Calgary campuses adopt new, government-mandated free speech policies

All of Calgary’s post-secondary institutions have introduced government-mandated free-speech policies modelled after the Chicago Principles, a set of free-speech guidelines originally created for use on American campuses.

In May, the UCP government directed the province’s 26 post-secondary institutions to adopt free-speech policies aligning with the one developed by the University of Chicago in 2014. Each school submitted its new policy by the province’s November deadline.

Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said he was pleased with the final policies, which were approved with only minor changes.

“It’s a recognition that free speech is central to the idea of academic debate and discovery, which is, of course, one of the central purposes of an institution of higher learning,” he said. “You fundamentally can’t engage in academic discourse and debate without protections for free speech on campus.”

Nicolaides referenced the case of two students found guilty of non-academic misconduct at the University of Calgary in 2007 after criticizing a professor on Facebook as one example of an Alberta school violating principles of free expression.

The new policies at Calgary’s post-secondaries are similar, with most opting to adapt the Chicago Principles using their own wording, prohibiting actions such as obstructing the free speech of others or shielding students from opinions they may disagree with or find offensive.

Mount Royal University president Tim Rahilly says his school’s policy isn’t as thorough as he would have liked, due to the short timeline to complete it.

“We actually went with a fairly streamlined policy that just captured the basics of a policy with, essentially, the promise to our campus community that we were going to engage in a year-long process to speak to them and hear their concerns about it,” Rahilly said.

The process will include a committee of faculty, students and staff tasked with figuring out how a freedom of speech policy will best work in practice.

Jessica Revington, president of the University of Calgary’s Students’ Union, was part of the committee tasked with crafted the statement from her school. She says student feedback was taken into account, particularly with regards to creating an inclusive campus culture and emphasizing respectful dialogue.

“The statement just formalizes what the students’ union believes with reference to free expression, that universities should be places where free and open dialogue should take place,” Revington said.

The policies now in place in Alberta differ in some ways from those in use south of the border, largely because federal free-speech laws are stricter in Canada, with provisions barring hate speech.

Nicolaides says this wasn’t a significant challenge, though, because the Chicago Principles specify any expression cannot violate the law. He added that hate speech “shouldn’t be used under the guise of free speech.”

Alberta isn’t the first province to require its post-secondaries to adapt free speech policies along the lines of the Chicago Principles. Ontario mandated the same for its campuses last year, with policies in that province coming into effect Jan. 1, 2019.

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