Academic Frances Widdowson speaks at an award ceremony held by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) in Toronto on June 13, 2025. Omid Ghoreishi/The Epoch Times
An Alberta court has rejected a request from Calgary’s Mount Royal University to appeal a recent ruling regarding the dismissal and possible reinstatement of a former tenured professor.
Frances Widdowson, a faculty member known for her views on Canada’s residential school system, was fired by Mount Royal University five years ago.
Widdowson’s dismissal was brought before the Alberta Labour Relations Board by the university’s faculty association, Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf noted in her ruling earlier this month. The board is responsible for overseeing and enforcing collective bargaining regulations in Alberta.
Arbitrator David Phillip Jones found that Widdowson’s firing was disproportionate to her conduct, which centered on a social media “Twitter war” with colleagues. However, Jones declined to order her reinstatement due to ongoing workplace hostility and proposed a monetary payout instead, according to the court documents.
The Mount Royal Faculty Association appealed Jones’s decision, and the Alberta Labour Relations Board ruled in May that the refusal to reinstate was “unreasonable.” The board cited a violation of procedural fairness because the arbitrator did not allow the faculty association “to be heard on a point that became central to the arbitrator’s decision.”
Mount Royal sought to overturn the board’s decision, arguing it would set a dangerous precedent for arbitrators’ discretion.
Strekaf rejected the university’s bid for appeal on Oct. 13, noting the university did not challenge the procedural fairness breach.
“I have considered that the circumstances that gave rise to this employment dispute date back almost five years,” the ruling reads. “As noted, the matter has been remitted back to the arbitrator because of a breach of procedural fairness, an issue that has not been appealed, and will be reconsidered by him. The further delay resulting from an appeal to this Court would unduly hinder resolution of the underlying claim.”
The decision leaves the question of Widdowson’s reinstatement to be reconsidered by the arbitrator.
The arbitrator must now re-evaluate the remedy for Widdowson’s termination with proper procedural fairness, the judge said.
Widdowson said she was surprised by the first arbitrator’s ruling.
“In academic workplaces you have people who don’t like each other very much … you might argue with one another very, very vigorously,” she said in an Oct. 28 video posted to social media. “That’s not a problem in the academic workplace, and the arbitrator did not really consider this.”
A spokesperson for Mount Royal University also offered a brief statement on the court’s ruling.
“We understand the ongoing impact this process has had on our faculty, students and staff,” the emailed statement said. “While the formal process continues, we will have no further comment.”
Widdowson has also criticized what she describes as “wokeism,” arguing that it threatens academic freedom and free speech.
She has also become a prominent voice questioning the 2021 announcement that unmarked graves of children had been found at the former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., and has rejected the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s conclusion that the residential school system constituted a “cultural genocide.”
