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If logic doesn’t tell you there is no civil right to ride a motorcycle, two Ontario judges ruled as much in the matter of Baljinder Badesha, a Sikh motorcyclist who fought the helmet law on constitutional grounds and lost both at trial (in 2008) and on appeal (in 2011) — despite interventions by the World Sikh Organization and the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Badesha never claimed riding a motorcycle was a form of “religious expression,” in the way wearing a kirpan or the turban itself is for many Sikh men. He was asking to be excused from the inconvenience of having to access public motorways by car, and the courts quite rightly deferred to the legislation’s safety-related goals.

On its own, this is no big deal. But it’s a good example of just how capricious, self-serving and addlepated governments often are when dealing with rights. Which brings us to Ontario’s new free-speech requirements for its universities and colleges. By Jan. 1, 2019, they must have policies in place affirming they are “places for open discussion and free inquiry” that do not “shield students from ideas or opinions that they disagree with or find offensive,” and that will not tolerate community members “obstruct(ing) or interfer(ing) with the freedom of others to express their views” — the latter being a particular concern among many conservatives.

I got a bad feeling about this right off the bat: knowing how governments treat our freedoms, it’s madness to assume they can usefully correct faltering universities. The feeling has only gotten worse. Many Canadians on the left clearly already see the classical liberal idea of free speech as a conservative notion, not as a key block in Western society’s foundation. This only further cements that idea. And I don’t trust this government not to make it worse.

Doug Ford is, after all, the guy who promised to ban Al Quds Day celebrations, where anti-Semitic speakers have been known to flirt with Canada’s hate speech laws.