Jaren Kerr and the Curse of Canadaland

When I went to Toronto to watch lawyers for Theresa Kielburger, Canadaland and Isabel Vincent argue the anti-SLAPP motion filed by Canadaland in the lawsuit between Mrs. Kielburger and Jesse Brown’s podcast shop. I wondered if I’d see any of the many defendants from the “Canadaland” collective.

Canadaland’s publisher, Jessie Brown, along with several other current and past Canadaland employees/contributors, namely: Olusola Adeogun, Mark Slutsky, Jonathan Goldsbie, Kieran Oudshoorn and Jaren Kerr, are the defendants in this lawsuit.

Only Goldsbie attended the hearing. Canadaland’s lawyers argued Jaren Kerr and two other Canadaland employees had nothing to do with the content that Mrs. Kielburger sued over and wanted them dropped from the case. The judge looked at the overall campaign and kept Kerr and the other staffers in the lawsuit.

The evidence against Canadaland put forward by Mrs. Kielburger’s lawyers was damning, and it resulted in a brutal assessment of Canadaland’s case by the presiding judge, Justice E.M. Morgan of the Superior Court of Justice.

As I wrote about in the spring, Justice Morgan ruled the case must go to trial, finding “…there is substantial merit in the claim against Brown and Canadaland…” and “…there is no reason to believe that Brown and Canadaland have any valid defence.”

It was a scathing rebuke from the judge, who added  “The Plaintiff’s (Mrs. Kielburger) testimony in this respect was credible and impactful. It was especially poignant in comparison with the callous disregard of reputation and personal damage expressed by Brown toward the Plaintiff.”

Justice Morgan also ordered Canadaland to pay 80% of Mrs. Kielburger’s legal bills for the hearing, which worked out to $110,000. This is very unusual: the anti-SLAPP law discourages judges from awarding costs to successful plaintiffs. They only do so when the motion seems to them to be an abuse of process.

While in Toronto, I recalled that I had not heard anything about Kerr since he left Canadaland.

During the years that Canadaland was attacking WE Charity Canada, I wrote several pieces about Kerr’s questionable and flawed reporting on WE and the Kielburger family under Brown’s tutelage and supervision. 

A Google search reveals he is on the “Breaking News” desk at the Financial Times out of New York.

While that may sound like an interesting job title, those who’ve worked in journalism know this likely entails nothing more than re-writing wire stories on the news of the day – a job that will soon be replaced by AI. It’s too bad, because Kerr seems to me to be a decent guy. He was once a promising young reporter trying to make it in a very tough job market.

Back in 2018, Brown and Canadaland plucked Kerr after his short internship at the city desk at the Toronto Star and thrust him into what must have seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. Brown had been looking for someone to join his vendetta against WE and the Kielburger family, but so far had no takers.

As Kerr later disclosed at a media conference I attended in May 2019, he reached out to Jesse Brown when his contract was coming up at the Star to ask if he had anything for him:

“And he did. He had a story in mind,” Kerr said at the time. “He sold me on the story that ‘you’ll have time, you’ll have resources, you’ll have legal insurance. Give it a shot.’”

While he worked at Canadaland, Kerr wrote several stories about the Kielburgers and WE Charity, and was interviewed by Brown on several Canadaland podcasts.

In October 2018, Canadaland published Kerr’s piece “Craig Kielburger Founded WE to Fight Child Labour. Now the WE Brand Promotes Products Made By Children”, which accused WE Charity of being “connected to no fewer than three companies known to use child and slave labour in their supply chain”.

The article relied heavily on information attributed to anonymous former employees and included digitally altered financial documents which created false assumptions/ It also featured a mocked-up digital image of a Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats cereal box that was co-branded with a ME to WE logo.

Canadaland spread this image all over social media. It was supposedly the “smoking gun” proving a secret and sleazy relationship between Kellogg’s, which Canadaland says has child labour products in its supply chain, and ME to WE.

At the time, I offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove the cereal box depicted an actual product. I still have my money because a real box never existed. The mock-up was made by an ad company making a pitch to the charity. Kerr never asked the charity for comment before publication.

On November 6, 2018, WE Charity served Jaren Kerr and Canadaland with a libel notice listing dozens of instances of shoddy reporting, invented documents and unsubstantiated claims. The charity served a second notice of libel for an article and podcast about WE Charity and its supposed bullying of the media, which was also anchored in amateur-level, faux journalism.

I think WE Charity would have easily won their case if they had filed statements of claim and moved the cases forward. But they did not proceed, likely because of the aggravation, cost and time involved. The anti-SLAPP regime is also hit and miss. Some cases are knocked out even though plaintiffs have been treated unfairly by the media or attacked by paid smear merchants.

That’s why it is so notable that Justice Morgan said Mrs. Kielburger’s case against Brown, Kerr and the rest has “substantial merit”. That does not bode well for Kerr’s future career in journalism.

Either way, I hope the whole process has taught Kerr that sloppy, irresponsible and misleading journalism, whether done by the reporter on his own, or because his boss wants it, has consequences. Bad reporting does not just hurt the people it attacks, it sticks to, and can eventually ruin, journalists who engage in it.

-Mark Bourrie is a Canadian journalist, lawyer and award winning author. Mark Bourrie, PhD has been a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery from 1994 to 2018. He previously taught media history and journalism at Concordia University. Mark is the author of 13 best-selling books including having won the RBC Taylor Prize.