Can't Buy My Silence

Jumping Off the Ivory Tower with Prof JulieMac

Our final episode for this season focuses on the campaign to ban the misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) being led by Dr. Julie Macfarlane and Zelda Perkins. Named “Can’t Buy My Silence,” Julie and Zelda’s campaign aims to bring new law into effect in both Canada and the UK to stop victims being forced to exchange their own privacy for protecting their abuser in cases of harassment, discrimination, and bullying, and to stop employers (including schools, universities, and churches as well as both unionized and non-unionized workplaces) using NDAs to secretly “pass-the-trash” to other employers. Julie talks with Dayna about how she and Zelda met and planned the campaign, both motivated by their personal experiences of NDAs: Zelda with the notorious Harvey Weinstein, and Julie who saw a colleague terminated for harassment protected by an NDA (and a letter of recommendation) from the University of Windsor. Stacey Buchholzer, the campaign coordinator, closes out the podcast by reading from a selection of the many stories that have been submitted to the campaign, illustrating the trauma experienced from being first subjected to unfairness and misconduct, and then permanently silenced. The campaign website includes a lot of public legal information about NDAs. You can also listen to Julie’s conversation with Zelda from last season, before they launched their campaign, in which Zelda describes how she broke her NDA with Weinstein and brought this issue into public discussion, which she has continued ever since. In Other News: This week our In Other News Correspondent is Research Assistant Charlotte Sullivan. Charlotte discusses: a Toronto-based legal clinic’s recent challenge against caps on damages awarded in claims involving the Canadian Human Rights Act; and Chief Justice Jacques Fournier of the Québec Superior Court’s recent decision to step down from the bench at the age of 71, and some interesting comments he made regarding access to justice in the COVID-19 pandemic context. For related links and more on this episode visit our website: https://representingyourselfcanada.com/cant-buy-my-silence/ Jumping Off the Ivory Tower is produced and hosted by Julie Macfarlane and Dayna Cornwall; production and editing by Brauntë Petric; Other News produced and hosted by Charlotte Sullivan; promotion by Moya McAlister and the NSRLP team.