Towing company sues Winnipeg's deputy mayor, rival company for alleged defamation

A defamation lawsuit against a Winnipeg city councillor accuses her of making comments that suggest a towing company bribed city officials to win a contract.

The lawsuit, filed by Tartan Towing and its owners in Manitoba Court of King's Bench on Wednesday, names Deputy Mayor Janice Lukes and Zakria Shoaib, who owns Bison Towing, as defendants, claiming they made defamatory comments about Tartan.

Lukes, the councillor for Waverley West, told CBC News Friday she can't speak to specifics of the lawsuit.

"What I will say is that my job here, in my role as a city councillor, is to ensure taxpayers are receiving value for their tax dollars," she said.

The suit centres around comments made after a tender was issued in June for a contract with the Winnipeg Police Service to tow police vehicles, as well as vehicles involved in criminal investigations and impaired driving charges.

Three bids were received — one for $113,600, another for $18,480 and the third for $14.70.

The lowest bid came from Bison Towing, which said the storage fees it could charge were lucrative enough to cover the low offer, but the city awarded the contract in August to Tartan, which made the middle bid.

In interviews that month, Lukes questioned the city's decision — not only because of the price difference but because the city was in the midst of suing Tartan for allegedly overcharging it in the past by $1.1 million for tows related to residential snow-clearing parking bans.

The city claims those tows never happened and that it found a number of invalid invoices. Tartan has since countersued.

Lukes claimed the August contract was not fair, accountable and transparent, prompting the Winnipeg police to later launch an internal review of their towing contracts.

Although the contract is for one year, the tender gives the city the option of adding four more one-year extensions without having to go to public tender.

A city spokesperson said earlier this month the contract will be publicly reposted next year and open to new bids.

"I'm concerned about how the city is managing these contracts. I'm concerned about the way the contracts are written from the standpoint of transparency," Lukes told CBC News on Friday.

"You have to be a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what's going on in some of these contracts, and I don't think that's right. That brings a lot of questions to the forefront."

Suit alleges defamatory statements in radio interview

The lawsuit alleges comments Lukes made in a Nov. 4 interview with the Winnipeg radio station CJOB questioning the contract decision included suggestions about possible fraud.

"A lot of things are paid in cash, and that's a lot of cash floating around. When cash floats around, there is interesting things that can happen," the lawsuit quotes her as saying in the radio interview.

When asked by the interviewer if she was dealing with "corruption" or "incompetence," Lukes responded, in part, "I don't know, I am trying to get to the bottom of it."

"I have put hundreds of hours into this researching, looking, questioning, because ... [it] just seems so bizarre, and it made no sense," the lawsuit quotes her as saying.

She also said there are "many other things that have played into this that we haven't gotten into," according to the statement of claim.

In a CJOB interview on the same day, Bison Towing's Shoaib criticized the contract process as lacking accountability.

"Things are not as they seem to be," he said in the interview, according to the lawsuit.

"Specific contract is given away just to favour some specific people in the market."

The suit alleges that "directly and by way of innuendo," the comments from Lukes and Shoaib can be "reasonably understood" to mean that Tartan bribed the city in order to obtain the contract, which disparaged the integrity and reputation of the company and its owners, Satnam (Sid) Brar and Rob Campbell.

They have never engaged in bribery or paid any city officials in cash or failed to complete their contractual obligations, the statement of claim says.

It also alleges Tartan and its owners suffered economic loss and damage, details of which will be provided at trial.

Brar and Campbell are suing for damages and seeking an unspecified monetary amount, leaving it to the court to determine.

No statements of defence have been filed and none of the lawsuit's allegations have been tested in court.