You raise an interesting question here.
First of all, breach of privilege, as you're probably well aware, or the rules of privilege don't apply during an electoral period. After all, Parliament has been dissolved. There is no Parliament, and the electoral period is a different situation; however, you can still sue for defamation for something that's said during the course of an election campaign. Now, you run into different issues, to some extent, because then the defendant will invite the court to consider whether what was said was a matter of fair comment on a matter of public interest. I can explain to you what that means.
The defendant typically might say, in any defamation action, that what was said was true, or, if it's not a matter of whether the facts were true but is a matter of comment, that it was a fair comment. You have to remember the distinction between facts and comment: there are facts, and then there's comment about the facts. The question with fair comment is whether the fair comment was made honestly and in good faith on a matter of public interest.
Saying something publicly about something that relates to a person's private life would arguably, prima facie, not be a matter of public interest. But certainly, if it's a public debate—let's say the recent debate regarding reproductive services to women—and all of a sudden there was a charge made against a member regarding his support for one type of service over another, and the charge had implications for that individual, given his riding and his religious faith and all the rest of it, then maybe there would be a basis for an action for defamation by the member.
But it also is a matter of public interest; it's a large public debate. In a matter of fair comment, the law says basically that there are five things that have to be shown. One is that it's a comment, not a fact; secondly, that it was based upon facts that are true; thirdly, that the comment was made honestly and fairly; fourthly, that there was no malice; and finally, that it was on a matter of public interest. If you establish those, you have a defence of fair comment, and in the context of an election, that may be available.
However, let me point one thing out to you. Recently—I think it was in the last election, or the election before—a member of Parliament went to court during an election campaign and obtained an order of the court, an interim injunction, to stop the distribution of a certain householder that had false representations made in it. Now, as the earlier member was saying, in a sense that householder was distributed, may have had an impact on the riding, and so on, but the court did accept that, in that situation, it was false, and would cause damages that would be irreparable. So an injunction was granted to the member, ordering not the pulling back of what was distributed but no more distribution of the flyer.
So there is legal recourse available to a person in the course of an election campaign.