Thin Gruel: The Crisis Management Team Review

By: Jonnette Watson Hamilton and Jennifer Koshan

Document commented on: Crisis Management Team Review, University of Calgary – Response to Protest Encampment: Final Report (November 4, 2024)

PDF Version: Thin Gruel: The Crisis Management Team Review

On November 4, 2024, consulting firm MNP released their Crisis Management Team (CMT) Review (CMT Review) of the University of Calgary’s response to the May 9, 2024 pro-Palestine encampment on campus. On December 2nd, the University’s Executive Leadership Team (ELT) added a few minor corrections to the review’s timeline and accepted all four recommendations in their Response to the CMT Review (ELT Response). On December 13th, Mark Herman, the Chair of the University’s Board of Governors (BOG), indicated the BOG was satisfied “there are no more material facts that we need to gather, and … management exercised sound judgment in a difficult, no-win situation (Mark Herman, “Review of university response to protest encampment concludes”, UCalgary News (13 December 2024)). Whether that is the end of the matter remains to be seen as both the University’s Students’ Union and its General Faculties Council have demanded an independent review of the University’s response to the encampment. And whether the CMT Review’s thin gruel will satisfy the appetite for a substantive review seems doubtful for several reasons.

This post looks first at the limited scope of the third-party CMT Review (an aspect which was criticized by the Students’ Union from the beginning (Nazeefa Ahmed and Vama Saini, “Analysis: University of Calgary’s May 9 encampment decision-making was ‘comprehensive’, consulting firm reports”, The Gauntlet (21 December 2024)). In the next section we point out some features of the CMT Review that are lacking, even when the review is taken on its own limited terms. While we take the CMT Review on its own terms, we also reference some records released recently by the University and Calgary Police Service (CPS) pursuant to freedom of information (FOI) requests which call into question some of the review’s findings. The FOI requests were made by Euan Thomson, one of the individuals arrested for trespass on May 9, who was facing trial until his charges were withdrawn on February 13, 2025. We then briefly compare the CMT Review to The Encampment Report’s analysis of the University of Alberta (U of A)’s response to their pro-Palestine encampment on May 9 to 11, 2024, to support our argument that the scope of the CMT Review is inadequate.

Limited Scope of CMT Review

“Thin gruel” is a metaphor based on peasants’ meals in Early Modern England, signifying an absence of substance and significance. It seems an apt description of the CMT Review, even by its own account.

Due to the use of the passive voice, we are not told which University entity or entities determined the aims and scope of the CMT Review, but only that the aims and scope were set out in “a competitive RFP process” (CMT Review at 1, 4-5). We know the completed CMT Review was provided directly to the BOG thanks to the Chair’s December 13th message. There is nothing in the Minutes of the Open Sessions of the BOG on May 24 or June 14 about the encampment except a note that the Students’ Union President’s request “(regarding an ‘independent review’ of the May 9, 2024 events at the encampment on campus) be moved to the Open Session” from the Closed Session “was not permitted in this circumstance” (Board of Governors’ Open Minutes, May 24, 2024 at 2).

Based on who the CMT Review was delivered to, our guess is that the terms of reference in the University’s Request for Proposals (RFP) were set by the BOG or its Executive Committee. The BOG – formally a corporation named “The Governors of the University of Calgary” – is composed of people with strong ties to a variety of corporations, and particularly oil and gas corporations (see here). This is especially true of the thirteen or more members appointed by the provincial government.

As set out in the RFP as it is described in the CMT Review, the aim of the review was to “assess CMT actions and decision-making process related to the removal of the protest encampment” and provide “feedback, advice and recommendations” (CMT Review at 4-5). The scope of the review included “the activities and decision-making process of the CMT” from mid-April to June 7, 2024 (CMT Review at 5). Most importantly, whoever determined the scope of the review explicitly excluded “an assessment or opinion related to the decisions made by the CMT,” i.e., evaluations of the substance of the decisions made were “out of scope” (CMT Review at 1, 5). This limitation dramatically skewed the perspective and results of the review.

Nevertheless, when looking at the CMT Review itself, it becomes evident that MNP did assess and provide an opinion on the substance of some of the decisions made by the CMT. And the limited scope of the review did not stop some people from offering their assessments and opinions of the CMT’s actions and decisions after reading the CMT Review. For example, on behalf of the BOG, its Chair issued a public statement that, “[a]s a Board we are satisfied there are no more material facts that we need to gather, and we are satisfied that management exercised sound judgment in a difficult, no-win situation” (Herman, emphasis added). Given the limited scope of the CMT Review it is difficult to see why the BOG Chair felt able to conclude his message with an assessment about the decisions made. His conclusion seems “out of scope.”

The CMT Review  

This section picks out five features of the CMT Review that seem worth attention. The tone of the review and its insistence on the May 9th encampment being characterized as a “crisis” is the first aspect we will comment on, because it sets the stage for everything that followed.

An “unprecedented crisis”?

MNP describes the encampment on May 9, 2024 as a “crisis” 16 times in its 18 pages of text (excluding the timeline table). The situation faced by the CMT was said to be “complex and challenging” (at 2) and “difficult and unprecedented” (at 1). The CMT Review called it an “unprecedented” situation based on five enumerated factors (at 8). Among those five factors, MNP included CMT’s lack of advance notice that an encampment that they considered “increasingly likely” by mid-April (at 9) would be set up on May 9th, as well as other universities’ experiences that indicated an encampment “had the potential to become a long-term situation with potential to negatively impact the safety of students and the wider University community and the continuity of campus operations” (at 8, emphasis added). The timeline facilitates this “crisis” characterization as well by including entries such as “CPS warns that makeshift weapons may be brought to encampment” by persons unidentified and at a time unspecified (at 21, emphasis added). Uncertainty attributed to no advance notice of the encampment was another one of the five reasons the encampment was said to be an unprecedented situation (at 8). However, the review later attributes “a high degree of uncertainty” to the CPS that was called in by the CMT and to the stakeholders the CMT was trying to keep informed (at 11), and not to the protesters.

The repeated use of “crisis” and the evaluative language of “unprecedented” seems to describe not the actual encampment on May 9th but an imagined encampment that the CMT thought the protest had “potential” to become. This characterization is facilitated by the fact the CMT Review never describes how many people were part of the encampment at any time on May 9th. The only time it mentions a number for protesters is in the timeline where it states there were five arrests among the “remaining protesters” just before midnight (at 21). Still, if everyone buys the idea of a “crisis,” then the intimidating tactics of the CPS members dressed in protective armour and helmets, carrying round shields, and deploying 15 pepper balls and four OC grenades to remove five or more protesters is easier to tolerate (Joel Dryden and Omar Sherif, “Officers not wearing ‘riot gear,’ used 15 pepper balls at U of C protest: Calgary police chief”, CBC News (29 May 2024)).

The 18-hour encampment was also not unprecedented. The University has reluctantly hosted highly emotive protests before and dealt with other crises as well. Probably the most common conflicts over the scope of freedom of expression on Alberta university campuses have involved universities’ attempts to limit “pro-life” student groups’ freedom of expression. UCalgary has been challenged in court for its actions in that context twice, and the U of A once.

R v Whatcott, 2012 ABQB 231 (CanLII) involved an activist who was detained by UCalgary campus security and charged with trespass because he was “[d]istributing graphic anti-abortion leaflets” on campus. Whatcott’s acquittal by a lower court was upheld in the Queen’s Bench because the University had infringed his Charter right to free expression and their use of trespass legislation was not justified in the circumstances.

Whatcott was followed by Wilson v University of Calgary, 2014 ABQB 190 (CanLII), which was a judicial review of the University’s decision that Campus Pro-Life UCalgary students had violated the Non-Academic Misconduct Policy. For at least two days twice a year for several years, Campus Pro-Life students had set up a display near the Student’s Union building called the “Genocide Awareness Project,” featuring large signs with explicit photographs of the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, racially motivated lynchings, and aborted human foetuses (Wilson at para 2). There were counter-protesters and the University feared the potential for physical conflict (at para 4). The disciplinary charges arose when the students refused Campus Security’s demands that they turn their displays inward (at para 7). The students were found to have violated the University’s Non-Academic Misconduct Policy and the Chair of the Student Discipline Appeal Committee refused to convene the Committee to hear the students’ appeal on the basis they had no grounds for appeal, a decision that was reversed by the court. This anti-abortion display was vividly recalled by one alumnus who wrote to the University to express their disappointment at the dismantling of the May 9th encampment: “I also find it ironic that as students in the 2000s we had to endure walking from the C-Train station with graphic images from anti-abortion activists daily for months, but a small gathering of students setting up an encampment is squashed with riot police within a few hours” (FOI Record 4 – May 11 – 16_Redacted at 285-286).

There is a similar case involving the U of A: UAlberta Pro-Life v Governors of the University of Alberta, 2020 ABCA 1 (CanLII). It also involved an anti-abortion event with large signs and resulted in another win for the students exercising their freedom of expression, particularly in the Court of Appeal’s finding that the Charter applied to the university in this context (more on this point later).

The May 9th encampment was not unprecedented except for the use of tents as temporary structures – but these could have been taken down every evening in the same way the large pro-life signs were for years. As the cases above show, the UCalgary leadership have seen their limitations on the activities of students and others found unjustified before due to their failure to give enough weight to freedom of expression in their decision-making (see also Pridgen v University of Calgary, 2010 ABQB 644 (CanLII)). What was truly unprecedented was the use of force by CPS, enabled by the University, but this is not the focus of the CMT review. 

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Despite UCalgary’s history of being challenged for paying insufficient attention to freedom of expression, the CMT Review never uses the word “Charter.” It does allude to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms three times, talking about the “need to balance the right to free speech and protest” (at 1 and 8, emphasis added) and “UCalgary’s commitment to the right to protest” (at 10). Hopefully many readers are aware that the relevant “right” the CMT Review alludes to is the “fundamental freedom” found in section 2(b) of the Charter: “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” It is the United States that has “free speech” in the First Amendment to its Bill of Rights. We do not have a right to protest per se in the Charter, but it has been included as part of our freedom of expression and we also have a guarantee of “freedom of peaceful assembly” in section 2(c) of the Charter.

Did the CMT’s decision-making process include due consideration of the protesters’ freedom of expression and freedom of assembly? Considering why the University has lost previous court cases brought by protesters when the University’s notices of trespass or disciplinary actions came up against Charter rights, this should have been made explicit in any review – even one that focuses on the process and not the substance of the decisions made.

UCalgary has a tendency to rely heavily on its own 2019 “Statement on Free Expression,” as though that Statement is the last and best legal word on what limits the University can place on students’ (and others’) freedom of expression (FOI Record 4 – May 11 – 16_Redacted at 31). The Statement was dictated by the Government of Alberta, which required all 26 post-secondary institutions in the province to draft a policy on free expression that aligned with the basic tenets of the Chicago Principles (Gayathri Peringod, “U of C drafting government-mandated statement on free expression”, The Gauntlet (10 October 2019)). More recently, the current provincial government has demanded “annual free speech reporting” from each institution, after the University of Lethbridge attracted the government’s disapproval (Emily Mertz, “Alberta government will require annual ‘free speech reporting’ from post-secondary schools”, Global News (3 February 2023)). This government control over the University’s handling of freedom of expression is a factor in whether the Charter applies at all, but it is also relevant to the weight of the Statement on Free Expression. Given the context of its adoption and monitoring, the Statement cannot be taken to necessarily comply with the demands of the Charter, which remains the supreme law of Canada in its protection of freedom of expression.

The provincial government’s control over Alberta universities in their available responses to the exercise of freedom of expression is just one reason why the Charter may apply to the University of Calgary. So too is the fact that the government appoints most members of the BOG. In the Provincial Priorities Act, SA 2024, c P-35.5, enacted in May 2024 but not yet in force, the UCP government gave itself the power to vet all federal funds going to post-secondary institutions, including research funding – another strong indication, if the Act is proclaimed, of Alberta universities being under government control and therefore subject to the Charter. The requirement that Charter challenges be connected to government is found in section 32(1) of that document, and the application of that section was explained very clearly by the majority judgment in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Dickson v Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, 2024 SCC 10 (CanLII). Even if previous decisions have found that universities are not government actors (see McKinney v University of Guelph, 1990 CanLII 60 (SCC)), Charter analysis is always contextual, and the UCP government’s current level of control over Alberta universities may serve to distinguish McKinney. Universities may also be seen as implementing government action for the purposes of Charter application, particularly where their actions are coercive (e.g. in relation to student discipline – see Pridgen and UAlberta Pro-Life). There are at least two routes to finding that the Charter applied to the University’s decision-making process on the encampment, so the omission of this consideration from the CMT review is a serious one.

The “Key” Decision

The CMT Review identified UCalgary’s “key decision” as being “the decision to allow protests but not allow encampments” (at 2). The review’s timeline tells us that on April 29 “CMT met, conducted further analysis and agreed that encampments/camping would not be allowed on campus. They formally recommended this to ELT and the recommendation was approved” (at 19, emphasis added). Then we are told that between April 29 and May 3, “CMT clarified existing policies and approved a detailed plan and supporting procedures for an encampment response” (at 20, emphasis added; see also at 4).

The University has policies and procedures in place for making policies and procedures. See, for example, the Policy on Establishing Policies and Procedures and the Procedure for Developing Policies and Procedures. When making decisions about what kind of conduct will attract sanctions such as disciplinary proceedings for staff and students, it is not at all clear that decisions to add to the category of “prohibited conduct” can be made by the CMT or ELT without following their own policies and procedures.

MNP’s classification of new types of prohibited conduct as “clarifications” is both inadequate and outside its own stated scope of review. It is an assessment or opinion about the propriety of the CMT’s decision-making. It also uncritically accepts a procedural determination made by the CMT or ELT that has no support in the University’s own rules. Shaun Fluker and one of us have written about the University’s apparent failure to follow their own policies and procedures in stating that the setting up of temporary structures and protesting between specified hours were prohibited conduct that could result in sanctions: see “The University’s Kafkaesque Direction on Temporary Structures and Overnight Protests: “You are not supposed to see this.“” (ABlawg, 5 November 2024). The question is whether what the CMT Review calls the “key” decision was a decision that the CMT or ELT could make, but the MNP report does not address that question in an adequate way.

The fact that the CMT’s “key decision” on allowing protests but not encampments was made prior to any context, i.e., the actual events of May 9th, shows further problems with the process. This is another instance where MNP should have assessed whether the University’s decision-making was Charter compliant in the sense that the process included a contextual rather than a before-the-fact analysis. Even within the limited scope of review of the CMT process, this lack of contextual decision-making was problematic.

“No more material facts”

As previously mentioned, on December 13th, the BOG Chair indicated that the BOG was satisfied “there are no more material facts that we need to gather.” However, some of those material facts, which are primarily found in the CMT Review’s Appendix A –Timeline, differ from those disclosed in the documents obtained through FOI requests.

For example, at 7:15 am on May 9, Campus Security emailed three members of the CPS and its Major Events and Emergency Management Section (MEEMS) that an encampment had been set up that morning on the University’s South Quad and that District 3 was “gathering in at the stadium, not sure what the plan is” (File 2024-G-2471-FINAL-SECURED at 1). However, the CMT Review’s Timeline states that after the encampment formed at a very precise 6:34 am on May 9th, at approximately 7:30 am a “CPS presence arrives at the encampment” (at 20) and that at 11:30 am “CPS sets up command post at McMahon Stadium” (at 21). The places and times for the police presence are not the same in the CMT Review and the disclosure obtained through FOI requests. In addition, how CPS District 3 personnel were deployed and gathering at the stadium 41 minutes after what the CMT Review describes as the start of an encampment whose formation came “with no advance warning” (at 11, 20), is not addressed in the CMT Review.

As another example, on May 14th the ELT and CMT knew, based on one of their social media scans, that at least one UCalgary student reported being assaulted during the CPS response to the encampment (FOI Record 4 – May 11 – 16_Redacted at 174). Yet the Timeline states that on June 11th “UCalgary released an updated public statement on the protest on the university website indicating the CPS nor the University have received any reports of injuries from May 9” (at 21).

These two examples indicate there are still material facts to be gathered or reconciled, contrary to the assertions in the CMT Review and BOG response.

(In)consistent Messaging

The CMT Review states that the CMT’s message to protesters was consistent: “you can protest but you can’t camp” (at 13, 14). However, there are several inconsistencies apparent in the facts provided. The amended “University Direction on Temporary Structures and Overnight Protests”, 2024-UC-003-A, Revised May 3, 2024, which was said to have “clarified” the University’s policy and formed the basis of the trespass notices served upon protesters and enforced by CPS, prohibited two activities: “temporary structures cannot be set up as part of a protest and protests cannot occur between the hours of 10pm and 8am.” Nevertheless, the CMT Review states that, prior to the encampment, “[t]he University’s stance and approach to encampments was clear, (although not widely communicated at this time): “Members of our community are free to protest, but for safety and operational reasons, encampments are not permitted” (at 10, emphasis in original). That “clear” message ignores the second prohibition, that of no protesting between specified hours. In addition, according to the CMT Review, “CMT allowed protests on campus that continued outside the University’s stated timeframe for protests (8 AM to 10 PM daily),” further muddying the waters (at 13, emphasis added). And in his December 13th message, BOG Chair Mark Harman stated: “It remains the position of the University of Calgary that, while you are free to protest, you are not free to camp or use space to the exclusion of others” (emphasis added). Unless “use space to the exclusion of others” is another way of saying “camp,” his statement adds a new category of possibly prohibited conduct (and because we all use the space our bodies occupy to the exclusion of others, this seems like an unenforceable position for UCalgary to take).

MNP offered their opinion that the University’s approach to encampments was clear, but this messaging is neither clear nor consistent. Because failure to abide by the two bans in the Direction “may constitute non-academic misconduct (students), cause for disciplinary action (staff), and/or grounds to be trespassed from the University of Calgary’s premises (all),” exactly what the prohibited conduct was should have been much more consistently messaged. Again, even taking the CMT Review on its own limited terms, this is an issue with process that should have been addressed.

Comparison with the U of A Review

The U of A also has a Crisis Management Team that has primary responsibility for managing the University’s response to emergencies and they also engaged in a review of their CMT’s conduct in the removal of the U of A’s three-day pro-Palestinian encampment. The U of A Board of Governors chose to retain a retired Court of Appeal of Alberta justice to conduct the review, the Honourable C. Adèle Kent KC. As noted above, the U of A has had its own losses in court when it comes to student protests and university limitations on freedom of expression. Perhaps that is why they chose someone with experience in assessing evidence and conducting investigations, as well as knowledge of the applicable laws, resulting in a much more fulsome review that looked into the substance of the decisions made and not just the process.

The Encampment Report written by Justice Kent, dated October 30, 2024 and released December 5, is not without its problems. Her analysis of the issue of whether the Charter applies to the university – i.e., the application of section 32(1) of the Charter – is disorganized and confusing, especially in light of the clear directions set out by the Supreme Court of Canada majority judgment in Dickson in March of 2024. Her reasoning on section 1 of the Charter is also lacking. However, a critique of the content of The Encampment Report is not the focus of this post.

Our aim is to highlight some of the many differences in the approach taken in the two reviews. Differences are evident even in their presentation. MNP produced a 23-page colour product with graphics (including their logo) and lots of white space, as compared to Justice Kent’s plain 106-page report, plus 31 pages of appendices, all in black and white text except for one useful colour map of the U of A Quad (at 28) and two informative photographs of the encampment (at 29-30). But other differences are more substantive, as the following examples indicate:

  • Justice Kent began out by positioning both the U of A protest and herself in context. Death and suffering in Israel and Gaza were acknowledged (at 1). She stated her goal of making the report accessible to all (at 2). The CMT Review was very light on context and written in what some have called “corporate eduspeak” (Eric Gould, The University in a Corporate Culture (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003) at 8, 80).
  • Justice Kent set out the terms of reference that were drafted by the U of A’s Board of Governors and accepted by her in full (at 5). They are very different from those given to MNP, particularly in their explicit inclusion of “applicable law, policies, procedures and regulations.” They directed her to conduct the review as she saw appropriate, looking at the actions taken by the administration before and during the encampment, the nature and scope of the rights and responsibilities of all involved, and the university’s policies. The only thing excluded was the actions of the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) because they, like the CPS, were being reviewed by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT).
  • Justice Kent stated that “[t]he review necessarily contains an analysis of the law” (at 2), something the UCalgary BOG and MNP apparently disagreed with.
  • Justice Kent’s review began with the facts, as is typical of a legal approach. In the CMT Review, MNP used the ISO 22361 – Security and resilience – Crisis Management guideline – a guideline that “incorporates best practices in crisis management from across multiple industries” – to determine what they focused on (CMT Review at 6). The scope of facts examined in each review is markedly different, which affected the ability of the reviewers to undertake a truly contextual analysis, as demanded by the Charter.
  • The reviews by both Justice Kent and MNP looked at similar university documents and CCTV coverage. Justice Kent reviewed the documents provided by the U of A and all other documents she requested (at 6), as well as 200 written responses to her call to the university community to contact her anonymously (at 14). Many of these documents were named and some were reproduced in whole or in part in the review or its appendices (e.g., at 20, 25, 38). She watched an edited version of U of A’s CCTV coverage taken May 9, 10, and 11 (at 14-15). MNP indicated they reviewed “University policies, plans and procedures, internal decision logs, meeting minutes, records of meetings, and notes from external stakeholders” and the May 9th CCTV footage (CMT Review at 5).
  • The two reviewers interviewed similar people in similar positions and similar groups, although Justice Kent cast a much wider net. She met with 17 named members of the senior administration, one professor, and ten student and staff associations or groups (at 14, Appendix B) and she listened to a podcast made by a named U of A professor (at 15). MNP interviewed 20 individuals, including the ELT (with 8 members), CMT, other senior-level personnel involved, student leaders and external groups hosting events on campus on May 9 and 10 (CMT Review at 5).
  • The two reviews treat the evidence – i.e., the sources of their findings of fact – very differently. The hour-by-hour discussion of the May 9-11 events in The Encampment Report covers 48 pages and is replete with specifics, as is the 14-page Appendix D: Rolling Updates. Some emails, news releases, and postings are reproduced in their entirety so that readers can see the facts on which Justice Kent relied for themselves. Some people are named, including the members of the CMT at the time (at 39-40). Sources of information are specified and details of events are provided. Justice Kent’s review is thus transparent. In all these ways it is the opposite of the CMT Review. Its portrayal of the UCalgary events is contained in a brief five pages in an Appendix. It names no one; people are only identified by their positions or by the group to which they belong (e.g., students). The CMT Report does not even name the members of ELT or CMT at UCalgary, lessening accountability. The policies that UCalgary relied upon are also not reproduced; they are not even named. Only the “clarification” of those policies – discussed in “The ‘Key’ Decision” section above – is named. Justice Kent’s report reflects the value courts and the academy place on transparency and the CMT Review reflects the secrecy and generalities preferred in the corporate sphere.
  • The Statement on Freedom of Expression at the University of Alberta is attached as Appendix F, whereas the UCalgary equivalent, relied upon by the CMT, is not even mentioned.
  • The Encampment Report includes a lot of numbers, such as the estimated percentage of students and alumni in the U of A encampment (at 32, 84), and the number of people in the encampment at specified times (e.g., at 36, 44, 50). The CMT Review offers only one number, that of the five protesters who were arrested (CMT Review at 21).
  • The Encampment Report specifically addresses the question of interference by the Alberta government (at 43, 53-55). The CMT Review never mentions the government or any minister.
  • The Encampment Report discusses the substance of the protesters’ demands and the administration’s responses (e.g., at 45-47, 51-52). That report also includes a discussion of actions taken by the administration in response to protesters’ demands after the encampment was removed (at 86). While the fact protesters had demands is mentioned in the CMT Review (CMT Review at 14, 20, 22), the content of those demands is never mentioned, and the only note about a response is in the timeline, where it is indicated that the UCalgary President met with students from two campus organizations on June 6 to discuss demands that had been sent to him before the encampment on May 9 (CMT Review at 23).
  • The Encampment Report presents the discussions between the university administration and the EPS and whether the latter would or would not come if called upon pursuant to a trespass notice (e.g., at 55-56). There is nothing similar in the CMT Review, which presents CPS involvement in a taken-for-granted manner (e.g., CMT Review at 1, 10).
  • Most of the ten recommendations in The Encampment Report are both specific and substantive, such as “Honour the agreement with protesters who were members of the Encampment about compensation for their lost items” (at 102). Recommendations for adjusting administrative processes include things like “[d]evelop a plan to engage with protesters” and “[c]onsider and strengthen the need for respectful dialogue as part of the rights of free expression and academic freedom” (at 104-105). The focus is on the campus community and its future. The four recommendations in the CMT Review focus on the “structure and process for stakeholder engagement,” with most attention paid to external stakeholders and finding out who may have been impacted and how to ensure that the administration knows who is on campus at all times (CMT Review at 16-17), as well as on more crisis management training and awareness (CMT Review at 17-18). In other words, most of the CMT Review recommendations have to do with external stakeholders and not students and staff.

Conclusion

Canadian universities have been corporatized over the past five decades and the CMT Review is a good illustration of how university governance has changed with the implementation of a corporate management model (Gould at 80).

The CMT Review is superficial, vague, and reproduces UCalgary’s lack of transparency around the events of May 9. It also does not get to the heart of the matter, i.e., the protesters’ freedom of expression and whether the University’s response was justifiable and commensurate with its concerns about safety and continued operations in light of the actual context on May 9.

There is a lot more that could be said about the problems with the CMT Review. For example, the recommendation about increased surveillance so the administration knows exactly who is on campus at all times is Orwellian (CMT Review at 3, 17). However, our purpose has been to show why an independent and substantive review of the University’s actions on May 9th is still necessary. Hopefully the Students’ Union’s motion, TUCFA’s Announcement of Support for that motion, and GFC’s vote in favour of such a review, do not meet the same fate as did Oliver’s request to the master of the workhouse for some more gruel in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

This post may be cited as: Jonnette Watson Hamilton & Jennifer Koshan, “Thin Gruel: The Crisis Management Team Review” (18 February 2025), online: ABlawg, http://ablawg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Blog_JWHJK_CMT_Review.pdf

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