Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson addresses the 5th Demographic Summit in the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest on Sept. 14, 2023. Photo by ATTILA KISBENEDEK /AFP via Getty Images
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Jordan Peterson lost his application to the Supreme Court of Canada this week for leave to appeal against the decision of the College of Psychologists of Ontario requiring him to undergo compulsory reeducation for various views expressed on social media, all of which were unrelated to the practice of psychology.
The complaints which resulted in the college’s order were made by people who had never been his patients, and indeed, who had never met him. They were also mostly American and clearly politically motivated. I was honoured to act on Dr. Peterson’s appeal, but was not involved in the original decision that led to the appeal.
This decision is a tragic loss both for the 25 per cent of Canadians who are regulated by professional and trade associations and for Canadians generally. It is an invitation to extortion and the pursuit of personal vendettas, as anyone can now threaten a practitioner with loss of their professional licence by filing complaints against them to their professional associations.
If Canadians must trust those appointed, or elected by their members, to our professional associations to monitor our free speech, we will be in a sorry state indeed, subject to whatever faddish peccadillo or personal bias which might seize those then in power.
And of course, the standards of acceptability will constantly change, based upon who is appointed and will vary between different trade and professional associations so that there will be different standards of acceptable speech over time and between groups.
Certainly, and I can speak to this personally as a member of a regulated professional association, when provinces endowed professional associations with the authority to ensure protection of the public from their members’ professional conduct, they did not envisage disciplining their members for their political commentary.
Rather than take the risk of unpredictable discipline where no guidelines for what is acceptable even exist, most members of professional trade organizations, such as doctors, nurses, lawyers, and so on will simply remain quiet rather than take the risk of losing their ability to practise their livelihood. Most do not have the resources of Dr. Peterson to appeal to our highest court or risk losing their professional licence. It will chill both debate and speech as regulated Canadians will not risk being offside the ever changing sensibilities of their regulators.
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The initial Peterson decision, even before the Supreme of Canada‘s dismissal Thursday of his application for leave to appeal, was already apparently being seized upon with alacrity by regulatory bodies across the country who imposed charges and discipline which had never been pursued before.
For example, British Columbia nurse Amy Hamm, who also writes columns for the National Post, is facing a disciplinary hearing over her support for the views of author J.K. Rowling, which includes sponsoring a billboard on Hastings Street in Vancouver reading “l love J.K. Rowling.” Rowling has made public comments that have been criticized as anti-trans by LGBTQ groups and other advocates.
Hamm is facing discipline despite the fact that she said she only expresses such views in her personal life and in her professional life uses the pronouns which patients wish her to use.
In Quebec, meanwhile, a doctor was suspended for three months for arguing with a transgender patient about the use of pronouns and whether or not the patient was a man responding that the patient was genetically female, and that, at least until that point, the patient remained a woman biologically.
These cases are almost surely just the start.
As for the punishment assigned to Dr. Peterson, he will attend the reeducation sessions and undoubtedly run intellectual circles around his “educators.”
The very idea that Dr. Peterson, one of the masters of social media, requires social media training by comparative incompetents, is both risible and ludicrous.
Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.
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.
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.
TODAY, Jordan Peterson’s court battle against the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s is coming to a conclusion!
As you may know, the College is seeking to not only silence Peterson’s common sense opinions on Twitter but they want to “re-educate” him by ordering him to attend radical and progressive Twitter “communication training.”
But, the matter is now before the Ontario Divisional Court which is scheduled to release its ruling by the end of the day.
The court will decide Peterson’s fate and will also decide if the College’s order to send Peterson to Twitter communication “camp”, or else lose his license because they disagree with his conservative worldview, is justifiable.
Please continue to SIGN and SHARE this petition, directed to Zimra Yetnikoff, Director, Investigations and Hearings at the College of Psychologists of Ontario, telling the College to drop all disciplinary action against Dr. Peterson. Thank you!
The College of Psychologists of Ontario threatens to revoke Jordan Peterson’s license to practice psychology within Canada and Ontario over his conservative-leaning political views.
Why are they taking this extreme action against Peterson’s professional life?
Because they disagree with Peterson’s personal beliefs, especially when he expresses them within the public sphere, which includes social platforms like Twitter.
The College is abusing its regulator power over Peterson’s ability to practice in order to control what he can and can not say publicly as a private individual.
Furthermore, they demand that Peterson undergoes “social media communications retraining,” including “coaching” for his Twitter commentary, or potentially face license suspension.
This is all happening to Jordan Peterson because he publicly disagrees with the mainstream progressive narrative, especially when he speaks out against the damage the LGBT community and Trudeau Liberals continually inflict upon Canadian culture and society.
We need your help to push back against their terrible abuse of power, especially when Jordan Peterson is due back in court any day when his fate, regarding his legal challenge against the College of Psychologists, will be decided.
We must firmly declare that no public institution, including the College of Psychologists of Ontario, has the power to strip any individual’s right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We cannot allow the College of Psychologists to silence someone like Jordan Peterson, who has consistently provided a voice of reason, clarity, and common sense against the extreme LGBT madness and totalitarian government coercion here in Canada.
Sign now and take a stand with Jordan Peterson against the College’s blatant attack on an individual’s RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!
Drop the Disciplinary Action Against Jordan Peterson
To Zimra Yetnikoff, Director, Investigations and Hearings,
I request that you drop all disciplinary action against Doctor Jordan Peterson because the College of Psychologists of Ontario is overstepping its boundaries to control Doctor Peterson’s Right to Free Speech.
As a public institution, the College does not have the right to use its regularity power to infringe upon its members’ individual rights as Canadian citizens.
Doctor Peterson has the same rights as any other ordinary Canadian outside of practicing clinical psychology within his office. He has the same rights as any other Canadian citizen to express his personal beliefs publicly.
Stop using the regulatory powers of the College of Psychologists to silence Doctor Peterson because other members of the College simply disagree with his personal opinions on Twitter. [Your Name]
Psychological warfare! Hundreds of Dr. Jordan Peterson supporters protest outside the College of Psychologists of Ontario
Earlier this month, Dr. Peterson took to Twitter to call out the Orwellian witch-hunt against him for making statements that the college considers to be politically incorrect.
Dr. Jordan Peterson is one of the most brilliant minds on the planet today. He has authored bestselling books; he is a speaker in demand the world over; and he has helped thousands of individuals – mostly young males – turn their lives around.
So why is Dr. Peterson suddenly deemed to be persona non grata by the College of Psychologists of Ontario?
Well, incredibly, Dr. Peterson is essentially being persecuted for… wrong-thought.
Earlier this month, Dr. Peterson took to Twitter to call out the Orwellian witch-hunt against him for making statements that the college considers to be politically incorrect.
Wrote Peterson: “BREAKING: the Ontario College of Psychologists has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social-media communication retraining with their experts for, among other crimes, retweeting Pierre Poilievre and criticizing Justin Trudeau and his political allies.
“I am to take a course of such training (with reports documenting my ‘progress’ or face an in-person tribunal and suspension of my right to operate as a licensed clinical psychologist.”
“About a dozen people from all over the world submitted complaints about my public statements on Twitter and Rogan over a four-year period (out of the 15 million who follow me on social media) claiming that I had ‘harmed’ people (not them) with my views.”
And so it is that Dr. Peterson’s colleagues think he must be… “reprogrammed”? What would George Orwell say if he were alive today? (Perhaps Orwell would lament that his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was meant to be a work of fiction, not an instruction manual.)
Indeed, the crux of the matter when it comes to this story is that Dr. Peterson is not being investigated by the College of Psychologists of Ontario for any alleged improper behaviour with regard to a current or former patient. Rather, the college deems his politics to be offside.
This is equal parts outrageous and egregious.
And on Wednesday, a few hundred Peterson supporters held a peaceful rally outside the Toronto headquarters of the College of Psychologists of Ontario.
Some notable speakers included People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier and Church of God pastor Henry Hildebrandt, both of whom have had to deal with censorship issues during the past few years.
The statements by attendees were consistent: they support freedom of speech; they despise censorship and compelled speech; and they believe the tall forehead types who comprise the CPO are, well, out of their collective minds.
And if the brainiacs at the college think Dr. Peterson is going to bend the knee to the woke mob, they are sadly deluded.
Indeed, Dr. Peterson first came to prominence several years ago when he was teaching at the University of Toronto. That’s when he first took a stand against compelled speech – especially when it came to referring to the various spirit unicorns on campus with phony baloney pronouns such as “zee/zir”, “xe/xem”, etc., etc.
He wasn’t silenced then; he won’t be silenced now.
And by the way, who exactly looks upon Jordon Peterson as being “controversial” in the first place merely for espousing… common sense?
Is it the woke mob on campus? The thugs who comprise Antifa? Those who suffer from mental illness and/or the radical transgender community?
Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson said on Tuesday that may lose his license unless he submits to mandatory “social-media communication retraining” by the College of Psychologists of Ontario, his home province’s licensing authority.
“I face public disgrace, mandatory political re-education, disciplinary hearing and potential loss of my clinical licensing for agreeing with [Conservative MP] Pierre Poilievre and criticizing our standing [Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau,” Peterson said on Twitter.
According to Peterson, “about a dozen people from all over the world” submitted complaints to the CPO, alleging his views and comments “harmed people.” None of them were actual clients of his, but lied about it so their complaints would be accepted, he added.
“If I comply, the terms of my re-education and my punishment will be announced publicly,” he said.
“Canadians: your physicians, lawyers, psychologists and other professionals are now so intimidated by their commissar overlords that they fear to tell you the truth. This means that your care and legal counsel has been rendered dangerously unreliable,” Peterson tweeted.
Peterson was reinstated on Twitter in November, after Elon Musk bought the company and reversed many prior bans that he thought unjust. He had been locked out of his account in July 2022, for refusing to use a transgender actor’s new name and pronouns.
On December 27, Peterson tweeted that Trudeau “appears to me to be perpetually 14 yrs old,” referring to the concept of “psychological age” in his field of expertise.
The psychologist first gained national and international attention in 2016, when he was subjected to similar “re-education” pressure over his criticism of a bill that declared “gender identity and expression” to be protected categories. More recently, he has denounced the “totalitarian” lockdowns and vaccine mandates embraced by many countries – including Canada – in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. (Russia Today, January 3, 2023)
