[Editor's note:  Below is the submission of  Dr Charles Bernstein, the Chair of The Jewish Physicians Manitoba (JPAM), to the University of Manitoba, on the subject of Freedom Expression guidleines. JPAM currently has 90 people registered as members and its membership drive is ongoing. JPAM has some 200 people on its mailing list] 

The Jewish Physicians Association of Manitoba (JPAM) agrees with the submission of Dr Bryan Schwartz and Rhonda Spivak.

JPAM would like to add the following comments on Freedom of Expression on the University of Manitoba campus which includes the Bannatyne or Health Sciences Centre campus, which includes health care providers and health care trainees.  The health care providers on the University of Manitoba Bannatyne campus include physicians, nurses, medical rehabilitation practitioners, dentists, and pharmacists. In the health care sphere freedom of expression that is unbridled, including that which the university refers to as uncomfortable can have serious repercussions for the health of society. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba specifies that physicians should never be divisive. This tenet exists because all persons need to feel comfortable with all health care providers. A health care provider (and I am extending this to all health care providers) who makes a patient, a patient’s family member, or a patient’s support team feel uncomfortable by virtue of their open expression of controversial and what could be hateful comments is breaching a covenant the health care provider has with their profession. In public fora such as graduations, welcoming and closing addresses or even simply curriculum lectures health care providers and health care trainees members of the University of Manitoba community, should not have the right to freedom of any expression. Racist or defamatory or exclusionary speech may be overt or subtle but any of it does not belong on a health sciences campus and should not be protected as freedom of expression.

The JPAM has heard loud and clear from the minority of Jewish medical students on the University of Manitoba Bannatyne campus at the Rady Faculty of health Sciences that expression that is currently freely disseminated verbally and on social media has been antisemitic, intimidating to them, and making them want to hide their Jewishness. This type of free expression whether it is affecting Jewish or any other minority or no-minority group of students should be tolerated let alone condoned.

Charles Bernstein, MD, FRCPC, Distinguished Professor at the Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba