Breadcrumb Trail links
- work
His fight is important. Its failure would leave many vulnerable to attacks on their work
Jordan Peterson faces a public disciplinary hearing and possible revocation of his professional license as a psychologist. Photo by Jonathan Castellino
Article content
Considering how hard Jordan Peterson has worked (and continues to work), it’s hard to attribute his phenomenal success to simple luck. But sometimes even he can just get lucky.
Advertisement 2
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
As a result of the most egregious unprovoked mistake I have ever seen, the Ontario College of Psychology is about to shoot his already ascendant career into a meteoric orbit.
By clicking the signup button, you agree to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails or any newsletter. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don’t see it, please check your spam folder.
The next issue of FP Work will be in your inbox soon.
We encountered a problem registering you. Please, try again
Article content
The college has just ordered Peterson to attend a mandatory Maoist-style social media re-education program at a cost of $225 an hour, with those sessions to continue until these paid “educators” determine he is sufficiently contrite. His refusal to participate—and he has, of course, refused—would result in a public disciplinary hearing and the potential revocation of his professional license as a psychologist. He was also ordered to “review, reflect and improve his ‘professionalism'” in public statements. This, to a professor of psychology at Harvard and U of T.
Advertising 3
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
Which patients complained to the College that he was practicing his profession as a psychologist (all that the College can regulate) improperly? Actually none. No one could, since he had not practiced as a clinical psychologist for more than five years. Nor did any of the appellants even know any of their patients.
OK, so what psychological principles did he violate? Again, the complaints against him have nothing to do with his practice of psychology, but are exclusively political complaints from the left about his conservative political statements. What were these complaints? These include his retweet of our federal opposition leader’s statement that the COVID lockdown is too severe and his criticism of our prime minister and of Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s former chief secretary. One complainant also objected to Peterson’s rather humorous response on Twitter to a critic worried about overcrowding: “You are free to leave at any time.”
Advertising 4
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
In a front-page story Thursday in the National Post, Peterson asked, “What makes you think something like this won’t happen to you or someone you know, respect or love?” And for those with too faint a heart (and cojones) to imagine that this would ever happen to them: “What makes you think that you will continue to be able to communicate honestly with your doctors, lawyers and psychologists or representatives of other regulated professions if they are so terrified from the regulatory boards that they can no longer tell you the truth?’
Peterson, of course, will not comply, and no doubt the college’s decision will quickly be overturned by the courts as a gross regulatory overreach. The college has picked the wrong target, and with its stupidity has undoubtedly further energized the conservative movement here, as well as south of the border.
Advertising 5
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
The public outcry was immediate. Elon Musk, who has barely spent time on this side since leaving university, called the Ontario college’s allegations “extremely troubling,” and even the editorial board of the August Wall Street Journal wrote a special editorial denouncing the college’s behavior, titled “The Campaign to Reeducate Jordan Peterson. “Professional bodies should ensure that practitioners are competent, not enforce political orthodoxies or act as language police outside the office,” he concludes. “But this is the trend in Western medical associations and beyond.”
Peterson is not a phantom care. Just four years ago, the Law Association of Ontario, which regulates the province’s lawyers, adopted a statement of principles requiring all Ontario lawyers to subscribe to and sign a statement agreeing to promote certain values of inclusiveness, diversity and equity (called DIE by Peterson ), prescribed by him, presumably in violation of the Charter freedoms of thought, belief, opinion, expression, conscience and religion. I and many others risked our licenses by refusing to sign, believing it was not our regulator’s role to tell us how to think. And I did it as a senior partner at one of the most diverse firms in the country.
Advertising 6
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
So elated were the lawyers that a body of candidates (the term for directors of the law society) ran directly in opposition to the society’s exaggeration, and every one was elected. They were chosen because Ontario lawyers were worried that the LSO, empowered by this statement of principles, would behave in exactly the way the College of Psychologists just has and order a witch hunt against the politically incorrect.
Interestingly, the regulatory overreach in the Peterson case should give new life to this group, which is again running on similar principles against the establishment class, in the upcoming judicial elections.
Under employment law, if you lose your job, you will receive compensation from the court of between two and 27 months depending on factors such as re-employment, age and length of service. But what if you are deprived not of a specific job but of your livelihood because this college is threatening and any professional regulatory body can?
Advertising 7
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
Courts have addressed this by finding that damages from employer complaints resulting in regulatory disqualification are dramatically greater than damages for wrongful dismissal. This can happen in any licensed profession from licensed mechanics to stockbrokers, pharmacists and teachers. And as regulatory bodies are increasingly run by the woke (take Halton’s school board and the ridiculous transgender teacher case), those on the other side of the political spectrum are at risk. And unlike Peterson, few can afford suspension pending a hearing, not to mention the expense and publicity associated with defending yourself against a hostile tribunal of political opponents.
One BC Court of Appeal case dealing with lost professional opportunity damages involved Melissa Ojanen, an art student who was fired for cause (wrongly, as it turned out) by Vancouver-based Acumen Law Corp. The stress of the ordeal resulted in her failing the bar exam, so by the time the matter came to court three years later, she had not yet been called to the bar and the stigma of the cause affected her future prospects.
Advertising 8
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
The court found that she had no reasonable prospects of practicing law pending the prosecution of the charges brought against her in the trial. She was awarded damages for her lost opportunity to practice law—a far greater sum than her successful wrongful-dismissal claim—as well as punitive damages for Acumen’s conduct.
So, if you have the fortitude, these rulings can be successfully defended and damages awarded, far in excess of what a wrongfully dismissed employee can expect. But given the pressures of fighting for your very career, we should all hope that the court imposes a heavy switch on the college, unless it has the sense to retire in flight first.
-
Read Jordan Peterson’s tweets that prompted complaints to the College of Psychologists
-
Jordan Peterson: I’ll risk my license to escape re-education on social media
Advertisement 9
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
Given that the board had the audacity to take on a man with such public support, one can only imagine how many psychologists with misguided political views he previously intimidated into submission. Peterson is an important fight. Its failure would leave many vulnerable to attacks on their work by third-party letters to their professional bodies or even to their employers by left-wing (today, tomorrow who knows what political views will be ascendant) with opposing views who claim to have put your profession into disrepute (which is an actual crime under law society rules). I had one such complaint about a previous column when I referred to a decision of a Privacy Commissioner as nonsensical that I had been informally warned about. Such weaponization of political opinions must be stopped immediately. Peterson is the man to do it.
Howard Levitt is a senior partner at Levitt Sheikh, employment attorneys with…
Add Comment