This post should be read as just my opinion as a non-lawyer —

Not having to hear a reportable complaint regarding a program’s academic freedom violations, harmful methodology and lack of pedagogy, and a senior officer’s conflict of interest would be a pretty big motivator to make a complaint disappear:

A UBC lawyer must know the Respectful Environment Statement defines one action with serious negative consequences alone as personal harassment:

The provost and his pet lawyer had officers parrot back that he gets to be the ultimate Decision Maker — even if it took an unwritten policy to give him that power:

I’m no lawyer, but this seems to be both of those things:

If this was policy language, I’d interpret that to mean that even if the Person at Risk’s actions were lawful, if they intended* to harass me by abusing their institutional power to attack my academic freedom and retaliate against informing activity, it would be Civil Conspiracy Type 1 as none of those acts are against criminal or civil codes. But if the former president allegedly violated Section 19.1 of the University Act by failing to act when required to do so for the institution’s best interest, it would be Civil Conspiracy Type 2.

But I’m still not a lawyer.

*given the Reasonable Person Test that the institution held its officers to

Allowing a VP of Academics responsible for the institution’s academic freedom to ignore his conflict of interest to silence an academic freedom violation complaint he had just confirmed in writing was certainly a concerted action, as defined by:

I would say the Provost’s, Lawyer and former President’s actions — or lack there of — meet all five aspects of this test:

1. They acted on company time to ensure that no academic freedom violation or conflict of interest complaint against the Provost was ever heard at the University of British Columbia.
2. The Duty of Honest Performance is something I’ve just discovered. I assume denying a student an impartial appeal regarding academic discipline and failing to act in a fiduciary duty as required violates the University Act. Despite seemingly being an orphaned Act with no institution responsible for its legislation, the Act is still on the books.
3. My name was on the “to” line of their work emails that contained their statements of dereliction of duty. An Ass. Lawyer wrote he was going to serve his client’s officer’s interests instead of his client, the former president’s lack of action allegedly violated his legislative act, and the Provost used his authority granted to him by a public institution to ensure no impartial appeal would happen. The Senate’s email specifically stated because so many people had advised me the Provost gets to whatever he wants, they weren’t even going to form a committee to hear the facts of the matter.
4. The lawyer owed his institution substantive knowledge of its procedures as a competent lawyer. The former president had the duties of knowledge, care, and disclosure above his fiduciary duties, and the Provost was also the VP in charge of Academic freedom.
5. Well, it’s year two of a system that demanded the complainant become the subject matter expert the province was paying its Managers of Investigations to be.
   
   Side note: a properly trained Manager of Investigations should be compensated at twice their starting salary in BC. Managers with a job description that takes on the level of personal risk for policy and legislative misinterpretation must be compensated for it. For that much accountability, I believe anything under 150k a year to start for that level of risk is unfair. Just look at the damage a poorly trained manager can do.
   

In my family of origin, I’d been trained to know since the age of six that if I wanted anything done, I had to arrange it myself. But I thought I was wasting my time through 2022 by researching just how many policy errors the institution had created or committed. I believed once the Ombuds Office started investigating my complaint, they’d have to investigate this again themselves, but at least I could provide them with a road map as to how a policy can go from this:

to this:

With only administrative edits on the documents approved. I am extremely serious about requiring an unintended consequences check for any administrative edit. Two organizations have abused the easier process to make substantive protocol changes without their board’s authorization.

But no one would have invested that time if I hadn’t. Procedural fairness within the British Columbia’s public sector administrative tribunals was dire. Having to work for two years full-time to become a subject matter expert for administrative tribunals in a province I don’t live in just to file a complaint that was never taken is too much of an undue hardship on any complainant attempting to report informing activity.

Expecting a complainant to sue a province for a decision made by an administrative tribunal that ignored its policies, mandates, values, codes, legislative acts, and charter rights is even more undue hardship. No administrative tribunal should be granted the power to be the final Decision Maker as to whether it violated its own legislative acts.

Especially when institutional policy errors are most likely to happen between the keyboard and chair.

The level of power difference between a member of the public and an administrative tribunal — given the member of the public has no recourse for incompetent decision-making at the tribunal level but to get a law firm involved — is more unconscionable than hardship.

Incompetent people are like the dead in The Sixth Sense. They can’t see other incompetent people and don’t know they are incompetent. This states — I assume — it doesn’t matter if the Lawyer just didn’t know what was required to be known to be a competent lawyer:

…(W)ere without liberty to commit is a perfect way to phrase incompetent administrative decisions.

Again, I’m sure if this was policy, it would state that all institutional officers are jointly responsible regardless of what they understood at the time. The Reasonable Person Test does not mess around:

This was definitely — if allegedly — a pattern of conduct:

Making a reportable complaint disappear was — I assume, as a policy expert — the goal all along:

The Lawyer had already decided policies weren’t legally applicable, and the Conflict of Interest/Commitment Policy was just a policy. The former president was jumping his sinking ship. I assume the Provost did not want to be known as the VP of academics that didn’t understand what pedagogy or an academic freedom violation were. I’m sure he didn’t want to be the Provost who didn’t see the lack of pedagogy or academic freedom in one of his program’s methodologies, either.

There’s a slight chance he didn’t even understand he had just confirmed my complaint in writing before closing it, but that would be ignoring the fact that the institution removed my freedom to ask any more questions after the “No, peer review is no more a pedagogy than “gentle” could be. No, I’m sure. A method can’t be its pedagogy” discussion with Dr. Expert.

And again, the Respectful Environment Statement defines UBC’s institutional definition of personal harassment. Those actions become institutional harassment if the institution condones it. As that statement says, it doesn’t matter that most of the institution unknowingly joined in. Every officer who joined the harassment did so by failing the Reasonable Person Test.

There is no zero chance a Minister’s secretary would have lied to my face within two minutes of our first conversation if the Ministry had been told: UBC removed this student’s academic freedom so we didn’t have to hear their complaint so that a senior officer could get away with serving his own interest:

Substitute “contract” with “improperly controlled policy,” and you have yourself a bingo: