Manufacturing silence on Canadian campuses

How use of NDAs and reliance on precarious work enable sexual violence and rape culture

“They are well known in their field and I was afraid that rejecting them (more than once) would lead me to be unable to continue my studies in the field but also to ruin my reputation among other scholars that I would eventually meet. In the long run it seemed simpler to go along with it than to keep trying to stop it because of the long-term repercussions I felt I would face.”

This is one of many similar responses from students to a Students for Consent Culture Canada survey on the impacts of sexual violence by faculty members. It’s an open secret on our campuses that there are faculty members who use their positions of power to blur professional boundaries and perpetrate abuse against students and employees. Even with years of sexual violence policy reform, cultural change, and militancy from students and professors alike, it is still taboo to speak openly and address this within our institutions. 

Two of the biggest reasons for this are the entrenchment of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) – binding contracts between two or more parties that outline confidentiality requirements – and the precarious nature of academic labour. 

Both uphold an important pillar of academic culture that enables sexual violence to proliferate on campuses across the country: silence.

In the 2010s there was a wave of recognition by post-secondary institutions in Canada that sexual violence perpetrated by students against other students happened on their campuses. As a result of the #MeToo shifts in the cultural zeitgeist, many of us were suddenly invited into spaces and discussions that had previously been closed to us. Institutions created committees and held consultations pushing the message that “we take sexual violence seriously.” However, many of us found that the doors that had reluctantly creaked open for us to discuss violence between students for the first time were slammed shut again once we brought forward the actions of sexually violent, harassing, and/or exploitative professors.

On the third rewrite it made me responsible for anyone’s retelling of the story, including random people warning others about [the faculty member].” 

Since 2019, a group of volunteer researchers at Students for Consent Culture (SFCC) Canada – myself included – have been pursuing one of the first attempts to explore the scope and impact of sexual violence and sexual harassment committed by professors against students: the Open Secrets project (report forthcoming 2026). We surveyed 230 students and 58 faculty, and conducted eight interviews with key informants in English and in French about what they witnessed and experienced on their campuses. Both student and faculty participants regularly discussed feeling betrayed by their institution, within a culture of silence around inappropriate faculty behaviour. 

NDAs in harassment cases

“The NDA I was asked to sign [by the university] stated I could not speak to anyone but a lawyer during the investigation, which [prevented] me from speaking to a therapist,” one student who reported sexual harassment to her university wrote. “It then made me accountable for any breach of confidentiality made by a therapist when I asked for a rewrite. On the third rewrite it made me responsible for anyone’s retelling of the story, including random people warning others about [the faculty member].” 

 If universities wanted to truly protect complainants, including victim-protective clauses would be one way to do so without shielding the perpetrator and the institution.

NDAs were originally designed to protect corporate trade secrets. They have since been co-opted as a key tool used by corporations and post-secondary institutions to restrict survivors from speaking about their experiences of sexual violence, or the terms of settlement of a complaint, while protecting the reputations of individuals or institutions named by plaintiffs in such cases. 

Often framed as necessary to protect the privacy of individuals named in complaints, NDAs serve as a risk-management tool that protects the reputation of the postsecondary institution. This matches the neoliberal approach we can see in the way human resource departments function in companies to ultimately protect the company. If universities wanted to truly protect complainants, including victim-protective clauses would be one way to do so without shielding the perpetrator and the institution. Another would be including such clauses only at the requests of wronged parties.

NDAs can be both disorienting and isolating for survivors of violence. Not only does the current use of NDAs stifle the person signing from speaking to other people who may have similar complaints, breaking confidentiality means breaching the contract and losing compensation.

“Every kind of bad behaviour in the workplace is now being treated as if it were a patented trade secret,” Macfarlane told CBC radio’s Day 6.

Often, complainants are told that they must sign an NDA to get any monetary compensation. This is not true. As shown in a 2022 Ontario Superior Court ruling on whether NDAs should be assumed to be an essential part of a settlement agreement, Justice Jaye Hooper determined based on previous case law that confidentiality clauses have been well-established as terms that need to be negotiated and are not assumed or essential parts of a contract. 

Campaigns such as Can’t Buy My Silence have argued that the use of NDAs in cases of sexual violence and harassment is an equity issue. This means they have a disproportionately negative impact on socially marginalized groups. Co-founded by Julie Macfarlane, a Canadian law professor and activist, and Zelda Perkins, a theatre producer who broke her NDA to speak out about what she witnessed as Harvey Weinstein’s assistant, Can’t Buy My Silence has been campaigning in Canada and the U.K. for changes to legislation to ban the use of NDAs outside of their original purpose.

“Every kind of bad behaviour in the workplace is now being treated as if it were a patented trade secret,” Macfarlane told CBC radio’s Day 6.

Their report also showed that 34 per cent of respondents said that they did not file a formal complaint because they anticipated being asked to sign a NDA. This data points to just how widespread the use of NDAs in harassment cases has become in Canada.

Thanks to this campaign’s work, activist pressure, and sympathetic politicians, P.E.I. was the first province to introduce legislation limiting the use of NDAs in settlement agreements. We are now starting to see the cultural impacts of taking a more critical approach to NDAs. The University of Prince Edward Island released two staff from NDAs that had muzzled them for 12 years. “It’s a combination of exhilarating and scary and weird,” Erin Casey, one of the staff, told CBC about now being able to speak about the sexual harassment complaint she made against UPEI's former president in 2012. Can’t Buy My Silence was also a part of pushing for and winning Ontario’s ban on NDAs for cases involving faculty sexual misconduct against students, in a 2023 amendment to the Strengthening Post-secondary Institutions and Students Act. In the U.K., the work of Can’t Buy My Silence also fuelled the ban on the use of NDAs across all workplaces in cases of harassment and  discrimination. A federal bill in Canada may soon follow suit by restricting the use of NDAs in cases of harassment and discrimination in the government.

In 2025, Can’t Buy My Silence published a report on the results of their “Speak Out” survey on the misuse of NDAs in Canada across employment sectors including post-secondary. It showed that of the participants in Canada who had experienced any type of harassment or discrimination in the workplace, 45 per cent said they had signed NDAs, with a further 13 per cent saying that they cannot say for legal reasons. Their report also showed that 34 per cent of respondents said that they did not file a formal complaint because they anticipated being asked to sign a NDA. This data points to just how widespread the use of NDAs in harassment cases has become in Canada.

In an interview with the Open Secrets team, a faculty member referred to the use of NDAs in cases of faculty misconduct as “a form of institutional betrayal that [...] inflect this position that rape culture often takes […] that people who are harmed don’t know their own experience and cannot be valid speakers or judgers of their own experience.”   

Precarious work

The increasing precarity of work in academia places non-tenured faculty in a tricky position: speak out and risk their job and reputation or stay silent and allow tenured and permanent staff to continue to harass others unscathed.

Senior admin[istrators] and people in positions of power who have job security need to step up. We are all essentially accountable because we allow it to happen. We know, but say nothing. That's not okay.

Because these workers often also wear hats as students, their supervisors hold disproportionate power over access to funding, references, student visas, research opportunities, and contract renewals. The stakes are high enough for many of these workers that it impacts not only if they report something that happened to them, but also whether they intervene as a bystander to sexual harassment and violence in the workplace.

While specific statistics for how many respondents were precariously employed won’t be included in the final report, analysis of the Open Secrets data shows that precarity is commonplace, with about 66 per cent of faculty respondents reporting employment as contract faculty or pre-tenure faculty.

One assistant professor spoke about the moral duty she felt despite her precarious work position: “junior faculty shouldn’t risk their careers to report unacceptable behaviour, but we often do. Senior admin[istrators] and people in positions of power who have job security need to step up. We are all essentially accountable because we allow it to happen. We know, but say nothing. That's not okay.” 

Tenured faculty who spoke to us underlined the important difference this job security makes as well. One professor said, “If I didn't have tenure and wasn’t senior, I couldn’t speak out publicly the way I have [...] I have a responsibility to work for change for my junior colleagues, as well as students and part-time workers.”

Faculty survey respondents were clear: job security creates a culture where inappropriate behaviour is identified and corrected while precarity enables rape culture to proliferate. But it’s not enough to defend job security without also addressing other power structures. Many of the harassers discussed in Open Secrets survey responses acted as though their tenured status was so secure, no one could touch them.

Other academic staff such as teaching assistants and research assistants – already fighting for job security – often don’t have a track to follow to access non-precarious employment, instead relying on tenuous contracts and their personal relationships with their supervisors. This creates even more barriers to reporting wrongdoing.

Losing trust

Students in the Open Secrets data reported feeling that their institution cared more about its reputation than student safety. 

Sexual violence on our campuses continues not only because of a lack of policy or training, but also because of structures that institutions and perpetrators rely on to suppress disclosure and protect their own interests. 

One student who experienced an assault by her professor explained that  “I was not believed by my institution and was seen as a liability.”  

So far, only four Canadian post-secondary institutions (Acadia University, Atlantic School of Theology, Columbia College, and University of King’s College) have signed the pledge not to use NDAs to silence people who come forward to raise complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, abuse or misconduct, or other forms of harassment and bullying.

As one student put it, “I just remember feeling so indignant that this was a problem. Like so hurt and alarmed and angry, deeply angry, that people I loved were leaving [school] because of this violence.”

While Can’t Buy My Silence and other advocacy groups give us hope that it is possible to challenge the silencing function of NDAs and privacy law and to create learning environments and workplaces that foster transparency, stability, safety, and accountability, unions and students need to come together outside of institutional spaces. By combining the expertise of both groups, we can build power on our campuses strong enough to change the culture of silence. 

One of the symptoms of this insidious culture is the people who leave institutions and academia because of it. From being told to finish their degree under the supervisor harassing them to suffering health issues to needing to prioritize their safety, many of our Open Secrets participants shared how their experiences of violence, poorly designed complaint processes, and lack of accountability ultimately led to their exiting the institution.

This represents a huge loss for our academic and campus communities, particularly given that members of marginalized groups are often overrepresented among survivors of sexual violence. It erodes any trust between the institution and community and allows repeat offenders to continue. 

As one student put it, “I just remember feeling so indignant that this was a problem. Like so hurt and alarmed and angry, deeply angry, that people I loved were leaving [school] because of this violence.”

Not addressing the culture of silence upheld by NDAs and precarious labour will mean continuing to drive students and precariously employed staff away from the university. Institutions need to re-examine what their ultimate purpose is and the tools they are using to accomplish this goal. We are seeing the long-established culture start to crack after mounting pressure from generations of activists. There is opportunity for students and union members to work together to keep up that pressure and uproot what keeps rape culture present in our learning and working spaces. To do otherwise is antithetical to academia’s goal of developing young minds, not scarring them.

* The quotes used throughout this report are from anonymous data collected from students and faculty through surveys and interviews as a part of a research project by Students for Consent Culture Canada.