“Safe space” rules are strangling free speech in universities, that should be bastions of open debate. Thus, constitutional lawyer Glenn Blackett, tonight’s guest on this week’s edition of Hannaford. It's an outrage that the courts won’t deal with, that university administrations use as a convenient escape hatch from academic accountability, and that leaves to take action only the governments that created these ‘safe space’ laws in the first place — ironically not to foster academic freedom, but to suppress workplace harassment..The principle of a university education, after all, includes learning by constantly testing orthodoxy. To do otherwise is to slide quickly into education’s opposite, indoctrination.And that's the issue Blackett is dealing withm as he represents well-known professor Frances Widdowson, fired from her tenured position at Mount Royal University for challenging current aboriginal dogma. Later invited to speak at the University of Lethbridge on whether “wokeism” threatens academic freedom, Widdowson was met not with questions but with a mob of protesters determined to drown her out. Drums, guitars, and shouting filled the hall until no dialogue was possible..The university took refuge in Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, claiming that its ‘safe space’ provisions obliged administrators to protect students from words that might cause hurt feelings, and cancelled her event altogether. See below for The Western Standard’s coverage at the time..University of Lethbridge sued over cancelling Widdowson speaking event.Widdowson sued in provincial court, which refused to consider the evidence. This week, Alberta’s Court of Appeal did the same thing..Alberta Court of Appeal shields 'safe spaces' law from charter challenge.As originally conceived, ‘safe space’ provisions were intended to protect employees from harassment, says Blackett. In practice, he says, universities have simply wielded them as a weapon to silence speakers whose views don’t conform to campus orthodoxy.Yet Widdowson, this year’s winner of the JCCF’s George Jonas Freedom Award, is no right-wing provocateur. She has devoted her career to addressing indigenous poverty and disadvantage. But through her insistence that solutions require rational inquiry — sometimes questioning dogma — she has become persona non grata in Canadian academia. Western education, she maintains, is about rational disputation: the testing of ideas through argument. But on campus today, even that is branded “unsafe.”.Blackett, whose work is funded by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, represents Widdowson and a student who wished to hear her. He argues that the law is being applied in a way that suppresses Charter-protected rights. However, both the trial judge and the Court of Appeal said the claim was hopeless — so hopeless, in fact, that the plaintiffs weren’t even permitted to argue it.“The Constitution is the supreme law of Canada,” says Blackett. “If a statute is inconsistent with it, it should be struck down. But the courts won’t even let us present the evidence.”That leaves only one remedy: legislation. Simply requiring universities to adopt “free speech policies” isn’t enough. Lethbridge had such a policy on paper, yet administrators still bowed to the mob. What’s needed is a clear statutory declaration: Alberta universities are not subject to the “safe spaces” censorship regime, and free expression must be protected in practice, not just in principle. Universities are heavily dependent on provincial funding. If the Alberta government wants campuses to be places of learning rather than indoctrination, it can act..It can act and it should. Premier Danielle Smith’s government has already pledged to strengthen Alberta’s post-secondary system. Ensuring it remains a place where ideas can be debated freely must be part of that mandate. It’s time to amend the law, exempt universities from the “safe spaces” regime, and make it clear that free expression is not harassment.Blackett also comments on broader trends in the legal profession and judiciary, where “social context” training and mandatory ideological exercises are being built into professional requirements.You will be gobsmacked at what the federal government is doing to Canadian law.The concern is clear: if lawyers and judges themselves are being conditioned to avoid dissent from fashionable dogmas, who will defend free speech when it counts?The Hannaford show airs at seven o clock tonight.
