A defence against a claim of defamation (libel or slander) available when the defendant issued defamatory words within specified occasions.
As Canada's Supreme Court said in Hill v Church of Scientology (1995) 2 SCR 1130:
"Qualified privilege attaches to the occasion upon which the communication is made, and not to the communication itself....
"(A) privileged occasion is . . . an occasion where the person who makes a communication has an interest or a duty, legal, social, or moral, to make it to the person to whom it is made, and the person to whom it is so made has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it. This reciprocity is essential.
"The legal effect of the defence of qualified privilege is to rebut the inference, which normally arises from the publication of defamatory words, that they were spoken with malice. Where the occasion is shown to be privileged, the bona fides of the defendant is presumed and the defendant is free to publish, with impunity, remarks which may be defamatory and untrue about the plaintiff. However, the privilege is not absolute and can be defeated if the dominant motive for publishing the statement is actual or express malice."