The most troubling element of the OCP’s action against Peterson is its “unidirectionally explicitly political” nature, as Peterson puts it. “Every single thing I have been sentenced to correction for saying is insufficiently leftist, politically,” he says. It would be hard to imagine any professional organization publicly reprimanding a member, for example, for supporting police abolition, the Black Lives Matter movement, or sex-reassignment surgeries for minors.
In light of the politically oriented investigation of his comments, Peterson has launched a legal challenge against the regulating body of psychologists in the Ontario Divisional Court.
Freedom of expression is coming under assault elsewhere in Canada, including by means of draconian legislation in the medical field. If passed, Bill 36 will allow for the imposition of fines up to $200,000, property seizure, and jail-time for physicians who give “misleading information to patients or the public.” Covid discourse over the past two years has taught us that the parameters of “misinformation” are often highly subjective and ideologically shaped. Had this bill passed two years ago, several doctors could have faced severe reprimands for making claims—then considered heretical but now vindicated—about the ineffectiveness of cloth masks, cardiac-related side effects from the Covid vaccine in young men, or the exceedingly low infection-fatality rate of the virus.
These and other attacks on free speech are Canada’s most alarming political trend. Jordan Peterson’s run-in with his profession’s gatekeepers may be the most publicized, but many medical professionals are also being threatened, cowed, and punished.
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