While I spend a lot of my time dumping on Liberals and lefties, I’m hardly an uncritical follower of Conservative governments. Case in point, the Ontario government’s initiative to protect free speech on university campus. (Thanks to Chris Selley for flagging this)
Now, at a high level, protecting free speech is a good thing, and there ample evidence that Ontario’s universities at best don’t take the concept seriously, at worst are actively hostile to the concept in practice – examples abound, the persecution of Lindsay Shepard at Wilfred Laurier University (who was vindicated only because she had the foresight to record her persecutors so that the untruth of their positions could be exposed) Queen’s university’s program (since cancelled) to hire “facilitators” to monitor the speech of other students, countless speakers (curiously – if you’re awfully naive – usually of a conservative variety) disrupted or cancelled. So the Ford government’s commitment to protecting free speech is welcome.
Continue reading “Ford Government’s Campus Speech Proposal: A Good Start, but Misses the Point”
