Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• The defendant sought dismissal of a defamation action under the Protection of Public Participation Act, arguing it was a SLAPP suit targeting her criticism of the plaintiffs.
   
• Justice Milman found that the impugned Facebook posts related to matters of public interest, including the vehicles' true country of manufacture and alleged stock price manipulation.
   
• Evidentiary support for the defences of justification, fair comment, and qualified privilege was found to be lacking.
   
• Several affidavits and exhibits submitted by the defendant failed to substantiate the truth of the allegations made in the posts.
   
• Reputational harm suffered by the plaintiffs was found to outweigh the public interest in protecting the expression at issue.
   
• No costs were awarded on the application, with the court directing that each party bear its own costs.
   

Facts of the case

The plaintiffs — VinFast Auto Canada Inc., VinFast Auto Ltd., and Vingroup JSC — brought a defamation action against Phuong Ngo, a Vietnamese-born refugee living in Vancouver who describes herself as an independent journalist and social activist. Vingroup JSC is the parent company of the other two plaintiffs and one of the largest corporations in Vietnam, founded and chaired by Pham Nhat Vuong. VinFast Auto Ltd. manufactures electric vehicles that are imported and sold in Canada through VinFast Auto Canada Inc. Ngo operates a Vietnamese-language Facebook page with more than 200,000 followers, on which she posted two statements the plaintiffs alleged were defamatory. The first, posted on May 20, 2025, questioned whether the VF9 model vehicle was genuinely "Made in Vietnam" or was instead substantially manufactured in China, and had received over 1.6 million views, 9,000 reactions, and 2,000 comments by May 25, 2026. The second, posted on October 9, 2025, alleged that Vingroup was manipulating its stock price through a financial mechanism involving VIC shares, implicating both the company and Vietnamese regulatory authorities; that post had drawn almost 6,900 reactions, more than 1,300 comments, and over 800 shares by the same date. The plaintiffs commenced the action on October 17, 2025, seeking damages and orders requiring removal of the posts and prohibiting further defamatory statements. Ngo responded on November 7, 2025, pleading justification, fair comment, and qualified privilege, and filed a counterclaim alleging persecution by the Vietnamese government at the plaintiffs' instigation, seeking US$100 million in damages, including US$20 million for "malicious foreign interference" and intentional infliction of emotional distress. On November 14, 2025, Ngo filed the application that is the subject of this decision, seeking dismissal of the action under section 4 of the Protection of Public Participation Act.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

The application turned on section 4 of the Protection of Public Participation Act, SBC 2019, c. 3 (the "PPPA"). That provision allows a defendant to apply for dismissal on the basis that the proceeding arises from expression relating to a matter of public interest. Once that threshold is met, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to satisfy the court that there are grounds to believe the proceeding has substantial merit, that the defendant has no valid defence, and that the harm the plaintiff has suffered or will suffer is serious enough that the public interest in continuing the proceeding outweighs the public interest in protecting the expression. The court applied the framework established by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1704604 Ontario Ltd. v. Pointes Protection Association, 2020 SCC 22, which interpreted analogous Ontario legislation, and drew on Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, for guidance on what constitutes a matter of public interest and on the elements of defamation. The court also considered section 7(2) of the PPPA, which governs costs on an unsuccessful application, providing that the respondent is not entitled to costs unless the court considers such an award appropriate in the circumstances.

Reasoning and analysis

Justice Milman addressed each branch of the statutory test in turn. On the first branch, he concluded that Ngo had shown the action arose from expression relating to a matter of public interest, since the public has a genuine interest in knowing whether there is corruption at high levels of the Vietnamese government and whether vehicles marketed as manufactured in Vietnam are in fact produced mainly elsewhere. He distinguished the posts from those in Cheema v. Young, 2021 BCSC 461, where the expression was merely incidental to a matter of public interest, and declined to follow reasoning from Sandher Fruit Packers Ltd. v. MacAskill, 2025 BCSC 844, that had conflated the public-interest threshold with a qualitative assessment of the expression's value. Turning to the second branch, he found the elements of defamation were made out: the posts were published, referred to the plaintiffs, and carried a defamatory sting suggesting the plaintiffs misled the public about vehicle origin and manipulated their stock price. On the third branch, concerning whether the plaintiffs had shown no defence was likely to succeed, the court reviewed four affidavits and numerous exhibits filed by Ngo, including translated Facebook posts and news articles about other critics of Vingroup, and found none of them provided evidentiary support for the truth of the specific allegations in the impugned posts. Because the defendant had not put the pleaded defences of justification, fair comment, or qualified privilege meaningfully "in play" with sufficiently detailed material, the court found this branch favoured the plaintiffs. On the fourth branch, the court weighed the harm to the plaintiffs' reputation — found to be more than nominal given the scale of engagement with the posts — against the public interest in protecting the expression, concluding that the absence of any evidentiary foundation for the allegations reduced the weight properly accorded to that expression.

Ruling and overall outcome

Having found that the plaintiffs met their burden on each element of the statutory test under section 4(2) of the PPPA, Justice Milman dismissed Ngo's application, allowing the plaintiffs' defamation action to proceed. On the question of costs, the court declined to award costs to the plaintiffs on this application, citing the significant power and resource imbalance between the parties and noting it was not persuaded Ngo knew her allegations to be untrue; each party was directed to bear its own costs of the application, though the plaintiffs remain entitled to seek costs later if the underlying action succeeds. No monetary damages were determined at this stage, as the decision concerned only the dismissal application and not a final adjudication of the defamation claim or counterclaim.