation years earlier. Before I could respond, the NDP issued a press release demanding that I be removed from the ballot.

Prominent politicians and journalists didn’t hesitate before piling on. They denounced me as “vile” and “abhorrent,” and demanded that I confess and apologize for beliefs I have never held. They wrote that I had “promoted white supremacy,” made “hateful” social media posts, and had complained about supposed unfairness towards white supremacist terrorists. I hadn’t actually done any of these things, but the force and endless repetition of the accusations almost convinced me that I had.

A “trial by media” is a misnomer: it is not a search for truth or justice, and there is no semblance of due process. The crimes are never clearly defined. There is no presumption of innocence, no rules of evidence, no concern for fairness or proportionality. If a person is condemned on the basis of allegations that turn out to be false, incomplete, or misleading, there is no authority to whom they can appeal for redress.

Within four hours, my candidacy was over. The NDP would go on to win the seat. My life, meanwhile, was irrevocably changed. 

Friends faced pressure to denounce me, or else risk being judged guilty to association. Some who stood by me were harassed and accused of “supporting a white supremacist.” The one radio show that gave me a platform to defend myself faced a boycott campaign. Several journalists and editors told me that they knew narrative about me was false, but they were afraid to say anything, lest they be targeted too.

The reputation and the good name that I had built throughout my life was gone. My career as a public servant, my graduate degrees, my work advocating on behalf of persecuted ethnic and religious minorities — all of it was nullified overnight. If you Google me today, you’ll see me described as a racist, a white supremacist, a fascist, and a terrorist sympathizer.

My experience is not unique: it is an example of what is commonly referred to as “cancel culture.”

The phenomenon typically plays out as follows: a person is accused of thinking, or saying, the wrong thing. Sometimes they have transgressed a well-established and widely recognized social norm, but in most cases their offence is ambiguous: they have violated an emerging or contested norm, newly held to be inviolable by an activist minority. They might have taken a position on a contested social issue, or attempted to critically examine a topic that certain people have declared off-limits to philosophical inquiry. They might have done nothing wrong at all, but their words or actions have been misinterpreted—honestly or otherwise—and made to appear nefarious.

The target is then ritually denounced and humiliated online and in the media in a manner that is wildly disproportionate to the severity of the actual or putative offence. The outraged parties call for the target to be fired from their jobs, denied a public platform, and socially isolated, permanently.

Cancelations are not a form of debate. As I discovered when I sought dialogue with my critics, they were neither interested in nor capable of engaging with ideas. They simply want to assign their target an incendiary, thought-stopping label—racist, fascist, white supremacist—and declare further discussion to be illegitimate and morally suspect. The object is not persuasion, but intimidation.

To be the target of a cancel campaign is psychologically shattering and often financially and professionally ruinous. But the harms of cancel culture go beyond the damage done to individuals. It erodes the boundary between public and private spheres, and so undermines trust and openness. It exerts a chilling effect on free inquiry, limiting our ability to seek truth or consider different perspectives without fear. It incentivizes a rush to judgement and to outrage, suffocating reason, charity, and generosity. By encouraging people to see each other as enemies and potential informants, it undermines the sense of solidarity that makes life in a free society possible.

Defenders of cancel culture often say that they are merely holding powerful people accountable for abhorrent behaviour. Cancel culture is just about “consequences,” they say, as they assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner. 

I also believe in consequences and accountability.

I think there should be consequences for people who wield career- and potentially life-destroying accusations frivolously and dishonestly for their own advantage. There should be consequences for deepening ideological polarization, and for eroding our capacity for openness and honest dialogue.

I am sometimes asked what we can do to fight back against cancel culture. One answer is that we can each try to uphold human virtues—real virtues, not the performative ones. We can commit ourselves to seeking truth, and refuse to give in to anger or assent to lies. We can be courageous in the defence of our friends. We can be slow to judge, and generous and humble when we do.  

We can also impose costs on those who use these tactics—not by playing their socially destructive game, subjecting them to retributive humiliation, or unleashing a mob against them—but by holding them accountable for their actions under the law.

That is what I’m doing by filing a $7-million defamation claim against the NDP, Press Progress, the CBC, the Toronto Star, and others. I am not asking for sympathy or looking for revenge: unlike my accusers, I am simply interested in the truth.