Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson’s defamation lawsuit against Coun. Katie Neustaeter has been thrown out by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
Neustaeter had filed to have the case dismissed under the Protection of Public Participation Act (PPPA), which is intended to protect discourse in the public interest.
The written ruling, given on Jan. 30 by Justice Jacqueline Hughes, comes after a series of hearings in September 2025.
The case addressed four instances of alleged defamation, including three emails and one public statement Neustaeter made on behalf of council in March 2023, all ultimately concerning communications between Hamer-Jackson and Neustaeter’s father.
Neustaeter had asked Hamer-Jackson multiple times not to involve her father in city politics. According to the decision, Neustaeter believed at the time her father was showing signs of dementia and she did not want him to be taken advantage of.
Hamer-Jackson had forwarded a voicemail he had received from her father to members of city council insisting they listen to it, as Hughes wrote, to show that Neustaeter’s father was supportive of him. He signed the email “Very confidential and not debatable.”
In response, Neustaeter sent an email to Hamer-Jackson and council telling him to “Never harass, meet with, attempt to meet with, or otherwise involve a member of my family in your dealings again.”
Email exchanges continued and the matter was brought up during a city council meeting. Then, on March 16, Neustaeter read a statement on behalf of council in front of Kamloops media at City Hall, reading, in part:
“While we, as councillors, have been subjected to repeated disrespect, violations of personal and professional boundaries, belittling, and constantly disruptive behaviour by the mayor, we have been willing to absorb the impact in service to our community and in an attempt to have city business compromised as little as possible.”
Hamer-Jackson had alleged that statement “adopted and repeated the false allegation” made in previous emails.
“I agree with the defendant [Neustaeter] that this case is fundamentally one about political speech. Her assertion that the plaintiff [Hamer-Jackson] is using this litigation to target her as a political adversary for speech that she made, which was critical of his conduct and governance in his role as mayor, is supported on the record before me,” Hughes wrote in her decision.
Hughes concluded there is no evidence of any causal link between the harms alleged by Hamer-Jackson and Neustaeter’s statements and that the mayor’s suit had a “significant chilling effect” on her ability to speak for and represent her constituents.
A date to decide on damages and costs will be decided within 30 days of the decision.