Amy Hamm, Victimized for Her Views on the Transgendered, Calls Bill C-63 “An Orwellian
Nightmare”
Amy Hamm, Victimized for Her Views on the Transgendered, Calls Bill C-63 “An Orwellian
Nightmare”
Speaking at a gathering of Reality Based Women Unite! in Toronto on March 8, International Women’s Day, Amy Hamm, whose case is discussed below warned: “The Online Harms bill will criminalize speech. We can be punished without even opening our mouths, for Internet postings. Bill C-63 is an Orwellian nightmare,” she added. “It is the last desperate attempt by a failed regime to silence its critics. Free speech has been in peril in Canada for many years. Freedom of speech must involve freedom from consequences like huge legal bills, job loss and public mockery.” Noting that Bill C-63 will allow anonymous complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, she argued: “It’s difficult to fight against a group (complainant) that cannot be named.”
Amy Hamm said: “We live in a culture that is hellbent on silencing the voices of dissenting women. The state funded media does the bidding of a man who loves power as does our national intelligence service.” She said CSIS has been corrupted and now classifies those opposed to the LGBTQ agenda as “potential terrorists” and violent. [Several CAFE associates attended this event.]
New Westminster Nurse Amy Hamm, the Latest Victim of Professional Persecution As Canada becomes more and more a Cultural Marxist, woke controlled society, professional bodies are increasingly used to punish their members for their political opinions. The persecution of media star and author Jordan Peterson by the Ontario College of Psychologists comes to mind. He was sentenced to re-education sessions to be paid out of his own pocket. Now, there’s British Columbia nurse Amy Hamm. CBC (November 23, 2023) reports: “A B.C. nurse accused of making numerous ‘derogatory and discriminatory’ public statements about transgender people took the stand in her discipline hearing on Friday, telling the panel considering her case that she is not transphobic. During a hearing at the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives, Amy Hamm of New Westminster testified that her advocacy on social and other platforms is meant to protect women and children from what she described as dangerous infringements into sex-segregated spaces. ‘I’m not transphobic. I don’t have any issue with trans people — it’s the infringement on women and children’s rights,’ Hamm told the college disciplinary panel. She said she is fighting against what she described as a ‘fringe’ movement of activists influencing official positions on transgender rights and access to gender-affirming care. ‘It’s a movement that is infringing on the rights of women and pushing institutions to adopt what are false and delusional beliefs,’ she said. Hamm faces allegations of unprofessional conduct for making “discriminatory and derogatory statements regarding transgender people” while identifying herself as a nurse, according to a citation from the college. Hamm frequently refers to transgender women as ‘men’ in social media posts, videos and podcasts, implying they pose a danger to cisgender [that’s woke-speak for normal] women and children. She has referred to the disciplinary proceedings as a ‘witch trial’ and suggested the college ‘would love for me to suicide myself.’ …. She told the panel she is particularly concerned about transgender women having access to women-only spaces including prisons and change rooms. She pointed to examples like Madilyn Harks, a transgender woman with a history of sexually assaulting young girls who has been housed in women’s correctional facilities. ‘It makes me extremely, extremely angry, and it feels as though people don’t seem to care what happens to these women,’ she said of female inmates. She said she completely rejects the concept of gender identity, calling it ‘anti- scientific, metaphysical nonsense.’” Political Prisoner Leslie Bory Not
I am genuinely frightened and deeply distraught by the federal government’s latest bill and its impact on YOUR Freedom of Speech and Expression.
Your Freedom of Speech and Expression is at stake, starting with censoring your voice on the Internet.
One “wrong” post on the Internet, and you’re silenced… forever…
Just last week, Justin Trudeau’s (In)Justice Minister Arif Virani introduced Canada, and the world, to Bill C-63, the “Online Harms Act”.
He is calling for a chilling piece of legislation aiming to reduce online “hate” and “hate speech.”
The implications are far-reaching and frightening since this bill will not just force social media and big tech giants to merely terminate your social media account.
It’s social media jail incarnate, where you will pay the physical price for sharing the “wrong” opinions by going to ACTUAL JAIL.
This grim reality is something straight out of science fiction, or at the very least, an online censorship law directly imported from an authoritarian regime like China, Iran, or North Korea.
If the Trudeau Liberal government gets away with it, this will be the new normal in Canada.
Here’s what authoritarian Justice Minister Virani’s “DEATH of Free Speech” law proposes:
Update the Criminal Code of Canada (CCC)‘s definition of “hate speech” and “hatred” to include ambiguous terms like “incites violent extremism or terrorism,” “incites violence,” and “foments hatred” (specifically section 318 and 319 of the CCC).
Expand the federal bureaucracy by instituting a “Digital Safety Commission” (aka Canada’s very own Ministry of Truth) and a “Digital Safety Ombudsperson” to receive complaints about “hate speech” and enforce speech “standards” on internet platforms (Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, Rumble, etc.).
Grant even more power to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, allowing them to force content removal and impose fines up to $70,000, with a maximum of $20,000 to the offended anonymous complainants.The same commission that labeled Christmas as “racist” last December.
Raise the maximum punishments for “hate propaganda” to life imprisonment.
Enact “protective measures” enabling a judge to act on anonymous reports of hate crimes by requiring accused individuals to wear an electronic monitoring device, undergo house arrest, be banned from public spaces, or have a restraining order against them.
The definitions of “hate” and “hateful speech” are so vague that they could include almost anything:
Critical opinions, political commentary, even memes.
The type of content produced by people like Tucker Carlson, Ezra Levant, The Babylon Bee, and CitizenGO.
It’s unclear how these claims of “hate crimes” will be verified, opening the floodgates for anonymous complaints from anyone, anywhere in the world.
Does this sound familiar? It should.
This is eerily similar to the current legal case CitizenGO’s own Eduard Proels is facing in Germany, who is facing charges for sharing a meme on Facebook.
Or Päivi Räsänen, a Finish MP, who is still being persecuted by a vengeful prosecutor for sharing her Christian beliefs online despite already winning her case in court, not once but twice.
If this bill passes, we could see individualslike Dr. Mark Trozzi, Jordan Peterson, Pastor Artur Pawlowski, and Josh Alexanderjailed FOR LIFE for sharing their opinions that go against the radical globalist elite’s favorite politically “correct” narratives.
Pro-lifers, pro-family advocates, and pro-freedom supporters could also face similar fates, like the countless freedom convoy supporters who suddenly had their bank accounts unconstitutionally FROZEN for showing their support behind our brave truckers.
The passage of Bill C-63, “DEATH of Free Speech,” would bring the Trudeau Liberals’ vision of turning Canada into a so-called “basic dictatorship” one step closer to becoming an actual-livable reality.
But in this dark time, there is still a glimmer of hope.
We’ve seen the massive public backlash against The Liberal government’s failed attempts to pass similar censorship bills over the last several years.
This is why I am asking you to act now. If you don’t, you will lose the ability to openly discuss and debate important issues, first online and then in person.
Only with your help can we successfully defend all Canadians from authoritarianism and preserve YOUR fundamental human right to Free Speech and Expression!
Gregory Tomchyshyn and the entire team at CitizenGO
P.S. This fight is one of the most important fights, if not the most important fight, myself and the entire CitizenGO team is engaged with right now.
Bill C-63 would not only silence me but also you and your voice.
If your fundamental freedoms and democracy is going to survive in Canada, I personally need your help rallying a massive army of voices against this authoritarian proposal before it becomes law.
“I believe that time has been kind to my decisions: the reality of the idiocy that I pointed to then, whose reality was then denied by most, has become something increasingly apparent to an increasing majority of people in the interim,” Jordan Peterson writes.
In November 2022, the administrative board that regulates the conduct of psychologists (and much more than that, it turns out) decided that my political views were a disgrace to my profession, that of clinical psychologist. I was therefore sentenced by that board, the Ontario College of Psychologists, to a bout of mandatory re-education, of indeterminate duration, at my expense, with my learning not evaluated by any standard method but subject to the opinion of those charged with, profiting by and exploiting my forced studentship. I took those decision-makers forthwith to court, and lost. The decision of the Ontario College of Psychologists was upheld. I then appealed, to a higher court. On January 16, 2024, that appeal was rejected. There were no reasons provided.
This means that my legal options have been exhausted. Thus, I face two choices. I can comply, when the College goes ahead with its determination to require my re-education, dutifully attend whatever bloody classes their Dei-enthusiast “social media experts” (whatever those are) determine to inflict upon, confess the sins of my classic liberal/conservative or even Judeo-christian political, philosophical and theological commitments, repent and silence myself — or even become a standard-bearer for the faux-compassionate woke cause, at least publicly.
I WOULD SAY EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS AGAIN. — JORDAN PETERSON
Alternatively, I can tell my would-be masters to go directly to the hell they are so rapidly gathering around themselves and everyone else, lose my right to practise or even to describe myself as a psychologist, and suffer the consequences on the reputation front:
“Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, disgrace to his profession, forfeits his formal licence, in consequence of his crimes.”
And what exactly were those crimes? — because there’s the rub or, at least, one of them. This is where the reader should pay careful attention, Canadian or otherwise, because this is what lies ahead in the West, given the course our leaders and their still-blind and deaf followers are charting. It should be hard for anyone considering this situation to believe that I am playing straight with the facts, if they have any of their own opinions or values whatsoever — because if what I have done and said constitutes the equivalent of a professional crime, you can be sure that your own head is full of like transgressions, regardless of your political stance, and your own tongue therefore likely to spill the beans.
I criticized three Canadian political leaders: a councilwoman in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, for what I regarded and still regard as her disgraceful behaviour during the Canadian Trucker Convoy; Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, a man who resigned from one of the highest positions within the office of the former amidst a scandal that had enveloped the Teflon-coated Liberal administration; and the woke poster boy and shining narcissist himself, Canada’s Prime Minister, a man who has done more to destroy my country than anyone else, in reality and reputation, nationally and internationally (and that includes his father, who was no shirker in that regard).
I pointed out the shortcomings of the idiot costly self-aggrandizing virtue-signalling demoralizing lie of the power-mad climate apocalypse-mongers — that on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the entire three-plus-hour transcript of which (!) was submitted to my College as evidence of my disgraceful conduct.
I voiced my objections to the politically-correct insistence that morbid obesity be regarded as the equivalent to the highest standards of athletic beauty, and I took a certain Hollywood actress or actor to task because that same person (oh tortuous grammatical niceties) used its platform to parade the advantages of double mastectomies when performed on the bodies of perfectly healthy young women.
I regret none of these actions. I would say exactly the same things again. Furthermore, I believe that time has been kind to my decisions: the reality of the idiocy that I pointed to then, whose reality was then denied by most, has become something increasingly apparent to an increasing majority of people in the interim.
I should point out, too, that these crimes were reported on the publicly accessible Ontario College of Psychologists website informer page not by anyone who had ever been a beneficiary of my professional services, or any people that knew them, or any of the people directly criticized, or by anyone who knew them, or even (in the main) by citizens of Ontario, my home province, or Canada. They were instead brought to the attention of the “authorities” by activists in other countries, many of whom also lied in writing, claiming that they were in fact clients of mine. About a dozen of such people reported me — this in contrast, by the way, to the millions or now even tens of millions of people who have found the work I have done and the stances I have taken of clear psychological benefit, and who have said so, buying my books, watching my lectures and even directly informing the College of their favourable judgment.
What does this all mean for me? Frankly, very little, practically speaking. I have options, in my fortunate and privileged position. I am no longer financially dependent on my practice, which I had to fold up in 2017, in the wake of the first scandals that emerged around me. I am independently wealthy. I am also not dependent even on my formal status as a psychologist. This makes me very unlike my colleagues and fellow professionals, for whom a threat to their licence is an intolerable threat to livelihood, reputation and family stability, financial and otherwise. I could even move to the U.S., say — to one of the still-free states — and join my daughter, who has done so for equally political reasons, and as an increasing number of Canadians have determined to do.
By far the easiest thing for me to do personally, therefore, is to say to the College “do your worst, you petty tyrants,” and let the cards fall where they will. I could even report, in detail, publicly (very publicly) on the re-education process, as I most certainly will do, if I decide to go that route. I could take the inevitable reputational hit mentioned previously, and continue going about my happy and profitable business. I have positioned myself very carefully, knowing all this was coming, accepting its inevitability, so that I wasn’t even particularly upset when the news came down. My personal security and desires, however, are not the point, and they haven’t been, right from the beginning. Here’s the point:
Canadians, mark my words: Your much-vaunted Charter of Rights isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, as one of its last remaining signatories has been continually striving to indicate. Your right to free speech is essentially non-existent, as evidenced by the court decisions we are now considering. You have almost no real rights to property. Your rights to mobility can be taken away without consequence at any moment, as they were very recently. You can all-too-easily become the indentured servant of anyone you dare to hire. Your tax load is going to continue to increase, and rapidly. Your economy is predicted to be the worst performing of any developing country for the next three decades — and that failure will be trumpeted, positively, as the “degrowth” necessary to save the planet (thus so conveniently providing those who, like Trudeau, have no interest in monetary policy to parade their ignorance and Machiavellian idiocy as a positive virtue: “I’m saving the planet” is a get-out-of-jail-free card for any and all crimes and justification for a grab for power the likes of which we have never seen. The failure of my appeal means that your professionals — engineers, physicians, lawyers and teachers, among others — are now required by administrative fiat to conceal what they really think and believe (which is precisely the truth you most truly need from them) lest they run afoul of the administrative minions who have now been granted full sway over their tongues and pens.
The Supreme Court has already determined this: hence the failure of my appeal. Regulatory boards in Canada are not required to apply the law correctly, as law professor Dr. Bruce Pardy recently pointed out. Furthermore, they can infringe charter rights — and those are your most fundamental rights — if they do so “proportionately.” And what does “proportionately” mean, practically speaking? It means any way they choose, unless you have the courage, time and resources to object. Fighting these pathetic demons has already cost me weeks of work and close to a million dollars. Are you, fellow Canadian professionals, feeling up to that task? I thought not — and have seen very little evidence of courage or ability from you on that front. So we can just imagine where that will leave the typical Canadian, who dares to speak his or her mind. Finally, and furthermore: the infringement on your rights — all your rights — can and will be justified by the courts if the action that does so promotes “charter values” guaranteed and promoted nowhere in the fundamental legal structure that makes up Canada — and those have become precisely the diversity, equity, inclusivity, group-rights conceptualization of humanity and vengeful quasi-marxist but worse victim-victimizer narrative that all goes to make up the progressive ideals of the carnivorous sheep who now rule this sad and blind land.
Are you listening, Canadians? If you refuse to abide by rules so radically leftist that they would have been and were in fact eschewed until recently by the outright socialist Canadian New Democratic Party, your opinions have now become outright illegal. Present them, even think about them, at your peril. And if you think I’m exaggerating, or beating my own drum, for reasons of my own, ask yourself this: what in the world is in it for me, in so doing? I could at any moment and so easily end my association with my increasingly mad profession, as I have the universities who so recently showed their disgrace in Washington, D.C. (I’m talking about you, presidents of MIT, Harvard and Upenn), and go about my perfectly functional life, without the burden of scrapping with idiots — without even the necessity of facing the full reality of the political idiocy and wilful blindness that now makes up the Canadian scene.
But I think I’ll fight a little longer. Bring it on, you bloody pikers: take your next steps, bureaucrats: write me, and tell me how exactly we are to conduct my re-education. I’ll play along, find out exactly what you will do, now that you’ve been emboldened to do whatever it is that the darkest resentful demons lurking in your evil little low-level administrative hearts most truly desire, even to your own detriment. I’ll see how burdensome playing your pathetic game becomes, and I will publicize every single bit of it. And, if I get tired of it, which seems highly likely, I’ll hand over the bloody licence I am increasingly embarrassed in any case to possess and let you continue journeying oh-so-morally to the dismal, fearful, pessimistic, moralizing, petty, butter-won’t-melt in our mouths hellish straits that you envision as the paradise best fit for your fellow citizens, yourselves and your children.
You have won the battle, minions of the deep state, faceless-for-now but not for long bureaucrat-authoritarians, but you haven’t won the war. And here is a warning, too, as is only fair: So far I have been constrained in my response to your pushing and prodding and overlord-nagging by the requirement not to compromise my efforts on the legal side. But that’s all over with, now, isn’t it? So there are no holds barred, as far as I am concerned. And it may be that you have nothing better to do with your nasty narrowly-circumscribed micromanaging bodies and souls than to cause me trouble. But we’re going to perform that dance on the international stage, with all that light shining on your machinations, and you may well come to rue the day you attempted to take possession of my tongue.
It seems obvious that freedom of expression is fundamental to a well-functioning free society.
But does this also include freedom of expression for nurses, accountants, teachers, engineers and other professionals?
While some establishment voices in Canada will try to tell you and I that there is a distinction between professionals and the general public, the Justice Centre is here to remind these powers that, in no uncertain terms, there is no difference.
Professionals in all fields deserve to be able to express their opinions, whether it’s convenient for industry gatekeepers or not.
Silencing and punishing Canada’s doctors, lawyers and psychologists for expressing unpopular opinions is unconstitutional.
How Dr. Jordan Peterson is being censored by the College of Psychologists of Ontario may well be the most prominent example. And let’s not forget British Columbia nurse Amy Hamm, whom the Justice Centre is defending against the BC College of Nurses and Midwives, which is conducting disciplinary proceedings against Amy Hamm because she stated publicly that there are only two genders.
Saskatchewan nurse Leah McInnes is now facing the same intimidation and censorship after daring to criticize the government’s vaccine mandates and attending a peaceful protest in September 2021.
As Leah McInnes would soon find out, merely by stating her opinions about government policies, she slighted a healthcare establishment that prioritized conformity, uniformity and blind obedience.
The College claims that no “mandates” were ever brought into force in Saskatchewan, and on that basis claims that Leah’s public statements about “mandates” amounted to “misinformation”, “disinformation” or “misleading” information. Of note, virtually the entire media apparatus, government officials and medical authorities have frequently referred to the government’s vaccine policies as “mandates” in Saskatchewan and across the country.
When taking on this case, our lawyers had a sobering reflection…
What happens when professionals tasked with the responsibility of looking after our health can be silenced for doing so openly? For exercising their independent professional judgment about medicine and science?
Or, perhaps more pertinently, what happens when well meaning, truth-seeking professionals speak out against the professional establishments that employ them?
Today in Canada, government-sponsored professional regulators–most notably in the medical space, such as the College of Registered Nurse’s of Saskatchewan (CRNS)–are increasingly taking on a brand new role by insisting that they are the final arbiters of what is true and what is not.
Freedom of expression in Canada is taking a back seat to power, control and obedience–even amongst our most educated and acclaimed sectors like medicine and law.
It’s becoming blatantly clear to our legal team, as well as to so many hard-working professionals who toil in silence every single day, that vexatious allegations of misconduct made by professional regulators, thrown at individuals merely for expressing an opinion that may undermine the regulators’ influence, has nothing to do with misconduct at all…
… it has everything to do with power and control.
The culture of control in Canada’s most coveted professions must be reined in.
As in the case of Leah McInnes, non-descript allegations of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ are used as a cudgel in disciplinary hearings by self-interested industry hall monitors to silence voices and opinions that differ from their own.
By defending brave, critical thinking, and selfless healthcare professionals like Leah McInnes, the Justice Centre is sending a clear message directly to occupational regulators everywhere:
Their political interests and their obsession for complete conformity does not and will not ever supersede the fundamental Charter rights of Canadians. Period.
Our legal team knows that Leah McInnes is on the right side of the law in this case because we’ve won on this issue before!And we know we can WIN MORE CASES just like this one if we could only stretch our litigation budget a bit further…
That’s right. In November 2020, the Justice Centre successfully defended Dr. Chris Milburn from disciplinary action being considered against him by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia.
A group of 14 activists filed a complaint against Dr. Milburn for writing an op-ed in which he opined that, while police and jail guards should be held to a high standard, they cannot reasonably be held responsible for inmate deaths arising from drugs, alcohol, and the often-violent consequences arising from their use.
The Justice Centre noted that attempting to have a doctor professionally disciplined for his opinions and commentary on matters of public interest amounts to bullying and should not be encouraged by the College.
As proponents of a truly free society, Canadians like you and I know that our society only improves when there is free debate, and when no power is beyond scrutiny.
Regulatory agencies must be held to the same standard as the rest of society when it comes to upholding these principles: the spirit of free and open dialogue and the right to free expression.
The Justice Centre is eager to take on more of these cases.
The more freedom of expression cases the Justice Centre can take on today, the less likely it will be that regulatory bodies will consider silencing dissent within their industries tomorrow.
Unfortunately, right now the Justice Centre can take on only a small fraction of the many very legitimate requests for legal help that come to us from across the country.
Every single one of these cases is another Canadian who needs help…
Our nation depends on free and open debate.
Such is the messy nature of democracy, a democracy worth preserving.
Sincerely,
John Carpay President Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms
P.S. Since its founding in 2010, the Justice Centre has been the tip of the spear for defending Charter rights and freedoms in Canada. Freedom of expression is a foundational liberty, without which we could not defend the rest. As healthcare and other functions like the justice system in our country encounter unprecedented dangers, the time is now to stand for free speech–the medicine that cures the disease. Only through free and open discussion–something we are very close to losing entirely in this country–will Canadians take back their lives and their safety. That discussion starts with principled citizens like you.
Jordan Peterson: Trudeau and the equity tyrants must be stopped
We’re at the edge of the terrible transformation that is occurring everywhere in the free world Author of the article: Jordan Peterson Published Sep 11, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 9 minute read 1664 Comments
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes part in a press conference during a stopover visit to Singapore on September 8, 2023. (Photo by Roslan RAHMAN / AFP)
Some of those reading this column will know that I have been ordered by the Ontario College of Psychologists to undergo “social media re-training” of indeterminate length, as a consequence of expressing my opinions publicly, with the specified outcome of my comprehensive compliance, as judged by my re-educators.
The charges levied against me include re-tweeting a tweet by the Leader of the Official Opposition in Canada (are you listening, “conservatives”?), criticizing Justin Trudeau and a diverse number of his minions, and expressing skepticism about the doom-saying fear-mongering tyranny-promoting chicken-little prognostications of the eco-fascists.
Why should Canadians care? If you’re a miner, and the canary caged next to you asphyxiates, you don’t blame the bird for being there. You notice that the air has become toxic, and you make tracks for the surface. Regulated professionals, subject to the petty tyranny of their overseeing agencies, are now starting to gasp and choke. Them first — you, next.
It’s already true in Canada that lawyers cannot have the reasonable certainty they once had with regard to the outcome of the cases they are pursuing, relying as they once did on precedent and the common or even civil law. Instead, they have to be prepared to be subjected to the opinions of an increasingly activist court, whose members have taken it upon themselves to put forward what is essentially a radical leftist (“progressive”) agenda. It’s true that physicians and teachers are so afraid to say what they think that even the reasonable among them no longer dare to tell the truth to the patients and children they serve. How do I know this? Because they tell me so. And how well do Canadians presume that the professionals they need will serve them, when they have all been cowed into, at best, liars of silence?
And why should Canadians believe in the existence and operation of such an agenda, rather than (comfortingly) passing such suggestions off as the ranting of demented, conspiratorially-minded right wingers, such as myself?
Here are a couple of facts (remember those?) simultaneously indisputable and unpleasant: Our “Minister of the Environment and Climate Change,” Steven Guilbeault, was not only a radical leftist activist, in his previous incarnation, but is now simultaneously savaging the economy of Western Canada, upon whose revenue his home province of Quebec shamefully, ungratefully and resentfully depends upon, while he works directly with the Chinese Communist Party, rulers of a country building more coal plants every year (two a week) than the rest of the world combined; six times more, to be precise.
He is doing that while rumours of CCP influence over the Canadian electoral process abound (!), under the supervision of a prime minister who has explicitly expressed admiration for the efficiency of communist tyranny, who was a friend to the demented tyrant who ran Cuba as his private fiefdom for decades. That would be Fidel Castro, bosom buddy as well as to Trudeau senior, and the same man who told former president Jimmy Carter that he would have sacrificed his whole island paradise to nuclear annihilation by our American allies just to move the Soviet agenda forward.
He is doing that under the rainbow-festooned banner of a “Liberal” party that has moved so far to the left that the hapless socialist NDP has nothing whatsoever left to offer (particularly labouring as they do under Jagmeet Singh, the most hypocritical politician Canada has ever coughed onto dry land. He is an empty suit of designer clothes too incompetent even to have bargained for the cabinet seat that is the going price, on the world market, for a politician’s soul).
He is doing that as part of an administration that is an express supporter of the deadly doctrine of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity, the mask that the wolves of compassion wear while they open the throats of the idiot sheep who think they are supporting all that is good and true. Equity: there’s a basket of snakes. What does equity mean? The useful idiots of the moderate left insist that it’s just a synonym for “equality of opportunity.” Why the new word, then, thinkers on the liberal side?
Equity means something very particular, good Canadians. It means that all economic and social systems that do not produce precise equality of outcomes across all possible measures of human difference (race, ethnicity, sex, “gender,” age, health status, ability, you name it) are to be regarded as “systemically prejudiced” and utterly re-tooled, in a revolutionary manner. What’s wrong with that, you ask, thinking of the excluded and the “marginalized,” in that manner so sympathetic endlessly and conveniently deserving of praise; considering yourself, despite your lack of actual effort on their behalf, a friend of the poor.
Let me ask you a straightforward question: do you own anything? A cell phone, perhaps; maybe a car; possibly even an apartment or house (although that is increasingly unlikely, particularly for young people, in Trudeau’s socialist paradise). Does that not mean that other people (the same marginalized; the same poor) don’t own that phone, that car, that house? Are you not therefore excluding them? The answer to that question, by the way, is “yes.” Of course you’re bloody well excluding them — oppressing them, marginalizing them, with your exclusive access to what you have hypothetically worked to earn.
“Property is theft”: no shortage of barely successful peasants such as yourself have died as a consequence of that cliché. How did societies get themselves to that point? By adopting the doctrine of equity, which is now deemed a mandatory belief by the professional organizations that regulate lawyers, physicians, psychologists, accountants, engineer and teachers (and that is not nearly all) in Canada.
Equity is no different than communism, boys and girls. Wait: let me clarify, as that is an error, but not in the direction you think. It’s far worse than mere communism. Marx had nothing on the post-modernists, who now occupy the universities, and have dramatically expanded upon his dread and murderous vision. Marx viewed oppression as essentially one-dimensional: the proletariat (that’s the poor for those of you who went through Canada’s “education” system and still don’t know even that) were exploited by the “bourgeoisie” (that turns out to be “anyone who owns anything at all”). That has happened forever; that’s all you really need to know about history and human social relationships in general; and it has to stop. By any means necessary.
Hence the hundred million or so deaths at the hands of the compassionate progressives in the 20th century. Of course, that wasn’t real communism.
You can tell, because some people were accidentally left standing.
For the postmodernists whose theories now dominate the academy and, increasingly, the western world, the bitter resentment of Marx was just the beginning. The concept of oppression is now limitlessly multi-dimensional. Everyone has become a victim, because of their height, their weight, their lack of attractiveness or athletic ability, their country of origin, their religious belief, the status of their ancestors.
What’s the problem with that? After all, life is hard, and much is distributed unfairly. Well, when everyone is a victim, everyone also becomes, perforce, an oppressor — and the punishment for that is severe. Maybe you’re a bit fat (victim, victim), but you’re white, or the tan that we now call brown that could become white in a flash. Presto! You’re a perpetrator. Maybe you don’t own a house (victim, victim). But you own a rusty old wreck from the 90s. Compared to those who can only afford a bicycle (perhaps because they’re useless layabouts) you are definitely an oppressor. Perhaps you’re genuinely poor (victim victim), but you’re young. You can be certain that you are then at least afflicted by implicit ageism, and your very youth a mark of at least your unconscious bias and general shameful reprehensibility.
Are you beginning to understand the game? I doubt it. It’s much easier for Canadians to keep their sheep/ostrich-heads firmly in the sand, and assume that anyone pointing out not so much what’s going on but what’s already happened is an extremist, a bigot, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, a Confederate sympathizer (in Canada (!)), a MAGA Republican, hell-bent for God only knows what possible reason on overthrowing Canadian democracy.
As if they bloody well care.
As if they even know where Canada is.
Why am I fighting the college? Probably because I’m stupid, or at least, as a Canadian journalist so famously put it, “the stupid person’s smart person.” Touché. Seriously (although all educators are, perforce, the stupid people’s smart person). But I have plenty of money, and a wife I love, and a family that supports me, and friends that do as well, and the opportunity to live anywhere I want to in the world, and have been informed by those who run other political jurisdictions that they would restore my licence in a heart-beat if the low-level schemers in eternally good-thinking Ontario manage to purloin it, as they probably will. I really don’t need the hassle, to say nothing of the literally tens of thousands of dollars it costs per month to keep the vipers at bay.
The process is the punishment, as those who have successfully weaponized many such deep-state bureaucracies know full well.
I am doing it to bring to the attention of Canadians — and, if not Canadians, whose smug self-complacency is perhaps unparalleled in the world (except maybe in comparison to the Kiwis or the liberal Californians) — then to people elsewhere in the West, increasingly inclined as they are to see what is happening in Canada, just as intelligent miners see their canaries.
We’re at the edge of the terrible transformation that is occurring everywhere in the free world. As Canada goes, so hope the progressives, the world goes. Thus, the good fight might as well be fought here. I have a son, a daughter-in-law, and grandchildren in this benighted country. My parents live here. My daughter departed for freer lands, and I won’t forgive the current administration for that. Her example is tempting, and I’ve lived in the United States before — but the same problem exists among our neighbours to the south, despite their more extensive commitment to the freedom that has vanished with amazing rapidity in the Great White North.
It is not that freedom of speech is threatened in Canada, by the way, good people. It’s that it’s already pretty much gone — although, God willing, not permanently. The same can be said for freedom of conscience and association. We gave up freedom of mobility under Trudeau, which was the only freedom he could directly threaten, in his attempt to (successfully) divide Canadians, and therefore promptly did.
We still have the freedom to pretend that everything is just as it was 20 or even 10 years ago. But it’s not. The fact that I am being persecuted for criticizing the prime minister, for passing on the opinions of Pierre Poilievre, and for doubting the opinions of that veritable traitor, Steven Guilbeault, is a primary indication of that. My case would not be attracting the international attention that it is — as is the prosecution of the Trucker Convoy leaders, whose protest was widely admired outside this country — if that was not the case.
Why should you care? It’s not about me, folks. I have options.
Jordan Peterson: Canada is trampling on my God-given right to free speech
Canada’s idiotic pandering and cowardly insistence on group rights set us up for dominance by the meta-Marxists Author of the article: Jordan Peterson, The Telegraph Published Sep 02, 2023 • Last updated 4 days ago • 10 minute read 1538 Comments
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Photo by The Canadian Press
As a professional, practicing clinical psychologist, I never thought I would fall foul of Canada’s increasingly censorial state. Yet, like so many others — including teachers, nurses, and other professionals — that is precisely what has happened. In my case, a court has upheld an order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario that I undergo social media training or lose my licence to practice a profession I have served for most of my adult life.
Their reason? Because of a handful of tweets on my social media, apparently. Yes: I am at risk of losing my licence to practice as a mental health professional because of the complaints of a tiny number of people about the utterly unproven “harm” done by my political opinions.
These complainers — most of whom did not even live in Canada, none of whom were my clients or even knew any of them, nor had any contact whatsoever with the persons hypothetically harmed by my views — submitted complaints to the College of Psychologists of Ontario about what I had said using a handy online form. That supposedly august body had the option not to pursue these complaints, but seemingly decided some months ago that my behaviour did not meet with their approval. I had to agree to their demands to undergo training with one of their self-declared “social media experts” — sessions of indeterminate length, cost and content — and it seems that if I did not I would be dragged in front of a formal disciplinary hearing and, if it concurred in the judgment of wrongdoing, stripped of my licence.
The right of the College to do so has now been upheld by a provincial court, despite their apparent admission that it could infringe on my fundamental rights.
My transgressions? Two tweets criticising Justin Trudeau; one criticising his former chief of staff, who resigned in the aftermath of scandal some years ago; one ironically commenting on the identity of a city councillor in Ottawa, who in my view acted in a particularly unforgivable manner during the famous trucker convoy protest; and one objecting to the actions of the physicians performing mastectomies on perfectly healthy women — often minors — alongside a criticism of a famous actress who received such “treatment” and then advertised its benefits to her unwitting fans. In conjunction, the entire transcript of a podcast I did with Joe Rogan where I expressed doubts, fully justified in my view, about the validity of the idiotic models that economists stack carelessly upon the doom-mongering climate predictions used by eco-zealots and wannabe tyrants to justify extreme policies which will harm millions. Finally, there was a tweet that apparently hurt the feelings of a plus-sized model (according to complainants she did not know) parading herself on the cover of a magazine hypothetically devoted to the celebration of athleticism and health.
Every single opinion was a political or psychological statement; every one devoid of genuinely documentable “harm” — except perhaps to the tender sensibility of certain Canadian moralists in whose mouths butter wouldn’t melt, in a country of fatal niceness and complacency.
Politicization of regulated professions
For context, there are many “regulated professions” in Western countries, including Canada; professions whose conduct is held to be crucial to the public interest, and whose practitioners must therefore uphold certain standards to protect the public. That idea worked for years. In Canada, as elsewhere, these professional colleges, with authority delegated from the government, limited their actions to situations of obvious professional misconduct.
In the last few years, however, such bodies – with their wide and untrammeled potential regulatory and punitive ability – have been weaponised by the same ideological radicals of the Left that have infiltrated and undermined higher education, media, judiciary, law, science and government. Any radical anywhere can submit the kind of complaint that can bring a professional’s life to a halt, and can increasingly rely on these captured colleges and other professional regulatory bodies to uphold and pursue their vexatious, vengeful, petty, spiteful and ideological motivated “complaints.” And this is regardless of how much good the target of their complaint has done — independent of the training, reputation or standing of the target, and accompanied by the deep pockets and infinite amount of time available for the accusers and adversaries, abetted by the resources of the government itself.
Suffice it to say: I appealed the decision of my professional college. But the court has rejected my appeal, ruling that although I had my Charter rights — my constitutional right to freedom of speech — the professional regulatory body essentially has indefinite sway over the determination of what limits they felt fit to impose in their professional context, in whatever retroactive manner they felt fit to impose them. This is a court, by the way, headed by appointees from the very administration I was criticising (and which has been criticised very recently and independently from me for the inappropriate relationships it has established with the judiciary).
Canadians now need to wake up to the fact that the right to freedom of speech in Canada is subject to limitations placed by any level of government, for any reason.
I know perfectly well that many professionals in Canada are cowed to the point where they are forced to lie; they tell me so repeatedly in private. And when professionals have to lie, they can no longer do their job properly, and the public suffers. I know, too, that this is increasingly true across the West. Hence the increasing international interest in the dangerous social experiment taking place in Canada, as we ride the forefront of the wave of woke lunacy threatening to swamp the entire Western world.
The decline and fall of Canada
Why does the situation appear particularly grim, here in Maple Leaf Country? We were, for most of my country’s history, miraculously and thankfully dull: our constitution, ensconced safely under British authority until 1982, enshrined “peace, order and good government” as the most basic principles of our dominion. This was not the clarion call ringing out to rally our good friends south of the border, who aimed at the much more dramatic and libertarian “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It was good enough, however, to produce a reliable, safe, secure and free state, conservative in the classic small-c sense, with institutions both predictable and honest, and an economy both productive and generous.
That all started to change in the 1980s. Our dashing prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau — father of the current Prime Minister, our current clown prince — was searching desperately for a legacy and for a solution to the chronic problem posed by the Quebec separatists, who were genuinely threatening the integrity of the country. Quebec was the last feudal country in the West: extremely traditional and dominated by a very small, tight, essentially hereditary elite right until the end of the 1950s. Quebec dumped all that in a few short years in a fit of 1960s freedom, also dropping its birth and marriage rate with exceptional rapidity (both are now among the lowest in the world) and abandoning the Catholic church in favour of a crude nationalism and a more-or-less socialist utopia favoured by those who pushed to also tear apart the country.
Trudeau senior, constitutionally displeased with the fundamental derivation of Canada from Britain, seized upon this opportunity to make his mark in history, and began to agitate to “bring the constitution home.” He did so, rewriting our primary legal agreement, and appending to it his much-vaunted Charter of Rights and Freedoms, paraded before Canadians as the ultimate guarantee of the freedoms we had enjoyed anyway under the much more reliable aegis of British Common Law. But Quebec put up its middle finger, refusing to become a signatory to the new agreement – even after Trudeau’s government abandoned both its spine and its principles to include a poison pill in the very Charter that hypothetically protected our citizens: the clause in Section 33 of that document, indicating that those very constitutional rights can be abridged more or less at will by any government in Canada, federal or provincial, if inclined to do so.
The Canadian government, in its own documentation, notes with unconsciously ironic understatement that “Section 33 is unique among the constitutions of countries with constitutional democracies.” It is unique because it essentially guts the Charter – and it was designed to do so, to appease the very Quebec that it never did appease and which has never in the 40 years subsequent to the “repatriation” formally signed on to the agreement.
And that is not all. Canada was a very early adopter of the idea of “group rights.” The Quebecois, again, began to obsess about the potential threat posed by English Canada (really, the English West, led by the culturally-dominant Americans) to the language and culture of their province. They had some reason for this: the ascendant US was and is a cultural force to be reckoned with, and even English Canadians were uneasy about the elephant to the south, capable of rolling over at any time, careless of its much smaller northern neighbour, and simultaneously much noisier and more effectively theatrical. To keep the country together, Canada began to prioritise the rights of its so-called founding peoples (the British, the French and the original inhabitants of this land, the native Canadians) and to insist that the groups they composed had rights equivalent to or superseding those of individual citizens. This was a very bad idea then, and it has become a worse idea in the subsequent decades. Canada parades itself as a “multicultural” society, pretending that a brainless tolerance — really, a spineless niceness — constitutes the way forward to peace and tranquility, forgetting entirely that too much multiculturalism often stokes unrest.
This bad situation is made worse by the naïve virtue-signalling of, ironically enough, Pierre Trudeau’s son: an unqualified part-time drama teacher who in a recent poll was found to be the country’s least-popular prime minister of the past 55 years. It was that same Justin Trudeau who famously proclaimed that “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” in 2015, insisting that the country has little uniting it except its embrace of cultural diversity and its putative values of openness and respect.
But what is a country without a central identity? Aimless, and therefore both anxious and hopeless; worse, prone to domination by the fractionated ideas that will fight necessarily for central place in the absence of the centre that must by one means or another be established. That is the shadow-side of the naïve “multiculturalism” that has doomed the world to continuous fractionalism and all its accompanying horrors.
Canada’s idiotic pandering and cowardly insistence on group rights set us up for dominance by the meta-Marxists who insist that the collective take priority over the individual. Canada’s inclusion of the notwithstanding clause to unsuccessfully satisfy separatists gutted the protection of the rights that might otherwise have protected the individual against group-think. Justin Trudeau’s insistence that Canada has no central identity has allowed the ideologically-possessed fools who know nothing of the great British Common Law tradition and who have contempt for the Western tradition to make their postmodern ideas the central axis around which this once-reliable country now by law is required to rotate.
In principle, Canadians enjoy the right to free speech, but the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is severely and fatally limited by the notwithstanding clause, and leaves our rights endangered.
I have been expressing my Charter Rights — though really I view them as God-given, and rooted more in British Common Law — by writing, lecturing, and using social media. Consequently, I have run afoul of the petty authorities in Canada, including at my former place of employment, the University of Toronto, where my opposition to an infamous bill, C-16, made it impossible for me, eventually, to continue as a professor at that cowardly institution, though it also brought my opinions and work to broad public attention. Since then, I have continued to voice my opposition to the current administration in Ottawa, and the destructive ideological idiocy that is threatening my country and the West itself.
As such, I will fight this idiocy all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. I have instructed my lawyers, in the aftermath of the rejection of my appeal, to inform the College that I will not comply with their forced re-education mandate, and to proceed with the disciplinary hearing they have promised will occur. In the past, such hearings have been videotaped and made public. I doubt the College will have the stomach to do the same in my case, although I will make every effort, reasonable and unreasonable, to ensure that every element of these proceedings is open to widespread international scrutiny. I have already posted the relevant documents online, as I am perfectly happy to have everything that I have done assessed in full.
But I know few people are in a position to conduct such a fight: I have the resources necessary to wage a multi-year court battle, ruinously expensive (tens of thousands of dollars a month) though it is. I also have the means of communication at hand to publicise exactly what is going on. I do so on the behalf of those who are unable to do so.
Regardless of the outcome, I have made arrangements with other jurisdictions — Canadian and elsewhere — to re-establish my licence, in a heartbeat, if the authorities in Ontario succeed in purloining it from me.
I’ll leave it to readers to think through what that would mean for free speech in Canada – and, for that matter, in the rest of the increasingly benighted Western world.
There is an eight-word statement in the recent court judgment against psychologist Jordan Peterson that should send chills down the spine of anyone who is under the impression that freedom of speech is a guaranteed right in Canada.
Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice found the College of Psychologists of Ontario was within its rights to order Peterson to undergo coaching following a series of tweets the college found unbecoming of a psychologist.
“The Decision simply requires him to have coaching,” said the court. Simply!
The court acknowledged that Peterson’s right to free speech would be curtailed; that he would be required to undergo coaching so that he could “reflect on, and ameliorate (his) professionalism in public statements;” that he would have to pay for that coaching and that if he failed the program he could be subject to disciplinary action.
How is all that a simple matter?
The coaching was not disciplinary, said the college, and the court agreed, it was merely “remedial” as if Peterson needed to be cured of expressing his opinion.
Peterson’s tweets should have been of no concern to the college since they had nothing to do with his being a psychologist.
PETERSON’S TWEETS SHOULD HAVE BEEN OF NO CONCERN.
Professionals are entitled to a private life after all.
In one tweet Peterson told an individual concerned about overpopulation: “You’re free to leave at any point.”
He called Catherine Mckenney, an Ottawa City Councillor who uses they/ them pronouns, an “appalling self-righteous moralizing thing.”
Of a plus-sized model on a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, he said, “Sorry. Not Beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.”
No doubt some people will find the comments offensive. But Peterson is allowed his personal views. Do they rise to the level of “degrading, demeaning and unprofessional” conduct by someone who also happens to be a psychologist? And if they do then why not launch disciplinary action rather than force someone to undergo mandatory coaching with its inescapable echoes of Mao’s re-education camps for those suspected of wrongthink.
Interestingly, Peterson has said that as a psychologist he was duty bound to raise at least some of the issues in the tweets.
“I am stating my opinions on Twitter and social media in my professional capacity,” he told Fox News this week. “So, for example,” he said, referencing comments he made about actor Elliott Page, “I am not the least bit happy about what the sadistic surgeon butchers are doing to minors and I’m also not very happy about narcissistic, let’s say, celebrities parading off their new enhanced bodies and enticing young women, for example, into being sterilized and butchered. I think I have a professional obligation, like all therapists and all physicians, to say very clearly that this is 100 per cent absolutely not acceptable.”
Even so, none of the complaints to the college had anything to do with Peterson’s treatment of patients. None of those who filed the complaints, according to Peterson, were ever his patients, despite some claiming to be so.
One cannot imagine, at least not yet, the federal government taking a Canadian to court for expressing such comments. Section 2 (b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that Canadians are guaranteed “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.”
Which is all well and good, but too many Canadians forget that Section 1 of the Charter says that all those fundamental freedoms are subject to “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Yet, the wording of the charter isn’t necessarily the problem, but, rather how it is interpreted. When reviewing government legislation, courts apply a rigorous legal standard to determine whether or not a limitation to a Section 2 right can be justified. When it comes to government-empowered regulatory bodies, however, whatever safeguards existed, have been dismantled. Regulators are held to a less-stringent legal standard, permitting them to infringe rights if their decision to do so “falls within a range of possible, acceptable outcomes.”
These bodies were set up by provincial or federal governments — governments that would be thrown out in a heartbeat if they tried to undermine the Charter in this way. And yet, we have granted these bodies so much power that their zealous overreach extends to enforcing the kind of speech they deem right and proper.
In ruling in the college’s favour, the Ontario court engaged in some specious reasoning.
“The order is not disciplinary and does not prevent Dr. Peterson from expressing himself on controversial topics; it has a minimal impact on his right to freedom of expression.”
But that “simply” isn’t true.
The college wants to stop Peterson from speaking on controversial topics, that’s the whole point. And of course, it will have more than a minimal impact on his right to free expression. The whole purpose of the specified continuing education or remedial program (SCERP) is to limit what he says until the concerns of the college “have been appropriately remediated.”
We have handed one of our most precious freedoms over to a body unelected by the people in the name of it being “simply” coaching. Peterson may be the lightning rod now, but many people will be caught in the storm.
Jordan Peterson ruling empowers woke bodies everywhere to discipline members who express unpopular opinions
Howard Levitt: The question that should have been put to the court was whether the college’s code of ethics overreached Author of the article: Howard Levitt Published Aug 25, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read 59 Comments
Jordan Peterson was ordered by the College of Psychologists of Ontario to undergo a coaching program on professionalism in public statements. Photo by Chris Williamson/Getty Images
I can predict one thing with certainty about anyone who reads this week’s Ontario Court decision about Jordan Peterson and the College of Psychologists: they will be stricken with overwhelming boredom.
As the court put it, “The issue in this case is whether the panel’s decision to order Dr. Peterson to complete a SCERP (remedial re-education) was reasonable.” Advertisement 2 Story continues below
The decision essentially states the court will not overturn the College of Psychologists’ decision because, whether it agrees with the decision or not, it did not meet the test of being so patently unreasonable that the court would second guess the college. According to the court, the college, not the court, is the expert body within its domain.
That is the proper legal test set out by the Supreme Court of Canada, in a case called Vavilov, for the review of any administrative tribunal’s decision, whether it be the Labour Board, Immigration Appeal Board, Landlord and Tenant board or any other administrative body.
But there are two significant problems with this decision and result. First, it is not the test that should have been applied to this particular case (which may, in fairness to the court, have been a function of the arguments made before it by counsel). Second, the impact of this decision is to empower woke bodies everywhere to discipline members who express unpopular opinions that cause someone “offence.” Of course, if prevailing political sentiments change, others will be next in that firing line.
This decision will inevitably motivate political enemies of any member of a regulatory body — whether it be one of lawyers, osteopaths, engineers or, well, psychologists — who have no legal basis for any claim otherwise, to harass that person by filing complaints about their expressed opinions or writings.
If someone, for example, complained about this column, they could file a Law Society complaint and make me spend money, time and stress defending myself. There is no real remedy as it is difficult legally to sue someone for filing a disciplinary complaint as such complaints are privileged — that is, protected from a lawsuit for defamation.
This decision will encourage such future complaints. The decision also answers the wrong question.
The issue should not have been whether the College of Psychologists’ decision was transparent and reasonable given its code of ethics (and which it found Peterson had arguably violated), but whether the college even has the legal jurisdiction to develop a code of ethics in the first place that prohibit the free expression of its members, unrelated to their clinical psychological practice, particularly if that free expression breached no laws — that is, wasn’t criminal nor defamatory.
The court’s starting point was that the college did not act unreasonably in concluding Peterson had violated its code of ethics in some of his political statements. But the real question should have been whether the legislation creating the college empowered it to go so far as to create a code that limits its members’ free and lawful speech.
Regulatory professional bodies are, after all, legislated into existence for the purposes of educating their members, ensuring competence and protecting the public from malpractice in their selected fields. Peterson’s political statements attacking Justice Trudeau, Gerald Butts, etc., had nothing to do with any of those legislative mandates. And they had nothing to do with his practice of psychology (which he has not practiced for several years). None of the complainants were even his patients.
The court in this case appeared to take the college’s code of ethics as a given, something that it had the right to impose and therefore supported the college’s right to force Peterson to take remedial re-education at his expense as a prelude to potential future discipline if his re-education does not curb his future “offensive” political comments. The question that should have been put to the court was whether the code of ethics itself overreached and was beyond the college’s legislative mandate.
My advice is that Queens Park should review this decision and enact legislation preventing regulatory associations from curtailing the otherwise lawful free speech of their members. That is the simple solution to this. Otherwise, those whose opinions are different from those of their governing bodies, and who lack the resources of Peterson to fight back, will be quickly silenced in a manner antithetical to our liberties.
Renowned psychologist and bestselling author Jordan Peterson lost his court challenge against Ontario’s college of psychologists today. The college sought to force Peterson into training on how to conduct himself on social media as a condition of remaining a licensed psychologist. Peterson took the matter to an Ontario court, which ruled today that the condition doesn’t actually hinder his right to freedom of expression. Canadian Constitution Foundation lawyer Josh Dehaas joins the Andrew Lawton Show to discuss.
Also, Catherine McKenna thinks Conservative politicians need their own mandatory education on climate change. True North’s Andrew Lawton weighs in.
Plus, is artificial intelligence leading to the end of thought? Christopher Snook tackles that question in an essay for C2C Journal titled “AI, the Destruction of Thought and the End of the Humanities.” He joins the show to explain.
TORONTO: The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) is disappointed in the result in the judicial review of a case between public intellectual Dr Jordan Peterson and the College of Psychologists of Ontario. The dispute is over professional penalties, in the form of mandatory training, imposed on Dr Peterson by the College. This order for training was a result of public statements Dr Peterson had made on social media. The comments did not relate to the practice of psychology. The complaints were made by members of the public, not by any individuals who Dr Peterson had ever treated as a patient.
The CCF was an intervener in the judicial review, arguing that professionals have private lives and regulators may not discipline for off-duty conduct that lacks a clear nexus to the profession. Where off-duty conduct engages a Charter right, like freedom of expression, regulators have a heightened duty to ensure they have given full effect to the Charter protection.
“We are disappointed in this result, which we think could have a chilling effect on people in other regulated professions, like doctors, lawyers, teachers and accountants,” said CCF Litigation Director Christine Van Geyn. “Professionals should not have to soft pedal their speech for fear that activists will weaponize regulatory bodies so that unpopular speech is penalized, even when there is no connection between that speech and the profession.”
The Divisional Court did not accept Dr Peterson’s argument that his comments were “off duty” and outside his role as a psychologist. Writing for the court, Justice Schabas found that Dr Peterson “cannot speak as a member of a regulated profession without taking responsibility for the risk of harm that flows from him speaking in that trusted capacity.”
“We hope that Dr Peterson will appeal this result, which will have long lasting impacts beyond his case. The right to freedom of expression must be given more weight than the court gave it here, and the mere assertion of risk of harm is not enough. While controversial and inflammatory, there is no suggestion that any of the people Dr Peterson made comments about were harmed in any way, and indeed, they were not the source of the complaints. Complaints were made by members of the public who simply did not like what Dr Peterson said, or worse, how he said it. This is not a sufficient basis for action by the regulator when weighed against Dr Peterson’s constitutional right to freedom of expression,” said Van Geyn.
The CCF is represented in this case by George Avraam, Ahmed Shafey and Juliette Mestre of Baker McKenzie LLP. The CCF is grateful for their hard work and diligence on this case. If Dr Peterson appeals, the CCF will seek leave to intervene.
