A Sturgeon County business owner who ran numerous political ads in the last county election says he’s suing Coun. Karen Shaw for defamation over a re-tweet.
County business owner Len Kozak announced Tuesday during a presentation to Sturgeon County council that he would file a $150,000 statement of claim against Shaw for defamation of character.
Kozak, who ran multiple full-page ads in the Gazette during the election against then-candidates Shaw, Tom Flynn, Susan Evans, Ferd Caron and Jerry Kaup, had requested the presentation to ask council to review Shaw and Evans' behaviour under the council code of conduct. He did not specify what actions of Evans he wished to have reviewed during his presentation.
Kozak did not release the grounds for his suit to the press, but confirmed in an email that the suit was related to an incident where Shaw re-tweeted a link to an article on the anonymous SurealFYI blog called “The Len Kozak Rant” on Oct. 11, 2017.
The blog, which is still active, criticized the activities of the Sturgeon United Residents for Effective Accountable Leadership group, certain candidates, and Kozak during last fall’s county election. The blog’s author declined to identify him or herself when emailed by the Gazette.
Kozak accused Shaw of being the author of the post, and said that in it, “somebody calls me a half-way intelligent businessman,” and that “thousands of people” would have seen the tweet.
“I did run ads. I didn’t run disrespectful ads. I didn’t insinuate that anyone on council was half-ways intelligent,” he said.
“I don’t understand how you can represent this county and you can act like that.”
Shaw said in council that she was not the author of the SurealFYI blog and did not know the author’s identity.
Carlo Passage, who works for Kozak, spoke to council about an Oct. 12 incident where he was distributing flyers written and printed by Kozak critical of candidates Flynn, Shaw, Kaup, Evans, and Caron at a coffee meeting organized by Flynn and Shaw at the Redwater Royal Canadian Legion hall. The flyers, copies of which were distributed at council Tuesday, do not identify Kozak as their source.
Passage said that Shaw grabbed his flyers, said he was not allowed to do this and had no right to be there. Later, five men tried to take his flyers and said they would call the police. He left, as he felt “very uncomfortable,” and contacted Kozak, who told him he was being bullied. He then returned to the meeting to distribute the flyers.
Former Mayor Tom Flynn, who was at that rally but did not witness these confrontations, said in an interview that Passage was standing outside of the door of the hall on the sidewalk, which was public property.
Shaw said in an interview that Passage’s account was “partially right.”
“He was distributing these pamphlets and we asked him to leave,” she said.
Shaw said Passage would not say who was behind the pamphlets, which she said contained “many inaccuracies.” He was asked to leave as he was giving people coming into the meeting the impression that he was acting on her behalf.
Shaw’s Twitter account shows that she made seven tweets and re-tweets related to the SurealFYI site on Oct. 11, 2017, one of which matches the one referenced by Kozak.
Shaw said she had not seen the details of Kozak’s suit, but said that she “shares hundreds and hundreds of tweets.”
When asked if she was the author of the blog post in question, she said, “Heck no! Absolutely not. If I was the author I would never have shared it.”
Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw said in an interview that she would not comment on the specifics of Kozak’s matter, but said that, due to the importance of their positions, elected officials had to take care that what they posted and shared online was factual “and not just the opinions of someone else.”
In council, Hnatiw apologized to Passage for his negative experience with the democratic process and said that council would be updating its code of conduct this year with additional measures for social media.
“We certainly can learn from this process and hopefully hold all of us up to a higher standard.”
