2025 April 17
Association étudiante de l’Université McGill c. X, 2025 QCCA 475
The Quebec Court of Appeal unanimously set aside an interlocutory injunction issued by a Superior Court judge which prohibited l’Association étudiante de l’Université McGill (McGill University Student’s Association) from implementing a policy adopted following a referendum of its membership. The policy, headed “Policy Against Genocide in Palestine”, criticized and denounced the intervention of the Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and requested that McGill University take concrete action. The Appeal Court held that an interlocutory injunction prohibiting expression should only be granted in the clearest and most extreme cases, where the expression is so manifestly defamatory and impossible to justify, that a defamation lawsuit would almost certainly succeed. The Court referenced numerous authorities relating to freedom of expression, including Canada (Human Rights Commission) v Canada Liberty Net, 1998 CanLII 818; R v Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2018 CSC 5; Champagne v General and Vocational College (CEGEP) of Jonuiere, 1997 CanLII 10001 (QCCA); Prud’homme v Rawdon (Municipality of), 2010 QCCA 584; and Lavoie v Vailles, 2013 QCCA 1482.
The Appeal Court rejected plaintiff X’s submission that the policy constituted hate speech. The policy merely asked the University to make certain symbolic and commercial gestures, which McGill was free to accept or reject. Quoting from Ward v Quebec (Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission), 2021 CSC 43, the Appeal Court observed that freedom to express consensual and inoffensive opinions is not freedom. The Appeal Court noted that a university is certainly a place par excellence for expression, ideas and opinion of all kinds on varied and even controversial subjects concerning major social and political issues. The Court also concluded that the plaintiff should not have been granted anonymity by the lower court, because the plaintiff’s identity was well-known to everyone before the litigation was filed.