Academic Freedom

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has carried through with his promise to require universities to develop, implement, and comply with free speech policies that meet his government’s minimum standard in the next 120 days or face the possibility of a reduction in their operating grant funding.

The Center for Free Expression and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression deplore the Ontario Government’s attempt to influence, through intimidation and the withholding of funds, the internal autonomous decision-making processes of Ontario universities and colleges in matters of free expression. 

At a time when academic freedom and university integrity are under widespread attack, University of Alberta President David Turpin has courageously defended the university as an institution founded on the principles of freedom of inquiry, academic integrity, and independence. His institution is under siege for deciding to offer an honorary degree to David Suzuki, the eminent Canadian geneticist, science broadcaster, environmental activist and human rights advocate.

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.

Toronto Star / January 26 – Writing in the Toronto Star, Sheldon Levy, past-president of Ryerson University, describes the university president’s challenge in defending freedom of expression on campus and why it is essential for universities and beyond. “On many occasions, I gave my administrator’s green light to events featuring speakers whose ideas I personally loathed,” Levy writes. “And I did so because freedom of speech is a core defining value for any free society. Democracy cannot function without it.”

In the general public sphere, expression is subject to relatively few legal restrictions. Canadian law includes ‘content’ restrictions on obscenity, hate speech, defamation, and false advertising. There are also laws that regulate the time or location at which expression may occur and are concerned with coordinating expression with other activities in public spaces.