CFE Blog

There’s more interest in campus free expression than we have seen since the Great Student Revolts of 1968, or even further back in the last century, in the arguments of the 1930s and 1940s over fascism, social democracy, war and peace.

In its recent draft Position on Online Reputation, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has suggested the options of removing webpages from search engine results, or “de-indexing”, along with “source takedown.”  

The Toronto Star has brought an application before the Ontario Superior Court asking for a declaration that the open court principle should apply to administrative tribunals – that their proceedings and records be public in the same way that court proceedings and records are public.

The No Platforming blog post calls on the Library Board to reconsider its revised room booking policy. The blog refers to TPL as “detouring from its mandate” and the revised policy as “a misguided endeavor”, suggesting TPL’s commitment to intellectual freedom has been undermined.

I was at work last week on a quite different blog for the Ryerson CFE when a jury of Gerald Stanley’s peers (or is it settler clones?), seven women and five men none of whom were “visibly Indigenous,” acquitted Stanley of the murder of Colten Boushie of the Red Pheasant First Nation in August of 2016.

Disinformation can be facilitated by government regulatory structures—leading to deception and betrayals of trust, regardless of the structures’ original purpose. Significant regulatory failures in health and environmental areas are discussed here. A subsequent post will discuss broader influences contributing to the failures and how to overcome such problems.