Lindsay Shepherd

Lindsay Shepherd (born December 7, 1994) is a Canadian columnist who is a regular contributor to the True North Centre for Public Policy, a conservative media outlet. She received national attention in 2017 for her involvement, as a graduate student and teaching assistant, in an academic freedom dispute at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Waterloo, Ontario.

In November 2017, Shepherd played her communications class two clips of a debate, formerly aired on Canadian public broadcaster TVOntario, with psychologist Jordan Peterson on Bill C-16, which added "gender identity or expression" as a prohibited ground for discrimination to the Canadian Human Rights Act and as an identifiable group to the Criminal Code. After one student approached a campus LGBTQ support group to express concern about the clips, Peterson also filed a lawsuit, for defamation, against the university and the staff members in the meeting. Both lawsuits were dismissed in 2024.

Shepherd is a board member of the Conservative Party of British Columbia. She was a communications officer with the party until October 1, 2025, when she was fired due to comments she had made on X (Twitter) against the provincial government's display of symbols related to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Early life and education Shepherd was raised in a non-religious household. Her mother teaches elementary school and her father is a youth counsellor. She attended Cariboo Hill Secondary School, Burnaby,

Wilfrid Laurier University incident

Class On 1 November 2017, Shepherd was teaching a WLU first-year undergraduate class, "Canadian Communication in Context". Discussing grammar and pronouns, she showed the class one two-minute clip and a second three-minute clip from The Agenda with Steve Paikin, a current-affairs program produced by TVOntario, a publicly funded channel. A critic of Bill C-16 and "what he sees as an intolerant left-wing in higher education", according to The Globe and Mail, In the second clip from the same debate, Peterson discussed the issues with Nicholas Matte, a historian who teaches in the Sexual Diversity Studies program at Toronto. Matte told Peterson: "I don't care about your language use. I care about the safety of people being harmed."

After the clips were shown, a heated discussion took place among students in the class, some supportive of Peterson and others critical; one told a college newspaper that students had used the discussion "as an excuse to make fun of trans identities".

During the 40-minute meeting, Shepherd was accused of having created a "toxic climate for some of the students" by playing the clips and adopting a neutral stance between the positions. Shepherd argued that students must be exposed to mainstream ideas, and that the ideas should be presented without taking sides. The professor compared the pronoun debate to discussing whether a student of color should have rights; that is, it is "not something intellectually neutral that is up for debate". Shepherd responded that the matter at hand was indeed "out there" and up for debate. Arguing that the ideas had been presented as a valid perspective, the professor compared the Peterson clip to "neutrally playing a speech by Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos from Gamergate." Presenting such material devoid of criticism was "diametrically opposed to everything that we've been talking about in the lectures", he said.

The professor added that Peterson's arguments were "counter to the Canadian Human Rights Code ", and that what had happened in class had been contrary to the university's Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy; the manager offered the view that it might have violated the Ontario Human Rights Code.

The meeting ended with Rambukkana asking that Shepherd send him her lesson plan prior to each class because there had been a breakdown in communication. This was the extent of her punishment, but Rambukkana said that he wasn't sure what else might happen going forward and that he had to discuss the matter with other members of the faculty.

Recording released, apologies Shepherd released the recording to the National Post, as well as to a local newspaper and another on Canada's west coast. The National Post contacted her immediately, and Christie Blatchford wrote an opinion piece in the Post on 10 November. WLU's president, Deborah MacLatchy, and Professor Nathan Rambukkana published letters of apology on 21 November. MacLatchy said of the meeting that it "does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires". His report, which the university did not release, found that Shepherd had not violated university policies and that the meeting had involved "significant overreach". On 18 December 2017 the university president, Deborah MacLatchy, issued a statement saying that there had been "numerous errors in judgement made in the handling of the meeting". The meeting should not have taken place, she wrote, because "o formal complaint, nor informal concern relative to a Laurier policy, was registered about the screening of the video." In April 2018 she repeated that whatever issue had been raised about the clips, it "was not a complaint as the term is defined in the university’s Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy, which Mr. Centa reviewed in establishing his findings". On 18 June that year, Peterson filed a $1.5-million defamation lawsuit against Laurier, Rambukkana, Pimlott, and Joel. His statement of claim alleges that he was compared to Hitler and portrayed as "sexist, misogynist, dangerous and racist" during the November 2017 meeting. In December 2018, Rambukkana and Pimlott filed a third-party claim against Shepherd, alleging she had had control over the recording and should therefore be liable for any damages Peterson suffered as a result of its publication.

Shepherd's lawsuit was dismissed on November 8, 2024. Peterson's lawsuit was dismissed the day before.

Free speech policy In August 2018, Ontario mandated all colleges and universities to develop and comply with a free speech policy. The mandate requires a definition of freedom of speech, a policy based on the Chicago principles, and annual reports to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. WLU publishes the reports online.

Subsequent career After the incident, Shepherd gave multiple interviews, including to newspapers and CBC News, as well as on YouTube shows such the Dave Rubin Report and Louder with Crowder, discussing the implications for free speech and academic freedom. She remained active online, gathering over 30,000 Twitter followers by December 2017. Later that month, Shepherd received the Harry Weldon Canadian Values Award from the public policy group POGG Canada for her free-speech advocacy. On 7 February 2019, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announced that Shepherd was joining the Justice Centre as a "Campus Free Speech Fellow".

On 14 July 2019 Shepherd was banned from Twitter due to an exchange with Jessica Yaniv on the social media platform. Shepherd's Twitter was reinstated later that month.

Shepherd appears in the political documentary No Safe Spaces, released on October 25, 2019.

She writes regularly for the True North Centre for Public Policy, a conservative media outlet.

In 2022, Shepherd was elected a director of the Conservative Party of British Columbia as part of Aaron Gunn's Common Sense BC Coalition and has remained on the board since then.

Shepherd was criticized for a post she made on September 25, 2025, a few days before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, in which she described the flying of the Truth and Reconciliation flag at the BC Parliament Buildings as a "disgrace". She further stated that "the Orange Shirt and the Orange Flag perpetuate untruths about Canadian history". On October 1, 2025, BC Conservative leader John Rustad terminated her employment as a communications officer with the party. and has three children. She is a vegetarian.