{"id":39905,"date":"2017-08-24T04:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T08:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39905"},"modified":"2017-08-23T09:58:21","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T13:58:21","slug":"andrew-scheers-latest-missed-opportunity-to-defend-freedom-of-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/24\/andrew-scheers-latest-missed-opportunity-to-defend-freedom-of-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Scheer’s latest missed opportunity to defend freedom of speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> is disappointed in federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s dropping the ball on defending the right to free speech in Canada:<\/p>\n

Last week, headlines proclaimed that the University of Toronto had \u201cbarred\u201d from campus a right-wing \u201cgroup\u201d calling itself the Canadian Nationalist Party, which was planning to hold a rally there despite objections from activists. Asked if this violated the hypothetical Conservative policy, Team Scheer said no. \u201cI respect the right for universities to determine which outside groups they give a platform to,\u201d he told the National Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Quite right. In fact, according to U of T, the \u201cparty\u201d \u2014 which may or may not be one fellow with a website \u2014 hadn\u2019t even contacted the university about it. If some random Facebook user announces \u201cRager at Selley\u2019s Saturday Night,\u201d I have no obligation to stock the bar.<\/p>\n

But in the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, a Scheer spokesperson went further. Scheer would work with universities \u201cto prevent loopholes for events that risk violating Canadian law,\u201d CBC reported. \u201c(Scheer) is committed to working with the universities to ensure that any policy he brings forward does not become a platform for hate speech,\u201d said the spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Sorry, no. That\u2019s hopeless. Any event can be \u201ca platform for hate speech,\u201d if an organizer or attendee decides to make it one. The key, within reason, is that they be given the chance. Team Scheer is all but explicitly endorsing prior restraint: Person X or Group Y might be too dangerous, too likely to utter \u201chate speech,\u201d for a university to vouchsafe.<\/p>\n

As soon as you endorse that idea over a universal defence of free speech up to some reasonable definable threshold \u2014 the Criminal Code, say \u2014 you\u2019re emboldening precisely the censors Scheer claims to want to take on. Are BDS and Israeli Apartheid Week prima facie<\/em> hate speech? Is the idea of a superior white race or male gender prima facie<\/em> hate speech? People disagree; universities are supposed to be free venues for those disagreements.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Scheer seems to have missed an opportunity to weigh in on a whopper of a free speech dereliction at Ryerson University last week. Citing an inability \u201cto provide the necessary level of public safety for the event to go forward, particularly given the recent events in Charlottesville,\u201d the Toronto university cancelled a discussion concerning \u2026 er \u2026 \u201cThe Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses.\u201d Activists had vowed to shut down the event; they managed it without even having to close their laptops. Ryerson hasn\u2019t formally been a university for long. A politician who (for better or worse) thinks campus free speech is his business might reasonably propose it shouldn\u2019t be going forward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley is disappointed in federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s dropping the ball on defending the right to free speech in Canada: Last week, headlines proclaimed that the University of Toronto had \u201cbarred\u201d from campus a right-wing \u201cgroup\u201d calling itself the Canadian Nationalist Party, which was planning to hold a rally there despite objections from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[1130,459,186,207,764],"class_list":["post-39905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-liberty","tag-andrewscheer","tag-censorship","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-toronto","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-anD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39906,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39905\/revisions\/39906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}