Libel Is Alright Because Everyone Does It??

At https://www.mondaq.com/canada/income-tax/833802/gordon-et-al-v-the-queen-canadian-tax-lawyer39s-analysis-and-comments are comments on a court case decided last year, which was fought over the issue of whether a CRA Investigation into an SRED practitioner’s routine of creating back-dated documents to make it appear that transactions and circumstances had occurred when they had not. The court’s findings make sense to me, with the exception of the determination that government reports labeling one of the individuals connected with the plaintiff as a “troublemaker” were not damaging to the subject’s name. The reason given by the Court to support the finding that the individual’s reputation was not damaged by the remarks is that such labeling practices are common within government! So, holding up a convenience store (easier now that masks are routinely worn) is alright because hold-ups are common? Yikes! It is a sad state into which a Just-Us system has fallen when such reasoning passes scrutiny. 

It is interesting though that the Court seems to have acknowledged that where poorly documented transactions or relationships had existed, it is a satisfactory accounting tactic to post hoc create missing documentary evidence.