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TORONTO — Doug Ford moved to appease social conservative voters on Tuesday, vowing to scrap and replace the Liberal government’s sex-ed curriculum days after dropping one of its staunchest opponents as a candidate in the spring election.

The Progressive Conservative leader also said he’d tie post-secondary funding to free speech as he announced three education pledges ahead of Wednesday’s official start to the campaign.

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Several Canadian campuses have seen incidents recently in which controversial speakers or professors have come under fire for their views. One of the most publicized was that of Lindsay Shepherd, a Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant who was chastised for airing a clip featuring professor Jordan Peterson, who has refused to use gender-neutral pronouns and has become a hero of the campus free speech movement.

Ford did not provide details on how his proposed process would work, but said universities are supposed to be a place where people exchange ideas, and too many schools are putting limits on that.

“We will ensure that publicly funded universities defend free speech for everybody,” Ford said. “But we have to remember that free speech is not an invitation to be reckless or hurtful and it all comes down to respect.”

Emmett Macfarlane, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo, said free speech on campus has become a far-right issue by virtue of the fact that most of the controversies have involved people with conservative views.