Denis Rancourt - Dissent – U of O Watch Blog

Dissent – U of O Watch Blog

Rancourt started an institutional watchdog blog entitled “U of O Watch” while he was a professor at the University of Ottawa and used this venue and other web sites to report various alleged malfeasance of administrators and of his colleagues. Many of the posts and web articles relate to incidents involving Rancourt that were reported in the media; such as a lawsuit in which students sued the University for not providing enough teacher assistants, a unilateral deregistration of two ten-year-old students (twins) from Rancourt’s SCI 1101 course that led to an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal lawsuit, a defamation lawsuit threat against Rancourt from Vice-President-Resources Victor Simon for posts on the U of O Watch blog, and an alleged University covert surveillance campaign (“UofOgate”) and cover up (see Covert surveillance section). The University used “copyright infringement” against the blog for using University web site images and disciplined Rancourt with a suspension that was grieved by Rancourt.

In June 2011 University of Ottawa law professor Joanne St. Lewis sued Rancourt for $1 million over several U of O Watch blog posts about her. There was a racism allegation in the statement of claim related to use of the term "House Negro". The developments of the case were reported on the U of O Watch blog and in the media. The Law Times (Canada) did a feature about the case on August 29, 2011. In October 2011 the University disclosed that it was funding the St. Lewis litigation against Rancourt, to which St. Lewis' lawyer Richard G. Dearden responded to the media "it is a personal libel action and has nothing to do with it being a SLAPP suit at all". On entering mediation to settle the case Dearden further stated "It's one of the most egregious defamations of anybody that I've ever encountered in 32 years".