Academic Freedom, Canadian Labour Law and the Scope of Intra-Mural Expression

The Murray Library is the central library at the University of Saskatchewan. In January 2013, the Library Dean announced that ten support staff in the University’s library system, including several working at the Murray Library, were to be laid off. All were women. After each staff member had been individually informed by the Dean that she was being laid off, she was told to collect her possessions and was then immediately escorted off the campus property. The layoffs were part of a University-wide cost cutting measure, which would ultimately result in 40 layoffs among the support staff across the campus. The support staff were unionized, in a bargaining unit represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. The University librarians were also unionized, in a separate bargaining unit represented by the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association. In the librarians’ collective agreement was a broadly drafted provision protecting academic freedom. Among other things, the provision guaranteed the right of the unionized librarians “…to criticize the University and the Association without suffering censorship or discipline.” This provision did not contain any language which would restrict the scope of its protection to reasonable or responsible comments. This right of faculty and librarians to criticize the university leadership is known, among the various features that make up academic freedom, as the freedom of intra-mural expression.1 * Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Western University, London, Ontario, where he teaches labour law, human rights law, and constitutional law.1 See generally Matthew Finkin & Robert Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009), ch 5.