Dr. Jordan Peterson is facing the loss of his professional licence as he refuses to back down after being targeted by the professional regulator in Ontario following complaints about tweets. He writes about his ordeal in the Telegraph.
As a professional, practising 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 its 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.
The problem is the professional regulators have now been captured by Leftist radicals and weaponised against ideological dissenters, says Peterson.
In the last few years… such bodies – with their wide and untrammelled 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.
Fighting it is absurdly expensive, he says, but he will not back down.
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
Worth reading in full.
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