A month back, the administrations at the Universities of Calgary and Alberta called in city police to remove their pro-Palestinian encampments. In the immediate aftermath, 19 professors from Alberta’s two law schools wrote an open letter claiming that this move was a “violent infringement of students’ right to protest.”

The main complaint raised by the professors was that the removals, authorized by trespass notices, occurred almost immediately after the encampments were set up, with no meaningful engagement with the protesters. They also argued that the university administrators’ justification for issuing trespass notices — that they were necessary due to potential safety and operational hazards — did not represent proportional limits on the protesters’ rights under section 1 of the Charter. With respect (as we lawyers say), I must object.