Thank you, Daphne.
In my five minutes I'd like to focus on legal responses to sexual violence on campus. As you are no doubt aware, Ontario and B.C. have passed laws requiring post-secondary institutions to develop, in consultation with students, policies and protocols for sexual violence on campus, including developing complaint mechanisms and providing information to students about due process rights and other rights, such as rights to representation and appeal processes. Manitoba, as you probably know, is also poised to do the same.
In this evolving legislative context we can expect to see the other provinces follow suit, so I want to briefly touch on what I see as three threats to the development and implementation of sound law and legal policy in this regard.
First, two of the three provincial laws require universities to consult only students, not other designated groups such as women's anti-violence advocates. Only B.C. contemplates the possibility that other groups may have significant expertise and/or investment in the issue so as to require their inclusion in policy building.
While it's laudable that provincial governments are legislating that student voices be included in devising responses, as they must be, there are serious problems with the legislation. The laws give no indication as to which students or groups must have a voice, or who's input should be valued. Universities are free to consult with individual students or groups of their choosing.
Many student groups have taken a position opposing rape culture, but not all articulate a feminist commitment. Some have voiced opposition to policies that implicate any sort of discipline for offending parties, and others are downright hostile to measures supporting women against male violence on campus. Even those students and groups who are politically aligned with supporting sexual violence policies may not have the expertise and long-term commitment to developing, maintaining, and refining campus responses.
The knowledge base of the women's anti-violence movement that has been theorized from decades of experience—what's been tried and failed and where current resources and struggles are focused—may be lacking. It's simply not possible to develop optimal responses to sexual violence on campus without the expertise of women's front line anti-violence activists.
Second, the provincial government's decision to leave development of the details of sexual violence policies to individual institutions adds to the volatility of this political and legal situation. Most institutions seem to be simply tacking on a sexual violence policy to their pre-existing student codes of conduct, or harassment and discrimination policies, neither of which have any track record of successfully responding to sexual assault.
The results of the tack on approach are confusing and contradictory and, as may be predicted, women students are already instigating complaints to provincial human rights tribunals about university policy failures. Furthermore, the issue of campus sexual assault sits within a much larger political and legal context, in which men accused of sexual violence are aggressively contesting campus adjudications of responsibility by seeking judicial review and arguing that they're due process rights have been violated.
The pattern has emerged powerfully in the United States where universities are being sued by lawyers representing aggrieved male students who have been found responsible for sexual violence and disciplined by academic sanctions, such as suspension or expulsion. Many of these claims have failed, thankfully, but others have resulted in settlements by universities wishing to avoid the glare of litigation, and some have actually been successful in court.
Although the provincial laws require that sexual violence policies articulate what due process measures will be provided, the fact that universities are free to pick and choose among them means that there's a potential for considerable variance among the universities, making them even more vulnerable to legal challenge that will weaken the integrity and finality of university processes and decisions. The lack of uniformity also means that it will be difficult to build expertise across universities and among those charged with administering these policies, increasing further the potential for litigation.
Third and finally, the presence of campus-based men's rights groups will only increase the risk that the effectiveness of these policies will be undermined. Men's rights activists have launched campus campaigns at the University of Alberta by removing and replacing anti-rape slogans on posters with rape-apologist messaging. They've also targeted a well-known feminist professor whose research and leadership focuses on sexual assault.
One men's rights group, the Canadian Association for Equality, CAFE, claims to have set up student groups on 16 campuses across the country. CAFE has the benefit and status of a charitable organization under the tax laws of Canada. Their activities have focused on hosting anti-feminists as public speakers whose talks are focused on repositioning men as the victims of women's violence and minimizing women students' experience of sexual violence. It seems likely that they, among others, will seek to oppose and upend university sexual assault policies.