All Posts Tagged With: "University of Ottawa"
UOttawa president finally talks Coulter
Says, “Freedom of expression applies. Even when it’s painful”
University of Ottawa president Allan Rock has finally addressed that itchy little PR debacle that stung the university a few weeks ago.
In an address to the university senate, Rock discussed the cancellation of right-wing commenter Ann Coulter’s speech on March 23. Coulter’s talk was called off after student protests prompted security concerns.
“From the moment we learned about Ms. Coulter’s intended presentation, there were groups and individuals who insisted that we prohibit her from speaking on campus,” Rock said. “We rejected those demands, asserting that Ms. Coulter had every right to appear and to speak.” Coulter has been criticized as being overly inflammatory and offensive.
“Freedom of expression applies,” he said later. “Even when it’s painful.”
And for Rock, it seems it was pretty painful. He said he turned to the Internet to learn more about Coulter and admitted to “using intemperate language in exchanges with colleagues” in her regard.
And then there was the infamous email from Provost François Houle–the one sent a few days before Coulter’s visit, essentially warning her to watch her mouth. “I share responsibility for the letter from the Provost to Ms. Coulter,” Rock said. He explained that the letter was sent with his knowledge on behalf of the administration.
Rock later added: “I acknowledge that there are other, and indeed better ways, of achieving the letter’s stated purpose.” He also confirmed that the university did not cancel the event; it was indeed Coulter’s representatives.
So what have we learned? Well, it seems the administration champions freedom of expression. That’s a good start! Even though they paradoxically encouraged self-censorship and incited uproar with a preemptive cautionary email (not so good), which culminated to a hostile situation beyond their control—a situation of which they really haven’t yet taken ownership. But hey, at least we know Rock did some solid Googling before that “welcome basket” popped up in Coulter’s inbox.
On second thought, we don’t want you
U of T retracts acceptance email sent to dozens of graduate school hopefuls
Wow, is this ever embarrassing. The University of Toronto School of Graduate studies mistakenly sent emails to dozens of students telling them they were accepted into the speech pathology program, when they were, in fact, rejected. Some 169 applicants received the erroneous email last Friday.
As the Sun reports:
“Welcome to the University of Toronto,” read the subject line. “Acceptance into Canada’s preeminent grad school is an achievement in itself,” the e-mail said. “We chose you because you’re at the top of our list. And we believe you applied to U of T because we’re at the top of yours!”
That message caused at least one student to be predictably elated. “I was walking on clouds,” Meara Brown, who is a University of Victoria student, told the Sun. “I told my references, my peers, my profs, my friends, and my family. My family started telling everyone in the small town I grew up in.”
Brown’s educational ego boost was burst just three days later, when the U of T sent a clarification email:
“On April 9 you received an e-mail from the School of Graduate Studies suggesting that you should have received an offer of admission from the University of Toronto,” the April 12 e-mail said.
“The e-mail was sent to you as a result of an administrative error. We sincerely regret the confusion this has caused.”
The U of T blames the mistake on a line of coding in the original mass email that was intended for the 45 students who were actually accepted into the program.
A not dissimilar debacle happened at the University of Ottawa last spring when the law school misplaced 600 applicants. To rectify the mistake, UOttawa admitted extra students, and at least they blamed it on “human error” and not on those dreadful computers as the U of T has done. I guess that is just the way things are done at “Canada’s preeminent grad school.”
When reality bites
Recessions hit young people hardest—even long after they’re over
During his final year at the University of Ottawa, Justin Cantin had one goal for his first job after graduation: not to wear a uniform. Ideally, he hoped to put his undergraduate degree in history to work in a museum or doing research. But after graduating last December, in the aftermath of the most severe recession in decades, reality hit. With $45,000 in loans, the 23-year-old moved back in with his mom in Mississauga, Ont., and started sending out resumés. He soon broadened his search to include part-time jobs, factory positions—“whatever would give me a paycheque,” he says. Last week, he landed a warehouse gig in Waterloo, Ont. Though relocating for a manual labour job is not something he ever imagined he’d do, he says, “It’s better than nothing.”
As Cantin struggles to adjust his expectations, he can take comfort, however cold, in the knowledge that many of his peers are doing the same. Though it’s been months since Canada’s economy returned to growth, recessions have a way of bearing down hard on youth, even long after they’re officially over. Predominantly employed in industries like retail and food service, which depend on consumer demand, or in unions where seniority rules, youth tend to be first on the chopping block when the economy goes south. This time was no different: since October 2008, more than 190,000 jobs for young people have disappeared; unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds rose to 16.3 per cent in August 2009, almost double the overall rate.
Although jobs are slowly coming back—as of February, youth unemployment had dropped to 15.2 per cent—what’s on offer is hardly the stuff from which middle-class careers are made. Thanks to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, hiring freezes and the delayed retirement of workers, for many the reality is a spell of unemployment or a low-paying gig—both of which can have lasting consequences, derailing careers for years to come. While it’s impossible to know how much their future will be shaped by the Great Recession, one thing is clear: the generation raised to believe in the limitlessness of their own potential has just been dealt a very unlucky blow.
Strictly in terms of unemployment, this recession has not been as cruel to youth as other downturns. In August 1992, unemployment for those aged 15 to 24 shot up to 18.4 per cent; in the early ’80s, it reached 20.6 per cent. But according to Armine Yalnizyan, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, it’s the kind of jobs that were lost that’s cause for concern. Whereas the recession in the early ’80s replaced full-time jobs with part-time jobs, and the one in the ’90s replaced traditional employment with self-employment, this downturn “seems to be replacing permanent jobs with temporary jobs,” she says. “Where is the next generation of middle-class jobs going to come from?” she asks. “There’s just nothing coming up on the menu.”
The best way for youth to survive the hostile job market, say experts, is to wait it out by investing in school or volunteer positions. The trouble is that with median family incomes slipping, indebtedness at record highs and boomer parents struggling, many youth can’t afford to delay working. To make matters worse, says David Green, an economist at the University of British Columbia, the social safety net is not what it once was. While 83 per cent of those who were unemployed at the beginning of the recession in the early ’90s qualified for jobless benefits, this time only 43 per cent qualified. And incomes aren’t what they used to be either: though new workers began to gain ground again in the mid-’90s, at the start of the recent recession, says Green, they were still facing real wages below those of their counterparts in the early ’80s.
For youth who are unable, or unwilling, to prolong their entry into the job market, breaking in during a downturn is an uphill battle. When Amanda, who asked that Maclean’s not use her last name, got her undergraduate degree in math last June, she wanted to get a job as an analyst. But after four months of unemployment, she took an entry-level position at a Toronto IT firm. While her friends who graduated with similar credentials just a few years earlier started out making about $40,000, she’s earning $30,000.
In fact, most young people entering the job market now are making less than peers who found jobs two or three years ago. “And that lasts for quite a while,” says Paul Beaudry, Canada Research Chair in Macroeconomics at UBC. A study of Canadian men who graduated with B.A.s over almost 20 years found that, on average, those who begin their careers in down times tend to do so at smaller firms that pay less, suffering an eight to nine per cent income hit. And it takes 10 years to catch up to those who graduated in boom times. Worse still, for those who graduated from less prestigious universities with degrees in lower-paying fields, the scarring effect on their earning potential “sort of remains permanent,” says Phil Oreopoulos, a University of Toronto economics professor who co-authored the study.
The prospects are bleaker for those without post-secondary education. “Employers out there, they’re asking for everything—the moon and the stars,” says Joan Gardener, project administrator at the Mississauga, Ont.-based Youth Community Connections, a government-funded program that serves out-of-work young people. For those who do manage to secure employment, the erosion of high-paying, middle-class manufacturing jobs means it’s tougher to get ahead. “Think about it as a career ladder with the rings in the middle all being missing,” says Morley Gunderson, an economics professor at U of T. “You don’t have a way to start at the bottom and move up anymore.”
Coulter in Canada
Did Coulter silence herself?
Organizers, not police cancelled Ann Coulter’s UOttawa speech
Despite conflicting reports, Ottawa Police said event organizers, not police, cancelled a speaking engagement at the University of Ottawa Tuesday evening that featured the fiery U.S. pundit Ann Coulter.
After a fire alarm that delayed the event from starting, Ezra Levant, who was set to open for Coulter, told the approximately 200 people who made it inside the auditorium: “2,000 people right now are pressed against the front doors, pressed against the police, refusing to allow people to come in” and, Levant added, police and security had advised them it would be “physically dangerous” for Coulter to speak.
“We did advise Ottawa U security that the venue wasn’t large enough to accommodate all the people who attended,” said Ottawa Police media spokesperson Const. Alain Boucher.
But he said, whether or not the event would take place was up to the organizers. Boucher said Ottawa Police were concerned with “security issues,” which he said could be summed up to the sheer number of people for the size of the venue. He said according to police estimates there were 1,500 people in total, both outside and in the entrance to Marion Hall, where the event was being held.
As for the protesters outside the auditorium, Boucher said, “I wouldn’t call them rioters. They were people there to voice their concerns.”
After Levant and International Free Press Society president Bjorn Larsen finished speaking to the almost half-full auditorium, protesters could be found grouped together on the tarmac holding signs and chanting various call and responses.
Police were guarding the steps to the building, but at the time none of the protesters were within 10 feet of the officers. No arrests or reports of violence were made.
One of the officers estimated the number of demonstrators to be 200.
Coulter herself told Maclean’s that police “eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”
But Boucher, maintains, the decision to cancel the event wasn’t made by police.
Despite backlash the university received after vice-president academic and provost Francois Houle sent a letter to Coulter advising her to “weigh [her] words with respect and civility in mind,” the university insists it never prevented the event from taking place.
A statement issued Wednesday said that the university made no attempts to bar Coulter from appearing on campus. “Last night, the organizers themselves decided at 7:50 p.m. to cancel the event and so informed the University’s Protection Services staff on site. At that time, a crowd of about one thousand people had peacefully gathered at Marion Hall,” the statement said.
President of the university Allan Rock, is quoted: “Freedom of expression is a core value that the University of Ottawa has always promoted.”
The organizers of Coulter’s speech, students from the school’s Campus Conservatives, have not yet responded to requests for comment from Maclean’s.
Coulter is set to speak at the University of Calgary tonight. CTV reported University of Calgary provost Alan Harrison said security will be increased because of what happened in Ottawa.
Ann Coulter: Canadian free speech hero
Canadian media to UOttawa–you suck
The reviews of Ann Coulter’s aborted talk at the University of Ottawa are in, and the message from Canada’s editorial and op/ed writers is, “Dear University of Ottawa, you suck.”
At the Globe and Mail, an editorial argued that “the forces of intimidation won out over public inquiry” and, as such, “It was a defeat of the university’s basic mission to educate and enlighten.” In a similar vein, the National Post editorialists remember the good old days, when “Universities used to fight vigorously for the free expression of ideas, all sorts of ideas, even discomforting and controversial ones.” When Coulter’s talk was canceled, “it was a triumph for thuggery over scholarship.” An Ottawa Citizen editorial, also invoking the word “thuggery,” goes even further and says the incident is just the latest example of “totalitarianism on Canadian campuses.” You can find similar arguments from editorial boards right across the country, from the Montreal Gazette, to the Calgary Herald, to the Vancouver Province. Curiously, the Toronto Star editorial board has so far ignored the issue.
I was beginning to worry at the fact that Ezra Levant’s blog has been silent on the cancellation of Coulter’s speech. Thankfully, he popped up in the Citizen this morning. Focusing his barbs on U of O provost Francois Houle, Levant said Houle’s “bizarre” email to Coulter, warning her she could be subject to criminal charges, was a “starter pistol for radical students.” For Levant, “it was the assessment of police, campus security and Coulter’s own bodyguard that there was too much physical danger to Coulter and the audience to proceed.” However, he stops short of calling the protesters rioters, and, instead uses the awkward phrase “student disrupters.” Levant also accused the U of O of indulging “in some of [the] most offensive conduct in the country on their campus.” Citing Israel Apartheid Week, Levant says “Never has Houle seen fit to issue a warning to his campus’s steady stream of Jew-baiters to govern their tongues.”
Paul Saurette, a professor of political philosophy at the University of Ottawa, sees the rancour over Coulter as an opportunity for a teachable moment. With a healthy dose of John Stuart Mill (an assuredly original source on free speech . . .), Saurette submits Globe readers to a yawning missive on the theoretical implications of free expression in Canada. Here’s a sample: “But we also need to remember that, even in theory, the principle of free speech is not a pure metaphysical law that says we are literally free to say anything we like.” Saurette is hopeful that the Coulter incident will “inspire” Canadians to spare “a few moments to think about the complex nature of free speech and its implications.” I get it, free speech is complicated. . . .
Lawrence Martin offers a somewhat different take. After making the obligatory sops to free expression, he, rightfully I would say, points to several greater threats to liberty that have failed to spark the level of outrage seen in the Coulter case. Stephen Harper has engaged in an “unprecedented” clamping down of freedom since he took office. From trying to censor “coverage of dead bodies returning from Afghanistan,” to putting “out a secret handbook instructing members how to muzzle parliamentary committees,” to thumbing a nose “at high court rulings on Omar Khadr,” the government has turned Ottawa into “Muzzletown.”
Maclean’s On Campus blogger Jeff Rybak has also argued that there are much greater things to worry about than the Coulter saga. After naming several news stories much more worthy of our attention, Rybak laments, “all I can bloody well hear about is this screwball American provocateur who has just about nothing relevant to say to Canadians and nothing informed to say to anyone. Someone please tell me why I’m supposed to care?”
And what has been the net result of the University of Ottawa protests, and Houle’s preemptive letter? The Post‘s Kevin Libin sums it up nicely: “Burnishing the image of Ann Coulter as a teller of dangerous truths may not have been quite the goal of Mr. Houle and the U of O mob, but they have unquestionably done it. In the U.S. media, their school, and this country, have become in the last 48 hours an object of scorn and ridicule, on all sides of the political spectrum, while Ms. Coulter has been cast a free-speech hero. No wonder she seems so cheerful.”
Coulter: the she-devil in her own words
Maclean’s speaks with Ann Coulter
Ezra Levant, who was present at the venue for tonight’s aborted Ann Coulter talk at the University of Ottawa, spotted my quickie weblog entry about the cancelled event and had me chat briefly with the leggy agitator. Coulter tells Maclean’s she never had the chance to move on from a private dinner reception at which she was signing books, meeting local conservatives, and waiting for the all-clear from her bodyguard, who was on the scene at the university. “I was just reviewing my speech. It was a fine little speech, and by the way, I cut it down so we could have an extensive question-and-answer period. I gathered that I was going to have a very exciting crowd tonight.”
The police, Coulter says, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”
Coulter agrees with the suggestion that conservative speakers face greater dangers and nuisances in trying to encounter audiences on university campuses. “I speak at a lot of college campuses and I need a bodyguard… Michael Moore does not; Judy Rebick does not. I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have spoken tonight with less controversy.” She dismisses the possibility, however, that things are ever likely to change. “Unfortunately, conservatives are too polite, so they will never get a taste of their own medicine in that regard, in terms of angry mobs with sticks and rocks.”
She accuses the University of Ottawa’s academic vice-president, Francois Houle, of “inspiring hatred” toward her with his epistolary warning to her that she needed to be conscious of Canada’s criminal prohibitions of hate speech. Indeed, she says she intends, with Levant’s help, to ask police to proceed with exactly the same charges against Houle.
“He described the law to me very carefully—any speech that incites hatred toward someone based on membership in an identifiable group can be criminally prosecuted. Well, before I even set foot in Canada, he had identified me as having criminal proclivities because I belong to an identifiable group: conservatives. Or it could be because I’m a Christian, I’m a Presbyterian. I’m a female conservative. If what Francois Houle did to me is not a hate crime, then nothing is.”
After the event was cancelled by the police, Coulter says she went to her hotel room to relax and had a surreal moment. “I was watching the local news, which was all hockey and Ann Coulter, and some nut came on claiming that he was the organizer behind my speech. [murmurs in background] OK, his name is Craig Chandler. I sent an e-mail to my bodyguard saying Craig Chandler is disinvited from the event in Calgary. He’s on TV claiming to be the organizer and denouncing me!”
Ann Coulter went home
UOttawa talk cancelled after protesters raise safety concerns
A controversial event at the University of Ottawa featuring right-wing U.S. pundit Ann Coulter was cancelled due to apparent safety concerns, after 200 students gathered in protest outside.
Lawyer and political activist Ezra Levant, who was slated to speak before Coulter, broke the news to the half-filled auditorium in Marion Hall, after chaos at the registration table and a pulled fire alarm caused delays. “The police and the security have advised that it would be physically dangerous for Ann Coulter to proceed with this event and for others to come in,” Levant said.
Controversy has stemmed from Coulter’s writing, which some critics say promotes hate.
In one prominent column she wrote for the nationalreview.com after September 11, Coulter said: “We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
Coulter was scheduled to speak at the Ottawa campus as part of a three-stop Canadian tour that started at the University of Western Ontario on Monday and ends at the University of Calgary on Thursday. The events were organized by the International Free Press Society in partnership with student Conservative groups on each campus.
Students in Ottawa lined up more than an hour before the event was set to start and the entrance to the auditorium quickly filled as the crowd attempted to push and bargain their way past the volunteers who were trying to verify who had registered in advance.
According to volunteers, only those on their lists who had confirmed registration would be let into the auditorium.
Inside, Levant cited the letter sent to Coulter by the University of Ottawa vice-president academic and provost Francois Houle, that he said concealed a “veiled threat” and was the source of controversy leading up to Coulter’s arrival in Canada.
In his letter, of which a copy was obtained by the National Post, Houle urged Coulter to act with “restraint” and warned her Canadian laws for freedom of speech differ from those in the United States. He advised that before arriving at the University of Ottawa campus Coulter should “educate [her]self as to what is acceptable in Canada” and to “weigh [her] words with respect and civility in mind.”
That message was echoed by the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, who Levant said, took their cue from the administration. The SFUO opposed Coulter’s arrival on campus, and Levant said ripped down posters advertising the event.
“Francois Houle got his wish,” Levant said. “He telegraphed to the community that the University of Ottawa is not a place for free debate like Western Ontario.” Levant’s speech was met by shouts of “Shame!” and “We want Ann!” from the raucous crowd.
Bjorn Larsen, the president of the International Free Press Society, the group who organized Coulter’s speaking tour, expressed his disappointment at having to cancel the event. “I promise you that we will try to bring Ann Coulter back,” Larsen said, which received loud applause from the audience, but was drowned out by protesters in the back who chanted “Ann go home!”
“It is an embarrassing day for the University of Ottawa and their student body,” Levant said. But protesters outside were happy to see the event cancelled. Levant said there were “2,000 intimidating protesters pressing against police,” but officers confirmed there was closer to 200 demonstrators.
Those who had gathered broke out in chants of: “Whose campus? Our campus!” after the event was cancelled, as police barred the way to the front doors of the building. A few pro-Coulter supporters came around to the front of the building and engaged in impromptu and heated debate with the protesters.
One student held a sign that read: “Free speech stops at hate speech.”
“We came together because we’re angry about the fact that Ann Coulter’s views risked being exposed on our campus,” said University of Ottawa student Mike Fancie. “The precedent that Ann Coulter set by publicly . . . insulting a Muslim student at the University of Western last night shows that she had no intention of being civil and no intention of avoiding attacks on minorities last night.”
During her speech to a crowd of 800 at the University of Western Ontario Monday night, Coulter told Muslim student Fatima Al-Dhaher to “take a camel” as an alternative to flying, the National Post reported. Coulter has said previously that Muslims should be banned from airplanes and instead use “flying carpets.” Al-Dhaher had asked Coulter how she was expected to travel, since she didn’t own a flying carpet.
Coulter also told the UWO crowd that the University of Ottawa provost’s letter has made her a victim of “hate crime” and that she would be taking it up with the Human Rights Commission.
SFUO president Seamus Wolfe said earlier in the day that he thought the provost’s letter to Coulter was “reasonable.” Wolfe said he had heard from a number of students over the past few days who were outraged about Coulter’s arrival at the university.
“Anyone that consistently promotes hatred of violence towards any individual or group of people should not be permitted to use a public institution, like a university, as a soapbox for that hatred and promotion of violence,” Wolfe said.
Wolfe was outside the building after the announcement that the event was cancelled. “I’m very happy that the students have spoken loud and clear, and that hate speech is not allowed at the University of Ottawa,” he said.
Coulter has appeared as a political and legal commentator on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
This story has been updated.
Coulter’s University of Ottawa speech cancelled
Protest causes safety concerns
A public speaking event by conservative commentator Ann Coulter has been cancelled after a protest prompted security concerns.
According to the Ottawa Citizen, several hundred protesters gathered outside Marion Hall at the University of Ottawa to protest Coulter’s speech. The event was cancelled at approximately 8:15 p.m., as security officials cited concerns for “public safety.”
Before Coulter arrived in Ottawa, she was warned by Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost at the U of O, that she should to review Canada’s hate speech laws prior to giving her address. The student union at the university had also voiced objection to Coulter’s visit.
Coulter responded in an email to the Ottawa Citizen, saying Houle’s warning promoted “hatred” and “violence” against conservatives.
For our complete on the ground coverage, click here.
Ann Coulter responds
And she still hasn’t been arrested.
Ann Coulter has responded to the University of Ottawa’s provost Francois Houle suggestion that she choose her words carefully, unless she wants to wind up with criminal charges. Coulter is scheduled to speak at the University of Ottawa this evening. In an email to the Ottawa Citizen, Coulter says that Houle is promoting “hatred” and “violence” against people with conservative views. She also told the newspaper that she would like to file a human rights complaint. Coulter spoke at the University of Western Ontario Monday evening, and will also be speaking at the University of Calgary this week.
As the Citizen reported:
“Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives,” Coulter wrote in an e-mail on Monday.
The Citizen had requested a telephone interview with Coulter. Instead, the newspaper received the e-mail from the author.
She questioned whether every speaker booked at the university received a similar warning or just the conservative ones.
“The provost simply believes and is publicizing his belief that conservatives are more likely to commit hate crimes in their speeches. Not only does this promote hatred against conservatives, but it promotes violence against conservatives,” Coulter wrote.
She added she would ask the human rights commission to investigate, but didn’t specify which one.
“I was hoping for a fruit basket upon my arrival in Canada, not a threat to criminally prosecute me,” Coulter said.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Coulter notoriously wrote of Muslim countries, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” She has also suggested that Muslims use “flying carpets,” as opposed to airplanes.
At Coulter’s University of Western Ontario talk, a Muslim student challenged her on her previous comments. The student said, as reported by the Sun media chain, “As a 17-year-old student of this university, Muslim, should I be converted to Christianity? Second of all, since I don’t have a magic carpet, what other modes do you suggest.” To which Coulter responded, “take a camel.”
Throw Ann Coulter in jail!
UOttawa’s provost should educate himself on Canada’s hate speech laws.
It isn’t just the student union that is having a fit over Ann Coulter’s planned visit to the University of Ottawa. Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost at the U of O, has sent Coulter an email warning her to watch her mouth, lest she find herself behind bars.
Coulter has posted the email online, which reads:
I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or “free speech”) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here.
You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.
There is little question that Coulter has written many things considered provocative, rude and inflammatory. For a few examples see here and here. But has she ever said anything criminal? Something so offensive that it would actually attract the attention of the police? Our criminal hate-speech provisions no doubt require an arbitrary line be drawn between what is acceptable and what is not. But the way the law has evolved is that it has become reserved for the most egregious and vile offences, like this case.
When Section 319 of the criminal code, the hate speech provisions, was subject to a Charter challenge and reviewed by the Supreme Court some two decades ago, it survived only because the judges reasoned that, as written, it should not have an overly broad interpretation, and that only the most extreme cases should be subject to prosecution. Such cases typically include a sustained effort by the accused to willfully promote hatred over a period of time, and, in such a way that there would be no redeemable political speech. Hate speech has to be near fully void of relevant comment on issues of public interest. In fact this is written right into the criminal code and anyone charged with promoting hatred has recourse to several defences. The defences include truth, commenting on religious topics, making comments that stem from religious beliefs, and making comments that are on a topic of public interest.
Even if Coulter repeated every inflammatory thing she ever wrote during her visit in Canada, she likely still wouldn’t be charged. And, if she was, she would have several legal defences at her disposal.
Provost Houle wants Coulter to educate herself on our hate speech laws, I would suggest he take his own advice.
Stepping on free speech to keep out Coulter
University of Ottawa student union president wants to ban controversial writer and speaker from campus
“Fickle Students for Selective Free Speech?”
Yes, that’ll do nicely. After all, I think it’s about time we coin some sort of phrase to describe the exasperating irresolution of student leaders on the issue.
Free speech is good, right? Except when it comes certain stances on abortion, Israel/Palestine, and anything else that can otherwise make you uncomfortable or upset.
This week, it’s Ann Coulter, the notoriously controversial writer/speaker/columnist known for her right-wing opinions and provocative comments. Coulter is scheduled to speak at the University of Western Ontario Today and University of Calgary Thursday, but it’s Tomorrow’s visit to the University of Ottawa that has spawned a “Ban Coulter from Campus” Facebook group and disdain from SFUO president Seamus Wolfe.
“The federation does not support Ann Coulter speaking on our campus,” Wolfe told the Ottawa Citizen. “We’re trying to work with the administration to see if we can ask her to do her speaking event somewhere else.”
That’s not all. According to the Ottawa Citizen article, Wolfe has prohibited posters advertising the event from going up in the University Centre building.
It seems obvious to me that these are counter-productive resistance tactics. Not liking Ann Coulter—that, I get. But trying to keep her off campus? I’ll need a little help with that one.
If anything, U of O students should consider themselves lucky; they have home court advantage, strength in numbers (or so it seems, at least, from Wolfe’s comments) and the opportunity to challenge Coulter directly during a scheduled Q&A after her speech.
Censorship is nothing but a soggy band-aid. Why cover up contentious ideology when you can potentially reason it down to irrelevance?
If you really think Coulter spews ridiculous, insulting dribble, let her hang herself with her own words. It will be a lot more effective than putting tape over her mouth and insisting that she would have been offensive.
In a 2005 editorial, Gilles Marchildon, executive director of Egale Canada, a national LGBT lobby group, summed up this view of censorship very succinctly. Referring to a homophobic letter printed in an Alberta newspaper by Pastor Stephen Boissoin in 2002, Marchildon writes:
While it is difficult to support Boissoin’s right to spew his misguided and vitriolic thoughts, support his right, we must.
If Boissoin was no longer able to share his views, then who might be next in also having their freedom of expression limited. Traditionally, the LGBT community’s freedom has been repressed by society and its laws.
Plus, it is far better that Boissoin expose his views than have them pushed underground. Under the glaring light of public scrutiny, his ideas will most likely wither and die.
Coulter’s views, too, should face the glaring light of public scrutiny. And our universities are just the places to house the debate. That is, unless our student nannies get in the way.
Fired prof. alleges UOttawa spied on him
Student hired to ‘infiltrate’ campus activists, says physicist who was dismissed after giving everyone A+.
Several months after physics professor Denis Rancourt was fired, the University of Ottawa remains mired in controversy over the high profile case. In November, Rancourt filed a union grievance accusing the university of engaging in “covert surveillance” against him. He posted a report and supporting documents on his website at the beginning of January.
He was dismissed last March after supposedly assigning arbitrary grades to his students. Everyone in at least one of the courses he taught in Spring 2008 received an A+. Since 2005, he has filed at least 25 grievances, including for wrongful dismissal.
Rancourt alleges that as early as Sept 2007, the university hired then-student Maureen Robinson to investigate him. He claims she created Facebook and email accounts under the pseudonym Nathalie Page in order to “infiltrate” student activist groups, and report her findings to dean of science André Lalonde. She denies his accusations, which have not been proved in court.
In particular, Rancourt argues Robinson gathered information on students who were organizing to have a cancelled course Rancourt taught reinstated. The class, Science and Society, also known as the activism course, was created by Rancourt but was only offered once in the fall of 2006.
According to Rancourt, the university is violating the collective agreement between the administration and the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa. He says that if the university was investigating an employee, than it would be obligated to inform him/her, which he says they did not do in his case.
“It’s the usual covert, underhanded methods, that any powerful institution will use to undermine popular movements,” he told Maclean’s in a telephone interview. Both the university and the faculty union declined comment.
Robinson, who studied chemistry at the University of Ottawa, worked for the student newspaper, the Fulcrum, from Sept. 2004 to April 2007. In at least one article in 2006 Robinson criticized the fact that the activism class was offered by the science faculty, and pointed out that even Rancourt believed it was closer to a faculty of arts course.
Rancourt bases his accusations against Robinson partly on the suspicions of students who had corresponded with Nathalie Page, Robinson’s alleged alias, on Facebook or email, but who never met her in person. In an email to Rancourt, former student Philippe Marchand described how Nathalie Page would confirm her attendance at a particular event, but wouldn’t show up. Instead he would see Robinson at the event.
Another student, Abla Adelhadi has signed an affidavit affirming that Robinson’s roommate, Jennifer MacLatchy told Adelhadi that Robinson had confided in MacLatchy regarding her investigation of Rancourt.
Adelhadi has also provided Rancourt with a copy of what appears to be a Facebook email exchange between MacLatchy and Adelhadi, where MacLatchy appears to discuss Robinson’s employment with the university. In the email exchange, MacLatchy expresses concern that if Robinson is discovered to be investigating Rancourt, that there will be friction between the two roommates.
Rancourt further believes that Robinson, or someone associated with her, recorded a talk he gave at Queen’s university and subsequently provided a transcription to the university administration.
“As far I could tell, they wanted everything they could [get] about me and about all the students that were involved in campus politics related to the activism course,” he says.
To verify his suspicions Rancourt filed a freedom of information request in July 2008, seeking all emails between Robinson and dean Lalonde. In a submission to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the university argues that it would not supply the materials sought because it would be related to labour relations, and therefore exempt under freedom of information legislation.
The submission makes no mention of Maureen Robinson, and only refers to an “individual” whose “role was to assist University of Ottawa legal counsel with the management of labour-relations matters.”
Rancourt admits that this doesn’t prove definitively that Robinson was gathering information about him on the university’s behalf. He says that when the Information and Privacy Commissioner forwarded him the university’s response to his freedom of information request, other supporting documents were also forwarded. He says these other documents provide further evidence, but he has not posted them online, and would not show them to Maclean’s on the record. “I don’t want to show the university what I have,” he said.
Responding via email, Robinson called the allegations “libellous” and “self-aggrandizing” on Rancourt’s part. “There was no covert surveillance. There were no spies . . . I was not directly or indirectly involved in the recording of a public conference given by Professor Rancourt at Queen’s University or anywhere else for that matter,” she wrote. “I am extremely confident that these allegations will not amount to anything.”
Robinson will only confirm that she worked for the university in an “assistant administrative” role. When asked if she ever worked on labour relations, or if she ever worked on Rancourt’s file, she declined to answer. “Unfortunately, due to pending legal proceedings, I am unable to comment any further on the matter of my employment with the university,” she said.
Video: Student president arrested
Seamus Wolfe and Marc Kelly’s arrest caught on camera.
On Tuesday afternoon the student president of the University of Ottawa, Seamus Wolfe, and student Marc Kelly were arrested on campus. Immediately below is the first part of the video, captured by student Joseph Hickey. It shows the arrest of Marc Kelly. Below that is part two which shows the arrest of Seamus Wolfe.
Update: Student president arrested at Uottawa
After cursing in front of police SFUO chief charged with causing a disturbance.
The president of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa and another student were arrested on campus Tuesday afternoon.
According to Ottawa Police services, Marc Kelly, a University of Ottawa physics student, was apprehended under the Trespassing Act. The director of the student appeal centre, Mireille Gervais, says that Kelly had been banned from the university since early December, and at the time of the arrest Gervais was meeting with Kelly to discuss his appeal. Shortly after Kelly’s arrest, student president Seamus Wolfe was also apprehended and has been charged with causing a disturbance.
Please click here to watch the video of the incident.
In an interview with Maclean’s, Gervais said that U of O protection services had been alerted to Kelly’s presence on campus around noon and visited the student appeal centre to remove him from the premises. Gervais, who has a law degree, says she explained to protection services officers that under the Trespass to Property Act, she is the “legal occupier” of the student appeals centre office and therefore has the right to determine who can and cannot enter. The SFUO rents the office from the university. “A legal occupier is described as the person who has control over the premises and control over the condition of the premises, and the activities there carried on,” she said. “The office is completely occupied by the student federation and the student federation only.”
Protection services then called the police. By that time, Wolfe had joined Gervais in front of the appeal centre. When Ottawa police officers arrived, Gervais explained her position regarding the SFUO’s control over the appeal centre, and Wolfe agreed to return to his office in order to produce a copy of the student federation’s lease agreement with the university. But, Gervais said, before Wolfe returned with the lease, the officers called the university’s legal counsel, who apparently told them simply that “the campus is U of O property, which disregards the act and disregards my position.” The police then “barged into my office and arrested Marc Kelly,” she said.
Wolfe says he then followed one of the officers on his way to his car, “asking if he would like to see the lease, and asking if he would like to produce a warrant. They refused to answer saying ‘we don’t need a warrant,’ and ‘you don’t own anything,’ even though I was trying to show him the lease.”
Wolfe’s exchange with the officer precipitated his arrest. “I got frustrated, and was starting to walk back into campus to file an official complaint with protection [services], and was obviously frustrated and swore as I was leaving,” he said. According to student Joseph Hickey, who witnessed and videotaped the entire incident, the F word was uttered before Wolfe’s arrest.
Speaking on behalf of Ottawa police services, Const. Jean-Paul Vincelette declined to comment on the details of the incident, beyond confirming that Kelly was arrested under the Trespass to Property Act, and that Wolfe was apprehended for “causing a disturbance.”
The University of Ottawa declined to comment on the incident.
U-Pass gets a chance in Ottawa
City council votes 22-2 in favour at budget meetings
After a lengthy debate over pricing, Ottawa’s city council voted to give the university transit pass pilot project the go-ahead at budget deliberations Thursday night.
The proposed project still has to pass a referendum question in the upcoming student government elections at both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa before the pass will begin next school year.
The pass will cost $145 per term pass and will be folded into mandatory undergraduate annual fees. This price is discounted from the $242 students normally pay for the OC Transpo semester pass.
A referendum question requires 1,000 student signatures before it can appear on a ballot.
If the referendum vote doesn’t pass at either school then the pilot project will be cancelled.
Carleton’s student newspaper, The Charlatan, quotes Carleton University Students’ Association president Erik Halliwell as saying he is positive the referendum will pass.
“There are strength in numbers,” Halliwell told the Charlatan. “And students are becoming more of a priority.”
The paper reported that project will cost the city an estimated $3 million taken from the city’s transit reserve fund.
- photo by Dick Penn
Facebook agrees to privacy changes, given year to implement
Federal privacy commissioner reacts to a formal complaint from UOttawa law students
The federal privacy commissioner has agreed to give Facebook one year to make the “complex” technical changes required to protect user privacy on its popular social networking site.
Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart told a news conference Thursday that she’s “very pleased” with the way the company handled her complaints.
And while the changes are being enforced under Canada’s privacy law, Stoddart noted that “Facebook has said to us this is a global change,” to its operations.
That means the Canadian ruling will improve the privacy of some 200 million-plus Facebook users worldwide.
Stoddart’s office will be monitoring the agreed-upon alterations, including getting a look at some of the changes as they are developed.
“In essence, we’re going to be looking under the hood,” said Elizabeth Dunham, the assistant commissioner who led the privacy investigation.
Stoddart, reacting to a formal complaint from University of Ottawa law students, was concerned that Facebook held on to personal information indefinitely – even after people closed their accounts – and that it shared users’ information with almost a million third-party developers of Facebook applications.
After extensive negotiations, the company has agreed to make technological changes to restrict third-party access unless users give express consent. It will also take steps to make it much clearer to users the difference between deleting an account – which removes all personal information from Facebook servers – and deactivating it, which merely mothballs the information.
Changes are also being made to handling accounts of deceased users.
Accused terrorist’s replacement takes over at Carleton
New instructor says it became “difficult” to have Diab in the classroom
Carleton University says Hassan Diab, an Ottawa professor who was released on bail after being arrested in connection with the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue, has been relieved of his teaching duties of a summer Carleton course.
On July 30, Karen March, a sociology professor at Carleton, took over as the summer sociology course’s class instructor. She and students addressed the controversy surrounding Diab’s dismissal as part of their class discussion on “social problems.”
Some students enrolled in the first-year sociology class Diab taught since mid-July say they are not happy he has been replaced
“They knew who he was when they hired him. What’s the point of changing it because the media found out?” said one student in the July 30 class, the first scheduled class since the professor’s dismissal.
“Three weeks of class, three profs and I need this courses to graduate,” said another former student.
Diab started teaching the class after the instructor who was originally scheduled to teach, George Pollard, became ill one week into the summer course, which started the first week of July.
For complete OnCampus coverage of this story, including commentary, click here.
March says she took over from Diab because it became “difficult to have him in this class,” but that she was “not coerced” into teaching.
The reasoning for the professor’s dismissal, according to Carleton’s release, was “in the interest of providing its students with a stable, productive academic environment that is conducive to learning.”
The announcement came following reports from several media sources, including the July 27 Ottawa Citizen article, concerning Diab’s new teaching assignment, and criticism from the Canadian national office of B’nai Brith, an international Jewish human rights advocacy group.
The group issued a statement July 28, saying, “the conditions of Diab’s bail do not even allow him to leave his home alone or to own a cell phone, but Carleton officials believe that it is fine for them to make him a member of their faculty? The last place in the world where this man belongs is in a university classroom, in front of impressionable students.”
CUPE Local 4600, the union representing Carleton teaching assistants and contract instructors, said in a open letter addressed to Carleton president Roseann Runte, obtained by the Charlatan July 29, that they are “extremely concerned” about Diab’s dismissal.
“Mr. Diab has the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty,” it read.
In the letter CUPE also raised the fact that Diab was fired after he had already been teaching the course under contract; his sudden dismissal may go against the collective agreement the union has with the university.
CUPE 4600 said they are urging the university “to balance public opinion with the law and a sense of professional integrity.”
The Canadian Association of University Teachers also said in a release July 29 that it “condemns in the strongest possible terms” the change in professors.
It goes on to say that Carleton’s actions “represent a serious violation of basic rights and procedures” and that they are calling for the school to reinstate Diab.
The department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton has said they will not be releasing the name of the course’s new professor until July 30, after the class is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m.
On Carleton Central — Carleton’s course registration website — the instructor for the class has changed from Hassan Diab, who was still listed July 28, to “TBA.”
Diab was arrested in November 2008 and accused of killing four as a result of the 1980 terrorist blast which was blamed on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations after no one claimed responsibility.
As part of his bail conditions granted on March 31 of this year, Diab has been outfitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet, is under house arrest when not attending work and must obey a curfew and refrain from owning a cellphone, among other impositions.
According to the Citizen, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger said the strict conditions were necessary to prevent the risk of Diab fleeing the country before he is to appear at an extradition hearing to face murder and destruction of property charges in France.
The Citizen also reported Diab was to be allowed to travel to Carleton accompanied by court-appointed surety and his common-law spouse, Rania Tfaily, also a Carleton sociology professor, to teach the course that is scheduled twice a week.
Diab told French newspaper Le Figaro during an interview in 2007 (as translated by the Citizen): “I am a victim of mistaken identity not based on anything . . . I have never belonged to any Palestinian organization, nor have I been militant politically.”
Diab has previously taught courses at both Carleton and the University of Ottawa.
The university has said it is not commenting further on the issue.
Neither Diab’s lawyer or Tfaily, were available for comment.
Diab faces his extradition hearing Jan. 4, 2010.
— a version of this story appeared in the August edition of the Charlatan, Carleton University’s student independent newspaper
How did 600 students go missing?
uOttawa overlooks hundreds of law school applicants, cites human error
Hundreds of UOttawa law applicants overlooked
University says it will admit an 50 to 70 extra students into common law program
According to the CBC, about 600 applicants to the University of Ottawa’s common law program have been overlooked due to an error in the school’s admission process.
But they’re going to get a second chance.
Out of the 3,500 applications they usually receive for the program each year, the school says some weren’t even considered due to human error. Although the students had their applications in by the November 2008 deadline, 600 were never told if they were accepted or rejected.
“What we’ve decided to do is to look at every one of them and make the determination,” says common law dean Bruce Feldthusen.”Would that person have been admitted earlier had we seen the file in the normal course of events? In each case, where the person would have been admitted, but for our error, we are going to give them an offer of admission.”
That means the university will admit an additional 50 to 70 students into the program this year, says Feldthusen. That will bring the total number of students from the original 210 to between 260 and 280.
Some students are expressing concern at how the school will accommodate the additional enrolment.
