What is the defence of qualified privilege in the context of defamatory statements?

Qualified privilege: There are limited occasions of “qualified privilege” in which the interests that the party publishing defamatory statements seeks to achieve outweigh the interest of defamed parties in protecting their reputation. The law will protect the publisher of a defamatory statement if that person has an interest or duty in communicating the information and the recipient has a corresponding duty or interest in receiving it (see McLoughlin v. Kutasy, 1979 CanLII 39 (SCC), [1979] 2 S.C.R. 311 at 321). This defence is not available if the plaintiff shows that the publisher acted with actual malice in making the defamatory statements.