What is the test for a judge to find defamatory words in a defamation action?

In executing the first role, the question is whether the words complained of are reasonably capable of being understood in a defamatory sense. In exercising this gatekeeper role, the judge must keep in mind that the question does not involve finding that the words are in fact defamatory, but concerns only what the words are capable of meaning. When performing this task, the judge must not stray from a “common sense construction” of these words (as it was termed in Makow v. Winnipeg Sun, 2003 MBQB 56, [2003] 11 W.W.R. 166, affirmed 2004 MBCA 41) and seize upon one marginal to that construction.