Freedom of Expression & Its Limits

Centre for Free Expression

Earlier this month the University of Windsor reached an agreement with the occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment on the university’s grounds. The agreement brought a peaceful end to the protest. Several of the leading Jewish organizations in Canada have been harshly critical of the agreement. Their principal complaints (listed 1 to 5) are that: 

Some 50 days after protestors set up a camp known as Occupy U of T, Ontario Superior Court granted the University of Toronto an injunction that ordered occupants to dismantle the site and discontinue their demonstration.

In spring 2024 student encampments at Canadian and US universities provoked strong reactions for and against pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus property. While some Canadian universities called in police to disperse demonstrators, others looked to the courts for injunctions compelling students to disperse and abandon their encampments.

CFE/CAUT/CFS(O) Intervener Factum – Ontario Superior Court. The issue is whether the University of Toronto’s request for an injunction should be granted against the encampment on campus. The factum argues the University’s common law rights as “fee simple owner” of its property are not unlimited or absolute and do not pre-empt or extinguish the Charter freedoms of those using its property for expressive purposes, as are members of the encampment. It further argues that the Province of Ontario’s decision in 2018 to regulate campus expression transformed an area of autonomous university governance into one of Ministerial regulation and control, making the University’s actions in relation to freedom or expression and freedom assembly subject to the Charter. It also argues against the claim that immunity from the Charter is necessary to protect academic freedom. To the contrary, they are complimentary values.