The Breach has published an illuminating article about the secret network that Canadian universities set up and surveillance in which they engaged to crack down on student pro-Palestine demonstrators. Here is an excerpt from the article at The Breach:

“’Hi Bob,’ began an April 18, 2024 email from University of Toronto (U of T) Assistant Director of High Risk, Crisis and Emergency Preparedness, Michael LeSage, to his counterpart Bob Maber at the University of Calgary. ‘I’m writing to…invite you to an orientation of a common online SharePoint forum: the Canadian Post-Secondary Emergency Manager Network.’ 

The Network’s purpose, LeSage explained, was to organize “emergency preparedness efforts” among emergency managers across the country.

Hours earlier, Columbia University had prepared to call in the continent’s first police response to anti-genocide campus demonstrations. New York City police officers arrested 108 protesters. In the days and weeks that followed, dozens more campus solidarity protests mobilized across the United States and Canada.

A string of access-to-information requests to U of T revealed that its national SharePoint network was created on November 1, 2023. The SharePoint hub had a discussion board, community guidelines, a members’ contact list, a resource library, an encampment “readiness roundup,” and training opportunities, with members from 30 Canadian universities and colleges. 

In April 2024, as the first Canadian encampments formed, it underwent a “net-widening,” with U of T officials like LeSage onboarding new members. 

At the end of that month, Kathy Branton, manager of Business Continuity and Emergency Management at Humber College in Toronto, posted a spreadsheet to the network’s shared channel with real-time updates she had received from emergency management contacts at institutions across the country.”

The spreadsheet of participant universities in the network is copied below and includes: University of Toronto, Cambrian College, University of Ottawa, Humber Polytechnic, University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier, Sheridan College, University of Guelph, Georgian College, Centennial College, George Brown, York University, St. Lawrence College, Brock University, Niagara College, Confederation College, Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Victoria, University of New Brunswick, UBC, University of Calgary, Memorial University, University of Saskatchewan, Conestoga, McGill University, University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, Université Laval, Simon Fraser University, Mount Allison University

To find details about how your university was involved in the Network and its operations, go to the article at The Breach here.