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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Academic freedom committee says Quebec universities should not be “safe spaces”

By
Jonathan Bradley
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Quebec universities are not “safe spaces” and should not be using “trigger warnings,” according to a report released by an academic freedom committee on Tuesday. 

The Quebec government struck the committee in March after hearing incidents of professors who stopped teaching controversial topics to avoid offending students. The committee was also formed as a response to a professor at the University of Ottawa (U of O) being suspended for deliberately using the N-word for a lecture in 2020. 

“The freedoms to think, express, and discuss constitute the very foundations of the university and of democracy,” said committee president Alexandre Cloutier. “I believe we can all rally behind these common values.”

The report included results from a poll of 1,079 professors and 992 university students. The poll showed that 60% of professors engage in self-censorship and avoid using certain words. The poll also showed that 82% said they were in favour of no restrictions about what they could teach or say in class. 

Cloutier, who is vice-chancellor at the University of Québec at Chicoutimi, recommended Quebec pass a law that would create a universal declaration of academic freedom and protect that freedom on campuses across the province. 

“Academic freedom must now be reaffirmed and protected,” said Cloutier. “I hope that our recommendations will find concrete application within all academic institutions and that the analysis and clarification of the various concepts related to academic freedom will contribute to their understanding and implementation.”

According to the report, the law should require universities’ mission statements to state that individual autonomy and academic freedom are necessary. The law would specify that community members’ working conditions could not be applied in such a way to restrict their academic freedom. 

The report recommends that Quebec require each university to set up a committee on academic freedom that would hear disputes. It also recommends that universities be required to write memos on their academic freedom policies that would be sent to the minister of higher education. These memos would have to state the number of disputes dealt with, descriptions of what happened, how long the investigations took and any punishments that were imposed. 

Quebec Premier Francois Legault criticized U of O for suspending a professor who spoke the N-word during a lecture. A student had complained that art theory professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval used the slur to illustrate how some communities have reclaimed terms over time. 

Legault said he was looking at issuing a statement to universities about academic freedom rather than enacting a law supporting freedom of expression on campus. 

Higher Education Minister Danielle McCann said in a tweet that the Quebec government would be looking at these recommendations. 

“Academic freedom is a fundamental condition for the health of our university environment,” said McCann. “I welcome the recommendations with great interest.” 

The Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities enacted a similar policy by mandating every university in the province have a free speech policy by 2019. The policy would apply to all community members, and it had to follow principles based on the University of Chicago Statement on Principles of Free Expression. 

Humour is the best weapon in politics

By
Candice Malcolm
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Wit and humour are political virtues, and they’re some of the best tools we can use in fighting back against abuses in power. Politicians and powerful people deserve to be mocked and ridiculed – it’s part of how we hold them accountable!

Today on The Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by a Harvard-educated Canadian professor Travis Smith to discuss what we can learn from the ancient Greeks and Enlightenment philosophers, and why political philosophy is still useful today. 

They discuss the use of humour in politics, the success and failure of political comedians and the problem of today’s political movements driven by anger and indignation.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE CANDICE MALCOLM SHOW

Jason Kenney calls out NDP for backing illegal activities by “loony left”

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
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Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is calling out the NDP for supporting radical environmental groups, even those illegally blockading oil and gas development sites.

In an exclusive interview with True North fellow Andrew Lawton, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney chided politicians and the Canadian legacy media for giving a free pass to law-breakers.

Alberta has recently been plagued by protests incited by radical far-left environmentalist groups such as Extinction Rebellion. 

“The NDP MLAs went out and joined Greta Thunberg last year at a rally with Extinction Rebellion in front of the legislature,” Kenney said in an interview with True North’s Andrew Lawton. “This is an organization that doesn’t just oppose oil and gas: they oppose nuclear, they oppose hydropower, they oppose all of the traditional green technologies, (including) carbon capture. They’re lunatics.”

“They want to basically turn off the entire industrial modern economy overnight, which would be devastating. These are the people that the NDP are associating with, and I can’t understand why the mainstream media give them a free pass as though they are a mainstream party in Alberta when they hang out with (them) and now have endorsed illegal activities.” 

The most recent protests to dog Alberta are centred around the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline in neighbouring British Columbia. 

In November, a group of far-left protesters claiming to represent the Wet’suwet’en First Nation blocked Edmonton’s High Level Bridge. These actions were spillover from the pipeline’s site, which has been subject to a number of blockades and sabotage attempts despite court injunctions against the demonstrators. 

TC Energy, the company behind the project, has secured agreements with every elected First Nations group along the pipeline’s route. Nonetheless, a small band of unelected hereditary chiefs with the support of foreign NGOs have sought to bring the project to an end. 

Kenney called the intervention “outrageous.”

“The bottom line is the NDP said that they stand with illegal blockades to interrupt the Coastal GasLink project, which is supported by all 20 elected First Nations councils through which the pipeline passes, including the five clans of the Wet’suwet’en people, and this is outrageous.”. 

“This is what I call environmental colonialism. Many of the so-called land defenders the NDP has endorsed are actually rich white people from southern urban Canada”

As for the media, True North found a recent CBC News article on the illegal pipeline protests to be full of inaccuracies and left-wing bias. 

The explainer piece made no mention that the protests were deemed illegal by the BC Supreme Court.  Its assessments instead relied on a single report by a foreign-funded NGO. 

LEVY: Ontario’s new measures to protect seniors in care homes are too little, too late

By
Sue-Ann Levy
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With cases of the Omicron variant rising every day in Ontario, the Ministry of Long-Term Care (LTC) finally woke up to the fact this week that our seniors – particularly those living in congregate settings – are the most vulnerable.

On Tuesday, LTC minister Rod Phillips unveiled a series of measures to “protect the health and safety” of residents in long-term care and retirement homes. He mandated enhanced testing for all those entering these facilities, including a COVID test for visitors and essential caregivers. These rapid antigen tests would be required regardless of one’s vaccination status.

The new measures – which take effect Friday Dec. 17 – also require that caregivers be fully vaccinated by Feb. 21 of next year. The timeline is far too lengthy according to professor and LTC advocate Vivian Stamatopoulos, who spent much of the past 19 months trying to improve the lives of seniors stuck in LTC homes.

It is shameful that it took 19 months – and the deaths of nearly 4,000 seniors in congregate care – for Ontario’s long-term care ministry to make seniors a priority. Not even a scathing 332-page report from the government-appointed LTC Commission could move the government –  or then-LTC minister Merrilee Fullerton – to admit that they really, really dropped the ball on the file.

At the time Fullerton coldly brushed off the findings, claiming circumstances had improved in LTC homes (which was not true), and they all needed to move forward. Never mind the negligence, the debilitating isolation of residents from repeated lockdowns and the abuse of power by many LTC home providers under the ministry’s watch.

I will never forget writing about the rampant spread of COVID through these homes whose administrators weren’t prepared, where caregivers came to work with COVID (or were forced to come to work) and people were left to die – often from dehydration – in horrific and heartbreaking circumstances. Several of these circumstances were documented in a May 2020 Canadian Military report.

It quickly became clear that inspections of LTC homes were virtually non-existent. There were almost no monitoring and compliance audits of the few that were inspected. Certainly no licences were yanked for non-compliance.

Yet the inspections that were done cited issues of neglect and abuse repeatedly.

When Fullerton appeared before the LTC Commission this past March, she admitted she knew in February of 2020 that personal support workers (PSWs)  who worked in more than one LTC home might spread the virus but says her ministry didn’t act right away over fears this would cause a staffing collapse.

It took until April 26 of 2020 – long after the damage was done – to mandate that PSWs only be permitted into one home.

Fullerton also told the Commission she wasn’t aware the LTC ministry had a pandemic plan.

As someone with a mom in a retirement home who endured incredible isolation last year, I have particular insight into the problem. 

But more than that, I have often wondered whether rapid testing would have saved my sweet 91-year-old dad, who died of COVID last Nov. 29. The pernicious disease raged through his Alzheimer’s facility, brought in by an asymptomatic caregiver who worked an entire weekend with it. All but one of the 47 residents caught it, and 15 died, including my dad.

Had there been rapid testing at the door, perhaps I’d be telling a different story.

But my dad has been gone a year now – one of nearly 4,000 who lost their lives because a government ministry dragged its heels and didn’t make seniors a priority.

Their announcement this week is too little, too late.

Mulcair says Trudeau “chickens out” when it comes to defending rights

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair has castigated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his performance on defending human rights. 

“When it comes to actually defending minority rights, Trudeau has failed completely,” Mulcair stated. “He is often invited to deliver speeches to minority communities across Canada. He talks a good game, showing real emotion when speaking on these issues. But he chickens out when it comes time to doing something to defend those rights.” 

Mulcair’s assessment came as a scathing op-ed published in the Montreal Gazette. It focused largely on the prime minister’s reaction to a recent story out of Quebec where a Muslim woman was removed from her teaching job because she wore a hijab. 

The teacher, Fatemeh Anvari, was removed from her Grade 3 classroom by school administrators in West Quebec for showing up in the religious garment. Anvari was reassigned from the classroom to an “inclusion and diversity literacy initiative” at the school. 

Anvari afterwards wrote, “I sympathize with anybody else that it affects, anyone who chooses to wear any article of clothing based on their religious beliefs, their identity, their culture. This isn’t just an issue for Muslims; it’s a human issue.” 

In Quebec, Bill 21 prohibits any public servant from wearing religious symbols while at work. Critics of the law have accused the Quebec government of being discriminatory towards minorities and those who want to practice their faith. 

Trudeau has said that he will not step into the debate, which would likely lead to a fight with Quebec over jurisdictional matters. 

“I think that it’s important, in the first stages of the work that’s being done right now, to not give the excuse of a fight between Ottawa and Quebec,” Trudeau said.

Mulcair criticized Trudeau for being all talk and no action when it comes to human rights. 

“The No. 1 job of any prime minister is to uphold the Constitution. Want to have a heart-to-heart about the fact that Quebec has never signed the 1982 Constitution? Fill your boots. It’s a big honking issue that is the elephant in the room in all of these discussions. It just doesn’t change a thing about the fact that all Canadians have the same rights and that Quebecers have the same rights as all other Canadians.”

Mulcair also went after Conservative Party of Canada Leader Erin O’Toole for following in Trudeau’s footsteps, calling both leader’s positions “a timorous failure.” 
In response to the Anvari incident, O’Toole said that the debate over Bill 21 was “an issue that is best left for Quebecers to decide” and that his position was the “exact same” as that of Trudeau and his counterpart NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

Pandemic enforcement blitz targets small-town Ontario businesses

By
Jonathan Bradley
-

A number of small businesses in Port Stanley, Ontario were hit with $10,000 worth of fines during a “provincial pandemic enforcement operation” this past weekend. 

James Street Home Decor co-owner Jessica Korbiel said in an interview with True North on Wednesday that two employees from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment came into her business and ticketed it this past weekend. 

Korbiel said the ministry employees handed her a $1,100 fine for “pandemic protocol violations.” These violations included a handmade safety plan instead of an official one, and staff not completing the COVID-19 safety checklist through the Ontario government’s website. 

“It’s literally just a paperwork problem,” said Korbiel. “Obviously it’s kind of a kick-you-when-you’re-down situation.” 

She said 11 other small businesses had been ticketed in Port Stanley, and three others received warnings. 

Two Forks co-owner Terrie Collard said an employee from the Ministry of the Environment came into her business on Friday and ended up giving her a fine. 

“I found him to be very abrupt and abrasive,” said Collard. “He proceeded to tell us all of the things in which we were doing wrong.” 

Collard said the ministry employee fined her business $1,000 because he said screening for her staff could have been better, the provincial safety plan was not at the front door and a server was not wearing safety glasses. 

She was told the server had to wear eye protection because guests were unmasked, but the small business owner said she had never heard of the rule before.

The affected businesses held a meeting on Tuesday, and all of them committed to fighting the fines individually. 

The Ontario Ministry of Labour confirmed to CTV News London that it oversaw a weekend enforcement operation and had borrowed employees from other ministries to carry it out. The operation was done with assistance from Southwestern Public Health. 

Korbiel said the Ontario government needs to do whatever it can to support small businesses during this time. 

“If there’s no small businesses, there’s a gigantic population that’s going to lose their jobs,” she said. 

The Ministry of Labour could not be reached for further comment in time for publication. 

Canada just banned clinical therapy for children thinking of transitioning

By
Candice Malcolm
-

Bill C-4, the ban on so-called Conversation Therapy, passed with the unanimous support of all parties in the House of Commons.

But it didn’t just ban therapy for children and adults confused about their sexual orientation – the bill also applies to children and adults suffering gender dysphoria and considering going through the irreversible medical procedure of transitioning genders.

On today’s episode of the Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by sex neuroscientist Dr. Debra Soh. Soh says that Canada is going in the opposite direction of other Western liberal democracies who have mandated psychotherapy before transitioning and banned dangerous puberty-blocking drugs to those under 18.

She says that clinical therapy is essential for children suffering from gender dysphoria, and banning it is cruel and anti-science.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE CANDICE MALCOLM SHOW

Government mum on status of CERB fraud investigation into Liberal MP

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

The federal government has gone quiet on whether they are investigating CERB fraud allegations made against Liberal MP George Chahal. 

On Tuesday, Conservative MP and Ethics Critic John Brassard prodded the ruling Liberals over whether or not reports of Chahal encouraging constituents to fraudulently claim the CERB benefit were being investigated. 

His questions received no reply. 

The allegations originated on a local Alberta radio program hosted by Shaye Ganam and involved Chahal’s time as a Calgary city councillor.

 A caller into Ganam’s show – known only as “Steve” – said that Chahal had advised him to inform the federal government that he paid wages to his family members who don’t work in order to collect CERB benefits on their behalf. 

Chahal has denied the allegations as “fabricated.” 

Brassard told True North that “it’s hard to tell” whether the Liberals are taking the matter seriously. 

“The Minister committed to investigating this last Thursday. She said last week that she takes all allegations of CERB fraud seriously and will investigate any and all claims of fraud. I asked today on the status of the investigation and didn’t receive an answer,” Brassard said.

On Dec. 9, Liberal Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough stated the government had a “zero tolerance” approach when it came to fraud. 

“We are systematically following up on every active case and every issue that we address through CERB,” Qualtrough continued. “We said from the beginning we would give Canadians, eight million of them, CERB. At the end, we are enforcing our integrity and compliance measures. We have no tolerance for fraud.”

According to Brassard, the Liberal’s actions are indicative of an accountability and governance problem when it comes to administering pandemic programs. 

“We’ve heard of several cases of fraud including organized crime and gangs using CERB to buy guns. According to a 2020 Fintrac Report, organized criminals “knowingly and actively” defrauded the CERB and Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) program,” Brassard told True North in an emailed statement. 

“The reports coming out show that there was widespread fraud and I expect more examples will come to light. It appears many of these programs were a windfall for organized crime. Hard working taxpayers should have a problem with their hard-earned tax dollars being given to organized crime and Canadians should frankly demand that this be investigated.”

Chahal has also been accused of allegedly removing Conservative candidate and former MP Jag Sahota’s election material from a community member’s doorstep during the 2021 federal election. 

Chahal defeated Sahota by approximately 3,000 votes.

Government’s own research shows Canadians oppose censoring the Internet

By
Jonathan Bradley
-

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: An earlier version of this article did not properly attribute this research to Blacklock’s Reporter, who first published the information in this report. We regret this error and apologize to Blacklock’s.

Canadians do not trust the Liberal government to regulate the Internet, research by the Privy Council Office released on Tuesday. 

“They generally favoured an environment in which free speech is promoted even if that meant offensive comments or material may appear online,” read the report. “A number of participants firmly supported free speech, commenting that a divergence of opinions and lively debate are vital to a healthy society.”

As first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, most respondents expressed concerns about online hate speech and cyberbullying of minority groups. Respondents agreed that online child sexual exploitation and sexting were significant issues in Canada and around the world. 

Participants were asked whether the Canadian government should be involved in tackling online hate or whether it should be left up to social media platforms. Most said it should be left up to social media. 

“Their initial impression was that the Government of Canada could do little to regulate social media companies which were headquartered in foreign jurisdictions and they generally felt that cases of malicious or criminal online activity should be actively and rigorously pursued by law enforcement groups,” stated the report. “They also viewed the social media companies themselves as being primarily responsible to self-regulate.” 

A similar question was asked about possible actions social media companies could take to combat online hate. Participants said the best approach would be to implement stricter penalties for repeat abusers. 

The Liberals introduced two bills proposing Internet regulations in the last Parliament, but both died after the session was dissolved for the 2021 election. 

Bill C-10 would have seen the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulate YouTube videos as if they were television shows. 

Bill C-36 could have subjected people to $70,000 fines for content that might “foment detestation or vilification” of an identifiable group. 

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told the House of Commons Finance Committee that dealing with online hate is “a priority” for the Canadian government and that a new bill to regulate the Internet will be introduced soon. 

“It’s going to be a very good bill,” Rodriguez said. “I am sure you will be satisfied with many sections, if not all of the bill.”

Majority of Canadian businesses using vaccine passports report lower sales

By
Lindsay Shepherd
-

According to an October survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), 68% of hospitality industry businesses and 62% of arts and recreation businesses nationwide are experiencing lower sales since vaccine passports came into effect. 

Only 4% of hospitality businesses and 9% of arts and recreation businesses have reported higher sales.

In every province and territory except for Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, Canadians must produce proof of COVID-19 vaccination to dine in at a restaurant, attend a concert or show or participate in a group sport or organized activity. Age restrictions and degree of strictness vary across jurisdictions.

“Regardless of one’s views on vaccine passports, there is no doubt they’ve led to a further drop in sales for the small businesses required to use them,” CFIB President Dan Kelly wrote on Twitter.

Despite the evidence of continuous strain on businesses, CFIB does not advocate for an end to vaccine passport schemes. Rather, the organization is asking for more government funds to subsidize businesses required to implement the programs. 

“With regards to vaccine passports, we just want to make sure governments are aware that they are placing an additional burden and costs on the very sectors that were the most impacted by the pandemic when they impose vaccine passports,” CFIB Public Affairs Manager Milena Stanoeva told True North.

“We have urged the federal government to work with the provinces to provide financial compensation to businesses that have to enforce vaccine passports through the $1 billion fund it set aside for them for the implementation of these programs.”

In addition to lower sales, half of Canadian businesses affected by vaccine passport schemes also report increased costs due to new staffing and technology needed to check patron QR codes.

In an earlier Aug. 2021 CFIB member survey, 37% of small businesses said they were in favour of checking their customers’ vaccine passports, while 16% were undecided. With large events such as concerts, festivals and sports contests, the number of businesses supporting vaccine passports rose to 65%. 

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