Psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson ordered to undergo political re-education by Canadian regulatory body

This piece was written in my capacity as the Free Speech Union’s Communications Officer, and first appeared in the organisation’s Weekly News Round-up. The Free Speech Union exists to protect those who’ve been cancelled, harassed, sacked or penalised for exercising their legal right to free speech whether in the workplace or the public square. Please take a look at the great work the organisation does - our Twitter account is here.

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Canadian psychologist and best-selling author Dr Jordan Peterson has been told by a government-regulated licensing body for practicing clinical psychologists in Canada that he must undergo “social media communications retraining” or face an in-person tribunal and potential suspension of his medical license (Epoch Times, New York Post, Reclaim the Net, Spectator Australia). Naturally, he’s refused.

“I practiced for 20 years without being investigated, this only started when I became a prominent public figure,” Dr Peterson told the Toronto Sun. He has a point. Only around a dozen complaints have apparently ever been made about him to the regulator, and they’ve all occurred in the past four-years – a period that coincides almost exactly with his rise to fame following a series of viral video lectures that were highly critical of ‘woke’ politics (Spectator). The psychologist also alleges that many of the complainants “falsely claimed that they were or had been clients of mine”.

The College of Psychologists of Ontario is apparently obliged to consider any written complaint filed against a member, but can decide to take no action upon completion of a preliminary investigation (Daily Wire). However, having reviewed the latest tranche of complaints made by woke activists – or rather, of course, 'concerned members of the public' – College Executive Director Rick Morris decided they warranted a full investigation. Following this high-level inquisition, the College of Psychologists of Ontario has demanded that Mr Peterson repent, acknowledging he “lacked professionalism” in public statements, and undergo a “coaching program” (Daily Wire).

The alleged Twitter transgressions include Tweets in which Peterson called Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau a “puppet”, described Trudeau’s former senior aide, Gerald Butts, as a “stunningly corrupt and incendiary fool” and a “prick”, and clips from Peterson’s January 25th, 2022 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in which he claimed that acceptance of radical gender theory is a sign of “civilisation collapsing”, and that climate change models are unreliable (Mail).

In other words, it’s perfectly lawful speech, which is all that should concern a professional licencing body. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “professional bodies are supposed to ensure that practitioners are competent, not enforce political orthodoxies or act as language police outside the office”.

Not that the College of Psychologists of Ontario sees it that way. “The impact risk in this case is significant,” the body’s clinical inquisition concluded, because the comments “may cause harm”. It counselled Mr Peterson that a stint in a re-education camp would help “mitigate any risks to the public”. 

And there it is—the mantra that woke progressives clutch to like a tiny amulet against interrogation by post-Enlightenment logic and reason: “Language is a weapon, words can wound.” From the moment the intellectual titans of the 1970s ‘linguistic turn’ in the social sciences and humanities started exploring the ‘postmodern’ implications of Nietzsche’s aphoristic claim that reality is nothing more than “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms” it was only a matter of time before third and fourth rate minds in the generations that succeeded them started taking literally the throwaway military metaphor that everyone’s favourite nihilist had used in order to articulate his broader, philosophical point about truth, power and epistemology. As the Chinese proverb so aptly reminds us, when someone points at the moon, only a fool looks at their finger.

In a scathing letter to Justin Trudeau, Mr Peterson has since vowed not to participate in the process and condemned the regulator’s effort to stifle free speech. “I simply cannot resign myself to the fact that in my lifetime I am required to resort to a public letter to the leader of my country to point out that political criticism has now become such a crime in Canada that if professionals dare engage in such activity, government-appointed commissars will threaten their livelihood and present them with the spectacle of denouncement and political disgrace,” Peterson wrote. “There is simply and utterly no excuse whatsoever for such a state of affairs in a free country.” (National Post).

Dr Peterson’s experience highlights the changing role of professional organisations in regulating the behaviour – and speech – of their members. Where once these bodies would restrict themselves to upholding professional standards in the workplace, they now seem intent on collapsing entirely the distinction between occupational and private life.

In Canada alone, for instance, the Law Society of Ontario has been pushing for a mandatory diversity pledge for all lawyers, while the province of British Columbia recently passed a law that can result in doctors being jailed for up to two years if they are found to have spread certain types of “false or misleading information”, e.g. face masks don’t prevent transmission of Covid-19.

Similarly, over in the UK the FSU has had a glut of recent cases in which employees from a wide range of occupational backgrounds have got into trouble with their professional associations simply for expressing their entirely lawful beliefs outside the workplace.

Social worker and FSU member Rachel Meade, for instance, was recently sanctioned by Social Work England (SWE), the regulatory body for social workers, for Facebook posts on her private account that criticised some aspects of the transgender rights movement. SWE found Rachel Meade’s “fitness to practice was impaired by way of misconduct”, and argued that her actions had the potential to undermine public confidence in social workers even though there was no evidence her actual work had been affected (Mail, Times).

Barrister Sarah Phillimore was investigated by the Bar Standards Board over a period of two years over complaints that she had caused ‘offence’ by tweeting about her gender critical beliefs – thanks, in part, to our help those allegations have now been dismissed.

Then there’s James Esses, a former barrister who we’ve helped in the past. James recently won the right to sue the UK Council for Psychotherapy for discrimination over allegations the regulator instructed the Metanoia Institute in London, where he was studying, to have him thrown off his Masters course in psychotherapy for expressing gender critical views (Mail).

The FSU is campaigning for an amendment to the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make it impossible for companies to discipline staff for saying non-woke things outside of the workplace. Increasingly we’re finding that it isn’t HR departments per se, but external professional bodies and regulators that give the policing of this out-of-office behaviour the momentum that it otherwise might not have.

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