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PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on original investigative and explanatory journalism.

Our small team of seven full-time, unionized journalists pursue stories across Canada within issue areas like big business and labour, healthcare and education, social and economic inequality, right-wing politics and far-right extremism, as well as civic institutions and threats to democracy.

PressProgress’ investigative journalism is rooted in democratic and egalitarian values, which sometimes earns us the wrath of wealthy and powerful people. But our readers tell us what they value most about our journalism is that we pursue stories guided by a moral compass while presenting solid information that is factual and responsibly reported.

PressProgress is a member of the National NewsMedia Council and all of our journalists are members of the Canadian Association of Journalists. All content published by PressProgress is the original and independent work of our team of editors and reporters, and is produced according to PressProgress’ Journalistic Standards and Editorial Independence policies.

PressProgress will be at the centre of a long and expensive 3-month trial in 2026 brought forward by Caylan Ford, a former candidate for Jason Kenney’s UCP.

The trial is focused on an important story PressProgress broke during Alberta’s 2019 provincial election, involving leaked messages between Caylan Ford and a fellow conservative politician making controversial statements on topics about race, immigration and white-supremacist terrorism. Caylan Ford later announced her resignation, and Jason Kenney publicly condemned her comments.

Since announcing her resignation, Caylan Ford has written lengthy blog posts, appeared on countless podcasts and right-wing media outlets and produced a feature-length documentary expressing her personal opinions about our journalism and setting out her alternative version of the facts. Caylan Ford even lodged a formal complaint with Elections Alberta about PressProgress, which Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer investigated and ultimately dismissed, citing Ford’s own statements to investigators.

Now Caylan Ford is moving forward with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against us, as well as several other defendants, including CBC News, the Toronto Star and other journalists.

PressProgress intends to defend our journalism and will be asking the court to dismiss the plaintiff’s claims in their entirety.

Given the nature of this lawsuit, we are limited in what we are allowed to share.

What we can say, however, is that public officeholders in Canada serve diverse communities and any statement from a politician challenging mainstream Canadian values like diversity and multiculturalism should be concerning to the public.

The public has a right to know about the views and values of those seeking public office.

In a free and democratic society, journalists have a right to quote the words of politicians, and that is what we did when we accurately quoted Caylan Ford’s own words.

In this case, PressProgress also took multiple steps to independently verify the authenticity of the Facebook messages prior to publication to confirm these were, in fact, words she wrote. Even Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer has investigated Caylan Ford’s allegations and concluded that PressProgress did not publish false statements about her and agreed that PressProgress “quoted excerpts from Ms. Ford’s electronic messages accurately.”

You might be wondering why this lawsuit is going to trial when other lawsuits get dismissed long before that ever happens.

Part of the issue is this lawsuit was filed in Alberta. In some provinces, like Ontario and British Columbia, news organizations can sometimes use something called anti-SLAPP legislation to challenge lawsuits when they believe they are groundless or undermine the public interest.

Anti-SLAPP legislation gives defendants an opportunity to make those arguments to a judge before they ever get to trial.

Alberta has no such legislation, leaving journalists who report on wealthy and powerful people in that province vulnerable to potentially long and expensive legal battles.

When someone launches a lawsuit, the plaintiff needs to file a Statement of Claim setting out their claims and their version of the facts. The defendant then gets an opportunity to reply with a Statement of Defence outlining why they disagree with the Plaintiff.

You can read Caylan Ford’s Statement of Claim here.

And PressProgress’ Statement of Defence here.

All of the other defendants in the lawsuit have similarly filed statements of defence.