Our father knows best premier has found a motherhood issue: Free speech.

In Doug Ford’s latest speeches, he has become a beacon — and bulwark — of free expression: He’d punish anyone on campus who opposes that view, by withholding postsecondary funding and enforcing disciplinary measures.

Fair enough — in principle, and in practical politics.

If the premier wants to proclaim himself a free speech guardian (as he did the other day), pose for photos with free speech warrior Jordan Peterson (as he did later that day), and weaponize provincial funding (as he will next year), that’s a perfectly reasonable point of view.

As a columnist, I happen to agree with free speech rights. Even if I disapproved of what the premier said, I would defend to the death (etc.) his right to say it.

But here’s a question, if the premier will permit: Is Ford truly ready to defend the rights of others to voice opposing views — not hate speech, merely hateful, hurtful, distasteful, objectionable or controversial words?

Not so fast. Not so much.

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Let’s listen to Ford’s speeches as a Toronto city councillor, when he wanted to weaponize public funding for precisely the opposite purpose: To silence opposing views from the notorious Queers Against Israeli Apartheid group (QuAIA), rather than give them sanctuary.

“We don’t support hate groups, that’s our view. If they want to march in the (Pride) parade, then we won’t fund them,” Ford said back in 2011.

Note that, notoriety aside, QuAIA is not a hate group, nor did it utter hate speech, as the city manager helpfully explained to Ford and his fellow councillors at the time. Legal advice suggested their use of the (admittedly provocative and misplaced) phrase “Israeli apartheid” does not violate the criminal code, or the Human Rights Code, so on what legal grounds could they be banned, or the parade defunded?

There’s little doubt that the pendulum has often swung too far in the wrong direction in recent years, as some university campuses gave excess weight to “safe spaces” and “micro-aggressions” at the expense of robust speech that provokes, offends, and yes, hurts people’s feelings. Supporting free speech means listening to (or merely tuning out) offensive speech.

The clash of ideas — and the competition of ignorance — isn’t always pretty, but that’s precisely the point: Only by testing propositions in public can they be rebutted, attacked, lambasted, lampooned.

Despite Ford’s supposed conversion on the road from city hall to Queen’s Park, he seems a slow learner on free speech. This summer, he muzzled middle school teachers over their sex-ed classes, warning they’d be penalized for using words recommended by experts in an updated curriculum he suddenly suspended (prompting a court challenge from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association).

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After an anti-Israel protest last June, Ford tweeted, “Our government will take action to ensure that events like Al-Quds Day, which calls for the killing of an entire civilian population in Israel, are no longer part of the landscape in Ontario.”

Contrast that with the more judicious response of Mayor John Tory, who rather than convicting before investigating, announced “that if there are incidents of hate, police will act.” In his passionate defence of Israel, did Ford forget his passion for free speech — and the principle that hate speech merits a hearing under due process before being banned in a tweet?

Our newly-empowered premier has boasted of tough new requirements for universities and colleges to keep speech free — a reaction to the heckling, disinviting, banning and silencing of some prominent right-wing provocateurs. Ontario’s universities and colleges are going along with the idea of greater clarity on campus.

Perhaps that’s because the new rules aren’t especially ominous or onerous, merely obvious: Administrators are being asked to draft their own free speech policies, and rely on pre-existing protocols for enforcement, which means that the fine print of Ford’s diktat is not so much a call to arms as a restatement of the status quo.

But the threat to reduce funding is an unwelcome escalation, an intrusion into the tradition of academic autonomy for free-standing universities. For Ford, when it comes to free speech, money talks.

This feels like a teachable moment, not necessarily for faculty and students, but for the premier who appears never to have spent much time — or had much time for — the campus life he deems so vital.

In “Ford Nation,” the book he wrote about himself and his late brother, Rob, he describes attending Humber College in 1984: “I was bored silly in the lectures.... All in all, college was pretty disappointing ... (but) it wasn’t a problem for very long.”

When teachers went on strike, “I turned around and went straight back home … put on a suit and tie and drove up to Deco” (his father’s print labelling firm, which Ford later took over).

Did Ford ever return to college for his degree, or attend a university where he witnessed free speech under threat? When I asked Friday, the premier’s office refused to answer, saying only that Ford’s government feels “strongly that colleges and universities are places where ideas matter and opinions can be expressed freely.”

As for his postsecondary record, “I won’t comment beyond that,” a spokesperson replied. Words have their limits.

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