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1/ In case you are worried about rampant cancel culture on campus, here is HEQCO's report on freedom of speech on Ontario campuses for the period August 1 2019 to July 31, 2020. https://heqco.ca/research/freedom-of-speech/
2/ System-wide there were 26 freedom of speech complaints. All were resolved internally, none went to the provincial ombudsman. Of the 70,000 plus non-curricular events on campus...
3/ It's almost as if this wasn't actually a problem to begin with.
4/ I really like what HECQO has done with this. Minimalist reporting, no commentary. Government can say "look it's working!", and institutions can say "look, useless reporting for a non-existent problem". Both sides see it as proof they were right. Issue defused.
5/ ok, I've gone through each individual institutions' free speech report and can provide more detail than HEQCO does on the nature of the free speech complaints. There were 12 at Ryerson, 7 at York, 3 at Brock, 2 at Toronto and one each at Mohawk and McMaster.
6/ Of the 12 complaints at Ryerson, 11 either identified no Ryerson individual responsible for the alleged violation, or were dropped prior to the complaints process starting. Details a bit scant, but most seem to have been about student elections and an anti-abortion protest.
7/ The 7 complaints at York were all related to a single event. https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/11/brawl-breaks-out-during-pro-israel-event-toronto-university/
8/ In this case, the institution brought in a mediator to work with the two opposing groups created both an internal working group to review policies and an external report headed by (believe it or not) an ex-SCC Justice. Details starting on page 7 here: https://secretariat.info.yorku.ca/files/2020-Annual-Report-to-HEQCO-on-Freedom-of-Speech-Final.pdf?x72264
9/ 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.
10/ The Mohawk case involved an outside entity asking for the college to refrain from charging the People's Party a security fee for an event on campus during the election. Since the Party had agreed to pay it, the case was declared void.
11/ The McMaster case involved the Student Union deregistering an organization. This case has yet to be resolved. I assume it is this case here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/mcmaster-china-student-association-ban-1.5298882
12/ One of the two Toronto cases involved a student who was prevented from distributing materials to classmates via the digital learning management system. The provost deemed this out of scope. The other was a conflict between student groups, solved with some mediation.
13/ In total, actual disciplinary measures were taken against only two individuals, one at York, one at Ryerson. Not entirely clear who they were or what they were for, but both appear to be students, both for incidents at non-academic events.
