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Opinion

Don’t give campus censors more power — they’ll double down on woke agenda

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From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Bruce Pardy

Expression on campus is already subject to the laws of the land, which prohibit assault, defamation, harassment, and more. The university has no need for a policy to adopt these laws and no power to avoid them.

Last Saturday, Liz Magill resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania. Four days earlier she had testified before Congress about campus antisemitism. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s code of conduct? “It is a context-dependent decision,” Magill equivocated. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman launched a campaign calling for Magill to step down, along with the presidents of Harvard and MIT, who testified alongside her. Their reluctance to condemn revealed a double standard. That double standard, like the titillation of a scandal, has distracted from the bigger mistake. Universities should not police the content of expression on their campuses.

In 2019, I invited a member of Penn’s law school to give a lecture at Queen’s University, where I teach. Some students at my law school launched a petition to prevent the talk. To their credit, administrators at Queen’s did not heed the call, even though the professor I invited, Amy Wax, had become a controversial academic figure. In 2017, she championed “bourgeois culture” in an opinion essay in the Philadelphia Inquirer (with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego). The piece suggested that the breakdown of post-Second World War norms was producing social decay. Some cultures are less able than others, it argued, to prepare people to be productive citizens. Students and professors condemned the column as hate speech. It was racist, white supremacist, xenophobic and “heteropatriarchal,” they said.

Wax was not deterred. She continued to comment about laws and policies on social welfare, affirmative action, immigration, and race. When she was critical of Penn Law’s affirmative action program, the dean barred her from teaching first-year law students. In June 2023, he filed a disciplinary complaint against her, seeking to strip her of tenure and fire her. It accused Wax of “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic actions and statements.” The complaint alleged that she had violated the university’s non-discrimination policies and Principles of Responsible Conduct. But unlike others, allegedly, on Penn’s campus, Wax had not called for, nor was she accused of calling for, violence or genocide. She continues to wait for a decision in her case.

For years, North American universities have embraced certain political causes and blacklisted others. To stay out of trouble, choose carefully what you say. You can accuse men of toxic masculinity, but don’t declare that transgender women are men. You can say that black lives matter, but not that white lives matter too. Don’t suggest that men on average are better at some things and women at others, even if that is what the data says. Don’t attribute differential achievement between races to anything but racism, even if the evidence says otherwise. Don’t eschew the ideology of equity, diversity, and inclusion if you want funding for your research project. You can blame white people for anything. And if the context is right, maybe you can call for the genocide of Jews. Double standards on speech have become embedded in university culture.

Universities should not supervise speech. Expression on campus is already subject to the laws of the land, which prohibit assault, defamation, harassment, and more. The university has no need for a policy to adopt these laws and no power to avoid them. If during class I accuse two colleagues of cheating on their taxes, they can sue me for defamation. If I advocate genocide, the police can charge me under the Criminal Code.

In principle, universities should be empty shells. Professors and students have opinions, but universities should not. But instead, they have become political institutions. They disapprove of expression that conflicts with their social justice mission. Speech on campus is more restricted than in the town square.

The principle that universities should not supervise speech has a legitimate exception. Expression should be free but should not interfere with the rights of others to speak and to listen. On campus, rules that limit how, when, and where you may shout from the rooftops preserve the rights of your peers. Any student or professor can opine about the Ukrainian war, but not during math class. Protesters can disagree with visiting speakers but have no right to shout them down. Such rules do not regulate the content of speech, but its time and place. If you write a column in the student newspaper or argue your case in a debate, you interfere with no one. The university should have no interest in what you say.

Penn donors helped push Magill out the door. In the face of rising antisemitism, more donors and alumni in the U.S. and Canada are urging their alma maters to punish hateful expression. They have good intentions but are making a mistake. They want universities to use an even larger stick to censure speech. Having witnessed universities exercise their powers poorly, they seek to give them more. Universities will not use that larger stick in the way these alumni intend. Instead, in the long run, they will double down on their double standards. They are more likely to wield the stick against the next Amy Wax than against woke anti-Semites.

The way to defeat double standards on speech is to demand no standards at all. Less, not more, oversight from universities on speech is the answer. If a campus mob advocates genocide, call the police. The police, not the universities, enforce the laws of the land.

Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.

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Business

Trump threatens additional 50% tariffs on China, urges ‘patience’

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From The Center Square

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President Donald Trump threatened to ratchet up tariffs against China after China upped its own tariffs against the U.S. in response to the president’s tariffs policy announcement earlier this month.

The Chinese Communist Party raised its tariffs on U.S. goods to 34%, ignoring Trump’s warning not to retaliate, which does not include Chinese tariffs on specific U.S. goods like natural gas.

That 34% figure matches the additional tariffs the president put on China in his announcement of the new tariff policy on April 2, an announcement that brought overall tariffs against China to 54%.

Trump argues that tariffs are not the only way China takes advantage of the U.S.

“Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation, despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set,” Trump said in a statement online.

“Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” he continued.

“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” the president said. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”

Trump also urged Americans to be patient with his tariff policy as stocks continued to decline.

The president unveiled a sweeping set of reciprocal tariffs during a press conference earlier this month, and since that announcement the markets have seen sharp declines.

“The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO,” Trump said on TruthSocial, his social media platform. “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!). Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!”

Democratic and some Republican critics have blasted the president’s tariffs, a policy previously foreign to the Republican Party in modern politics.

Trump has admitted there will be some pain but argued that the tariffs will reinvigorate domestic manufacturing in the U.S. and raise revenue for the federal government. He also says the tariffs will help the U.S. negotiate better trade deals with other countries, many of which currently charge steep tariffs against the U.S.

Critics argue the tariffs will increase prices for Americans and hurt the economy and U.S. trading relationships.

Trump and his allies have argued the U.S. has been manipulated and taken advantage of in the previous tariff system, all while manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas. Now, they argue, much of our manufacturing is done by one of our greatest adversaries: China.

“Countries from all over the World are talking to us,” Trump said. “Tough but fair parameters are being set. Spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate! They have treated the U.S. very poorly on Trade. They don’t take our cars, but we take MILLIONS of theirs. Likewise Agriculture, and many other ‘things.’ It all has to change, but especially with CHINA!!!”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has helped lead the charge of Republicans who oppose the president’s new trade policy.

“Politicians should pay attention to the millions of investors who are worried that widespread tariffs will lead to a recession,” Paul wrote on X Friday.

Trump’s comments suggest that he is doubling down, not backing off, of his new tariff policy, likely part of the reason markets continued to slide Monday. Trump pointed to other signs of economic health, and his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has pointed out that the stock market is only one marker of the economy and one in which half of Americans have no stake.

“Oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION, and the long time abused USA is bringing in Billions of Dollars a week from the abusing countries on Tariffs that are already in place,” Trump said. “This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its Tariffs by 34%, on top of its long term ridiculously high Tariffs (Plus!), not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate. They’ve made enough, for decades, taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA!”

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2025 Federal Election

Poilievre to invest in recovery, cut off federal funding for opioids and defund drug dens

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From Conservative Party Communications

Poilievre will Make Recovery a Reality for 50,000 Canadians

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pledged he will bring the hope that our vulnerable Canadians need by expanding drug recovery programs, creating 50,000 new opportunities for Canadians seeking freedom from addiction. At the same time, he will stop federal funding for opioids, defund federal drug dens, and ensure that any remaining sites do not operate within 500 meters of schools, daycares, playgrounds, parks and seniors’ homes, and comply with strict new oversight rules that focus on pathways to treatment.

More than 50,000 people have lost their lives to fentanyl since 2015—more Canadians than died in the Second World War. Poilievre pledged to open a path to recovery while cracking down on the radical Liberal experiment with free access to illegal drugs that has made the crisis worse and brought disorder to local communities.

Specifically, Poilievre will:

  1. Fund treatment for 50,000 Canadians. A new Conservative government will fund treatment for 50,000 Canadians in treatment centres with a proven record of success at getting people off drugs. This includes successful models like the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre, which helps people recover and reunite with their families, communities, and culture. To ensure the best outcomes, funding will follow results. Where spaces in good treatment programs exist, we will use them, and where they need to expand, these funds will allow that.
  2. Ban drug dens from being located within 500 metres of schools, daycares, playgrounds, parks, and seniors’ homes and impose strict new oversight rules. Poilievre also pledged to crack down on the Liberals’ reckless experiments with free access to illegal drugs that allow provinces to operate drug sites with no oversight, while pausing any new federal exemptions until evidence justifies they support recovery. Existing federal sites will be required to operate away from residential communities and places where families and children frequent and will now also have to focus on connecting users with treatment, meet stricter regulatory standards or be shut down. He will also end the exemption for fly-by-night provincially-regulated sites.

“After the Lost Liberal Decade, Canada’s addiction crisis has spiralled out of control,” said Poilievre. “Families have been torn apart while children have to witness open drug use and walk through dangerous encampments to get to school. Canadians deserve better than the endless Liberal cycle of crime, despair, and death.”

Since the Liberals were first elected in 2015, our once-safe communities have become sordid and disordered, while more and more Canadians have been lost to the dangerous drugs the Liberals have flooded into our streets. In British Columbia, where the Liberals decriminalized dangerous drugs like fentanyl and meth, drug overdose deaths increased by 200 percent.

The Liberals also pursued a radical experiment of taxpayer-funded hard drugs, which are often diverted and resold to children and other vulnerable Canadians. The Vancouver Police Department has said that roughly half of all hydromorphone seizures were diverted from this hard drugs program, while the Waterloo Regional Police Service and Niagara Regional Police Service said that hydromorphone seizures had exploded by 1,090% and 1,577%, respectively.

Despite the death and despair that is now common on our streets, bizarrely Mark Carney told a room of Liberal supporters that 50,000 fentanyl deaths in Canada is not “a crisis.” He also hand-picked a Liberal candidate who said the Liberals “would be smart to lean into drug decriminalization” and another who said “legalizing all drugs would be good for Canada.”

Carney’s star candidate Gregor Robertson, an early advocate of decriminalization and so-called safe supply, wanted drug dens imposed on communities without any consultation or public safety considerations. During his disastrous tenure as Vancouver Mayor, overdoses increased by 600%.

Alberta has pioneered an approach that offers real hope by adopting a recovery-focused model of care, leading to a nearly 40 percent reduction in drug-poisoning deaths since 2023—three times the decrease seen in British Columbia. However, we must also end the Liberal drug policies that have worsened the crisis and harmed countless lives and families.

To fund this policy, a Conservative government will stop federal funding for opioids, defund federal drug dens, and sue the opioid manufacturers and consulting companies who created this crisis in the first place.

“Canadians deserve better than the Liberal cycle of crime, despair, and death,” said Poilievre. “We will treat addiction with compassion and accountability—not with more taxpayer-funded poison. We will turn hurt into hope by shutting down drug dens, restoring order in our communities, funding real recovery, and bringing our loved ones home drug-free.”

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