Weeks after a masked individual poured a bottle of water over Dr. Tom Flanagan’s head at the University of Calgary, soaking half of me in the process, Canadian Students for Free Speech brought its campus tour to UBC.

This time, nobody threw anything but ideas.

ONE WEEK LEFT: No Safe Spaces comes to UBC on Monday, Oct. 26.

Join the Hon. Stockwell Day (@Stockwell_Day) and Kate Marland (@kateemarland) for a discussion on free expression at Canadian universities.

🎟️ General admission $10 · VIP $55 (includes a meet-and-greet)

GET YOUR… pic.twitter.com/1TKcvRAP99

— The Democracy Fund (@TDF_Can) October 20, 2026

On Monday, Oct. 26, the group, a project of The Democracy Fund, teamed up with the Free Speech Union of Canada for “No Safe Spaces,” its first event in British Columbia.

Former federal cabinet minister Stockwell Day and Kate Marland, executive director of the Free Speech Union of Canada, took on one question: what shape is freedom of expression in on Canada’s campuses? Their answer: not good.

Day’s talk included discussing how cultural Marxism and censorship running rampant in campuses can be traced back to Karl Marx himself.

“Karl Marx is gone, his principles live on, very strongly, especially in our universities,” he told the crowd, adding that “cultural Marxism now is endemic in our education system, in our government systems.”

Marland told me afterward that’s exactly why the fight has to happen on campus. She called universities “ground zero for a lot of these kind of nefarious ideas.”

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When the conversation turned to our Calgary debate, Day said what bothered him most wasn’t the water. It was the shrug that followed from the media and the university.

“They didn’t react and people go, oh, that was just a glass of water,” he said. “They used to say that in Afghanistan when girls would get water thrown at them and then eventually, of course, morph into acid.”

To UBC’s credit, the evening went off without a hitch. “I appreciate the fact here at UBC, we were able to have this without any riots today,” Day told me.

Where the two speakers split was on whether any of this can be fixed. Day admitted he’s been “around the block too many times.”

“I don’t think it can happen, but hearing someone like Kate who’s advancing the cause, who’s getting things done, she reminded me that in some cases these ridiculous provincial tribunal commissions have been disbanded,” he said.

Marland is more hopeful. With the B.C. Conservatives winning a majority government the day before the event, she sees a chance to take on what she called B.C.’s “really oppressive human rights regime” and, in time, change the climate on campus.

“I see a very real window to do that,” she said.

A free-speech event on a Canadian campus that ends without a police report shouldn’t be news. Right now, it is. The Canadian Students for Free Speech plan to continue hosting discussions and debates to help differing opinions be welcome and normalized on campuses across the nation.