A local company sued for defamation by Northwestel Inc. has filed its statement of defence in Yukon Supreme Court.

Orange Technology denies that the statements its director, Martin Lehner, made in the media about Northwestel’s Internet service were defamatory.

On Nov. 20, 2015, Lehner appeared on the CBC Yukon morning show, A New Day.

He was being interviewed about the Yukon government’s plan to build a fibre line along the Dempster Highway.

He told CBC the new line would offer redundancy, but wouldn’t fix all of the territory’s Internet problems.

Northwestel took issue with part of the interview.

In it, Lehner alleged one of his client’s Internet service goes out frequently, that the issue comes from Northwestel’s infrastructure and that the company had told them it didn’t plan to fix it.

On Jan. 14, the company filed a lawsuit.

“The statement is defamatory ... in that it discredits Northwestel by suggesting that it is unresponsive to complaints by its clients,” the company said in its statement of claim.

In the statement of defence filed Feb. 10, Lehner and Orange Technology advance three distinct defences to argue the statements weren’t defamatory.

The first is that the statements refer solely to Northwestel’s goods and services.

The second is that those statements are true.

The company also denies Northwestel’s claim that the statements imply that the company is unresponsive to complaints made by its clients.

But even if the court were to rule the statements do imply that, these innuendos are still not defamatory, the company argues, because they fall under the defence of fair comment.

In a 2003 case involving the Winnipeg Sun, the court of Queen’s bench of Manitoba looked at the defence of fair comment raised by the newspaper.

“Everyone has a right to comment on matters of public interest provided he does so fairly and honestly and such comment, however severe, is not actionable,” the decision read.

The judge in that case set out the criteria to establish such a defence.

The statement in question must be a comment, not a statement of fact, it must be fair and it must be on a matter of public interest.

“In the alternative, the Alleged Innuendos (...) are fair comments made in good faith and without malice upon a matter of public interest involving the state of Internet services in the Yukon Territory and the effect the development of a second fibre line will have on those services,” the statement of defence reads.

Orange Technology also denied it had an “improper motive” for making the statements Northwestel took issue with.

Orange Technology and Northwestel declined to comment for this story.