Encampments spark debate over campus status

Quebec Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry said their continuing presence is an affront to the rule of law.

After four weeks that have featured torrential downpours, blistering heat and two failed legal bids to have them removed, pro-Palestinian protesters remain encamped on McGill University’s downtown campus.

Quebec Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry said their continuing presence is an affront to the rule of law.

“These encampments have to be dismantled,” she told reporters this week in Quebec City. “It is not the appropriate place. Again, we are talking about private lands that are currently occupied.”

McGill, which last week failed in a bid for an injunction, has also labelled the encampment an illegal occupation of its property.

Constitutional lawyer and Université de Montréal instructor Frédéric Bérard says that while a campus belongs to a university, it shouldn’t be understood in the way a private residence belongs to an individual.

Bérard said in an interview this week that unlike a private residence a campus is a venue for engaging in debate, and the public’s right to access and use that space for free speech and peaceful assembly is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.