You may remember that one of the Ford government’s first acts on taking office was to order institutions to develop Freedom of Speech policies based on University of Chicago principles, and ask the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario to research and evaluate how free speech is addressed by postsecondary institutions and produce reports thereon.  Their second annual report came out last month and is worth a read (it’s short)

HEQCO’s reports focus on two things: events on campus which are cancelled for reasons of safety or the security costs, and formal complaints filed to universities or colleges with respect to what freedom of expression.  Here is what they found:

• Out of 70,000 plus non-curricular events, exactly none was cancelled due to concerns about safety or security. One event was re-scheduled in order to reduce costs.
• Province-wide, there were twenty-six complaints made to universities and colleges about infringement of free speech policies. All were handled internally, and none were taken to a higher level with the provincial ombudsman.

At first glance, this would certainly seem to indicate that there is little in the way of a real problem with respect to freedom of expression at Ontario universities.  But before concluding this, we should take a closer look at those 26 cases to determine whether there are genuinely any real issues at play.  The HEQCO report does not deal with them individually, but the individual institutional reports do.  Since HEQCO reports only on aggregate, not by institutions, I went through the tedious process of pulling up all of them to check for more specific detail.  As it turns out, these 26 incidents occurred at just six institution: Ryerson (12), York (7), Brock (3), Toronto (2), McMaster (1) and Mohawk (1).  Briefly, this is what they concerned:

• The Ryerson institutional report is a bit vague on some points, but clear on others: of the twelve complaints, eleven were either dropped before a resolution process could begin or involved no identifiable Ryerson individuals as the subject of the complaint (Ryerson being in the middle of downtown Toronto, it is often the site of protests/events that involve people with little connection to the institution). Most of them, apparently, had either to do with an anti-abortion protest and/or posters relating to student elections.
• The seven York cases all came from a single incident, a case where a group called Herut (Hebrew word meaning “freedom” but also the name of a former right-wing nationalist party in Israel) held an event involving former Israeli soldiers. The event was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors. “Verbal and physical confrontations ensured” according to a Globe and Mail account, and police separated the two sides.
• The three Brock cases were deemed to be out of scope because the alleged infractions were either hypothetical or did not occur on the Brock campus or on a Brock website.
• One of the University of Toronto cases involved a student complaining they could not distribute material to classmates using a digital learning management system. The Provost ruled this was not a free speech issue. The other involved a conflict between two student groups, which was resolved with some mediation.
• The Mohawk case involved a complaint from a third party about the decision to charge the People’s Party a fee to cover security during an election event. Since the party agreed to pay the fee, the case did not proceed.
• The McMaster complaint is an interesting one. In November 2019, the student union decertified the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) as an SU-recognized association after it protested a speech by a Uighur activist denouncing Chinese activities in Xinjiang as genocidal. The CSSA’s activities were seen as an extension of Chinese state security, monitoring and reporting on Chinese overseas students. Safe to say this was not the kind of activity a “free speech” policy was meant to protect. The case apparently remains unresolved.

Out of all that, exactly two people – one at Ryerson, one at York – were disciplined by institutions for violations of freedom of speech or other code of conduct reasons.  Though details are scarce (presumably for privacy reasons), both individuals appear to be students, and both infractions appear to be related to student-sponsored events.   There was one significant incident at York, and the institutions responded to it by bringing in trained mediators to work out differences between the two groups, conducting a significant internal review process and commissioning an external review of policy from an ex-SCC judge.  And despite the obvious punchlines about ex-SCC judges, it’s a pretty thoughtful discussion of how to manage freedom of expression conflicts (which obviously applies both to speakers and to protestors) on campuses (Appendix D in here if you’re minded to read it).

If you read the HEQCO report carefully, you’ll see that it is written to thread a pretty delicate needle.  Most people, upon learning that there were basically only two cases and one significant crowd event across an entire system of 45 colleges and universities and nearly one million students, might question the need for any kind of policy in this area.  But HEQCO doesn’t comment on any of this.  The report is just a straight-up recitation of a limited number of facts. If you’re in government, you can reasonably point to the report and say “look, our policy is working” while at the same time permitting a more straightforward reading, namely “man, this is all pretty small beans, and the whole moral panic with which Conservatives like to suffuse this issue seems totally overblown”.  Kudos to HEQCO for walking this tight line.