Jamie Sarkonak: Anti-abortion protests the new psychological ‘hazard’ in Alberta

The Mount Royal University campus was photographed on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. Gavin Young/Postmedia

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Workplace hazards can be a lot of things: fall risk at construction sites, mice in kitchens, hydrogen sulfide at oil rigs, bears at remote sites, violence in high-crime areas, etc. But in Alberta, that list has now been stretched to include exposure to images of aborted or miscarried fetuses.

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The pronouncement came down from a labour arbitrator who decided last Tuesday that anti-abortion displays at Calgary’s Mount Royal University constituted a psychological hazard which the administration “did not adequately control.”

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The case arose from a string of complaints by a staff member from 2019 to 2024. She had a miscarriage some 15 years prior, and was retraumatized at the sight of posters displayed by the anti-abortion, or “pro-life,” group that assembled regularly in a high-traffic part of campus.

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“The images displayed on the obscenely large posters that the group chooses to convey their message is frighteningly similar to what I saw when I miscarried,” she wrote in a 2022 health and safety complaint.

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The staffer had first requested the removal of the protesters from campus in 2019, but out of concern for free speech, the university sought compromise. It had an app which it used to send out safety notifications, so it set up a new type of notification to alert subscribing users of when and where anti-abortion displays popped up, and when they left. The university also had security staff place six or seven “WARNING GRAPHIC MATERIAL” signs in the areas leading to the protest display. Eventually, QR codes linking to support services were added to these signs.

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The staffer approached her concerns in a number of ways. She spoke to human resources about it in 2019 but was rebuffed for free speech reasons; she made a health and safety complaint in 2022; she yelled and swore at the protesters in 2023, a video of which was published by Rebel News. And finally, she got her union to file a grievance in 2024.

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Throughout this time, Mount Royal University made what appears to be a fair attempt to juggle the interests of the protesters and the staffer. Beyond the notification system and the dedication to posting warning signs, it consulted with the provincial health and safety agency in 2023 and was advised that the sign-notification system was adequate. In 2024, it began asking the protesters to provide 30 minutes’ notice the following year so that the signs and notifications could go out beforehand. All the while, it maintained that free expression meant allowing these protests on campus.

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In the spring of 2025, the university stopped sending out notifications for the protests because, went the evidence, the person in charge feared that the volume of notifications would cause people to stop using the app. It was a strange concern because only those who signed up for these specific notifications were supposed to receive them. After some pressure from the campus community, the notifications resumed in the fall.

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When this all fell on the labour arbitrator’s lap, he took a look at Alberta’s definition of workplace hazard, which is a “situation, condition, or thing that may be dangerous to health and safety.” Did the images of bloody fetuses meet that definition? To answer that, the arbitrator looked to the staffer’s experiences. She testified to her trauma; colleagues testified to instances where she shook and cried; even the Rebel video helped her case — the arbitrator said that the yelling and swearing was evidence of emotional dysregulation. She took medical leave in April 2024 and testified that she sought counselling that month.