https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/01/10/opinion/free-speech-isnt-what-jordan-peterson-thinks
I’m sorry. I really am. But we have to talk about Jordan Peterson. The controversial author and former University of Toronto professor is back in the news, this time for disciplinary action meted out by the College of Psychologists of Ontario and his predictably furious response to it. The college, which governs his activities as a clinical psychologist, has responded to a growing number of complaints about his unprofessional conduct with a recommendation that he undergo social media training — one he’s turned into a (yet another) national controversy.
“For my crimes,” Peterson wrote in a column for the National Post, “I have been sentenced to a course of mandatory social-media communication training with the college’s so-called experts (although social media communication training is not a scientific and certainly not a clinical specialty of any standing).” Noted “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk (who has fired Twitter employees for disagreeing with him), Conrad Black and Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre were among the high-profile allies that rallied to Peterson’s side.
Peterson hasn’t committed any crimes, of course, unless being excessively dramatic has been added to the Criminal Code of late. And his now-deleted post in which he accidentally released the full names and detailed personal information of the people who filed the complaints against him — in essence, doxxing them to his 3.6 million followers — shows that he might be in need of some social media training after all.
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That’s not the only irony here. Despite his enthusiasm for preaching the gospel of personal responsibility to other men, Peterson takes a pass on it here. “The fact that it is happening (and that physicians and lawyers have become as terrified as psychologists now are of their own regulatory bodies) is something that has definitely happened on your watch,” he wrote in a performative letter to the prime minister, “as a consequence of your own conduct and the increasingly compulsion-based and ideologically pure policies that you have promoted and legislated.”
But once you set aside Peterson’s well-honed bluster and bravado, a few important facts emerge. First, as Peterson himself acknowledges, he hasn’t actually practised since 2017, when “my rising notoriety or fame made continuing as a private therapist practically and ethically impossible.” And second, while he desperately wants to make this about Justin Trudeau and his government, the College of Psychologists of Ontario is, as its name suggests, a provincial organization.
There is nothing unjust or illiberal about professional organizations enforcing codes of conduct for their members. The government is not restricting Peterson’s speech or telling him what he can and cannot say, and he’s welcome to tweet all the bile and invective he likes at whichever politicians he chooses. But his professional organization, which is responsible for protecting the best interests of its members, can also make its own choices.
Peterson is right about one thing, though: this isn’t really about him. It’s about our collective understanding of free speech rights and how they actually work in Canada, one that Conservatives seem determined to conflate and confuse with the American approach. There is, for example, no guarantee of free speech in Canada’s Constitution. Canada safeguards the “freedom of expression” but weighs it against the rights of other Canadians. There are no unimpeachable or absolute rights in Canada, as Section 1 of our Charter makes clear. Instead, those rights are “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
