Juno News - What the Jordan Peterson ruling means for free speech

00:00:00.000 all of that is aside from the big story of the day though jordan peterson

00:00:12.200 having a ruling against him in court in ontario now just to avoid getting totally into the legal

00:00:19.760 weeds here he brought an application for judicial review of the ontario college of psychologists

00:00:25.580 decision about that mandatory re-education training and the court ultimately ruled that the college

00:00:31.940 was within its purview to impose such a requirement on peterson they basically said that

00:00:37.420 yeah he's still allowed to talk he's allowed to tweet so it's not really affecting his right to

00:00:43.080 freedom of expression the college is you know trying to reduce harm and all of that stuff

00:00:48.040 a lot of implications of this we need to dig into here want to welcome to the show josh de haas who

00:00:54.120 is a counsel for the canadian constitution foundation which was an intervener in this case

00:00:59.980 josh it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today happy to be here so let's start first off

00:01:06.500 with what was really at stake here because obviously the college is a private organ but it's a creature

00:01:12.380 of statute at the same time he can't be a psychologist in ontario without being a member of this college

00:01:18.800 so uh what was really the the main thrust of the argument here yeah so um the college of psychologists

00:01:26.300 they're a professional regulator so they're private in a sense but they're like you say

00:01:30.460 um they're implementing the government's regulations so um they do have to comply by the charter

00:01:37.780 um abide by the charter and that means that they have to consider jordan peterson's freedom of speech

00:01:43.940 and so what was at stake here was essentially whether professionals whether it's the psychologist

00:01:49.820 in jordan peterson's case or you know lawyers like me doctors nurses anyone regulated by one of these

00:01:57.380 um professional regulator bodies uh whether what they say on social media whether it's you know

00:02:02.780 political commentary or cultural commentary whether that sort of off-duty conduct

00:02:07.940 can lead to discipline in their professional capacity so basically what's at stake is the

00:02:15.460 ability of any professional in canada to uh participate in debates and say you know sometimes

00:02:21.700 controversial or politically incorrect things and what the court seems to have decided here is that

00:02:26.380 it's okay for the college to um to force people into re-education if they you know say uh put out mean

00:02:33.880 in tweets basically i found there to be a fair bit of i i don't want to speak ill of judges entirely

00:02:42.020 because i don't want to put you in an awkward situation as a relatively fresh lawyer but

00:02:45.820 there seemed to be some very strange revisionism in in some of the arguments here i mean one when

00:02:51.180 you bring up discipline that i found noteworthy is the court saying that this was not

00:02:54.760 a disciplinary order and i wonder what sort of technicality they were hinging that on

00:03:00.080 yeah so that that caught my eye too this is a this is an argument that the that the college made

00:03:07.340 essentially that you know he wasn't he what he didn't face any actual discipline this is just sort

00:03:13.200 of a remediation and so it's just sort of this you know minor step where they just said you know meet

00:03:20.600 with some coach and this coach is going to teach you you know a world-famous psychologist uh formerly a

00:03:27.720 professor at u of t who's been in all kinds of uh different media they're going to teach you how to

00:03:32.480 you know speak professionally when you're out there in the public so um it's a very strange argument i

00:03:38.300 thought they made that argument because uh you know maybe that that would lead the um the court to say

00:03:46.260 oh we can't really decide this it's premature in some sense but i don't really understand that either

00:03:51.160 i think you know if you are forced uh to spend your own money to hire a coach who's going to teach

00:03:57.040 you what you're allowed to say and how you're allowed to say it i'm pretty sure that counts as

00:04:01.320 as discipline yes and certainly when the consequences of not complying uh will carry discipline it is a

00:04:09.900 step towards discipline because basically they're not even requiring this of everyone they're going to

00:04:14.320 him directly and taking issue with his tweets and saying that you've warranted this sort of

00:04:18.920 re-education and it's not even where you could say it's just about box checking or once you've

00:04:23.660 gone through the course you can just carry on doing what you're doing they're effectively saying there

00:04:27.700 is a correct way to for you to conduct yourself and you're not doing it yeah that's right and uh

00:04:34.380 what's interesting too here is the court you know when the court's considering whether a charter right

00:04:39.000 like free expression has been violated it has to be um if the government and in this case if the

00:04:44.240 regulator is going to limit that it has to be minimally impairing of that right so i think this

00:04:49.760 sort of allowed the court to say well you know it's not really discipline it's just this initial sort

00:04:54.140 of step um that could potentially one day lead to discipline it's no big deal it's just meeting with a

00:05:00.940 coach for several months and having them teach you you know how to speak properly um but it has really

00:05:07.760 big implications like the fact that you know all the media including you are talking about this today

00:05:13.000 is to sort of send a warning shot to other people in various professions that they better watch what

00:05:19.000 they say and make sure it's politically correct or else uh they might face discipline we were talking

00:05:25.820 about this a little bit yesterday in the context of medical associations and and how physicians

00:05:32.280 colleges have had a very significant crackdown i think on their uh individual members

00:05:37.680 right to speak freely on on covet issues and whether we're talking about law societies medical

00:05:42.440 colleges the psychologists college for jordan peterson i mean anything it could be the regulatory

00:05:48.560 colleges for massage therapists for psychotherapists it doesn't matter i mean the these bodies are all

00:05:54.020 tremendously powerful because you don't really have a right to operate in your chosen field without

00:05:59.340 being a member of them and i'm just wondering in general if this is an area of law that has been

00:06:05.300 fairly well established in which these organizations have this much power or if this is kind of a

00:06:10.480 recent advent in in judicial reviews yeah so it's it's come up a lot more lately and part of that has to

00:06:17.520 do with the with the pandemic um basically you know there's there's always been this idea that regulators

00:06:24.820 can uh you know correct speech they can take care of uh sort of the image of the rate of the profession

00:06:31.500 in the eyes of the public and um you know we at the canadian constitution foundation we don't disagree

00:06:37.660 with that like the regulators do have some um some role established in law to um to prevent harm to

00:06:46.080 you know people who are for example patients of jordan peterson we don't take issue of that but

00:06:50.860 it seemed to come up a lot lately that just things people say at uh at um you know on twitter or whatever

00:06:56.900 are are are being policed um you know for example it came up a lot with nurses during the pandemic

00:07:02.860 you know nurses that opposed vaccine mandates maybe because they've been exposed to vaccine mandates

00:07:08.060 with the flu shot for decades and don't don't like them or nurses that criticized uh mask mandates and so

00:07:14.500 um it's not a completely new area of law but it's it's coming up more and more well and i should point

00:07:21.380 out too that we're not even talking about in some cases tweets that are i would i would argue outside

00:07:28.160 of what a psychologist who's not jordan peterson could or should be weighing in on i mean one of the

00:07:33.220 tweets they brought up was him commenting on the transgender actor elliott page formerly ellen page

00:07:39.460 and uh you know the transgender issue is entirely fraught within psychology one of the big debates we have

00:07:45.120 in medicine right now is how to treat especially children that start identifying by a different gender

00:07:51.000 than what their biological sex would dictate so the idea that a psychologist cannot have

00:07:55.340 heterodox opinions on the transgender issue and express them uh is i think insanely insanely offensive

00:08:02.740 to what uh professionals should be encouraged to do which is debate live issues and hot issues in their

00:08:08.820 field yeah that's right and uh it's it's probably even worse than people realize in this particular case

00:08:15.260 because uh what jordan peterson said about um the actor elliott page uh formerly ellen page was uh just

00:08:24.040 used used their their original pronoun that they used for decades because in peterson's view and you know i

00:08:31.140 don't necessarily agree with him but in his view it's um you know it's bad for the patient to um to to sort of

00:08:39.780 allow them to choose their pronoun because in his view that's sort of engaging in a delusion and they're

00:08:45.640 better off if they don't do that so you know you can be on one side of that issue or the other but

00:08:50.280 if anybody should be able to talk about that it's it's psychologists right yeah and i'm curious where

00:08:56.760 you think this is going to go because i i know jordan peterson has been fairly unrepentant on this and

00:09:01.640 i know that the ccf is not uh representing him you're intervening so you don't i believe get to appeal

00:09:07.440 on his behalf but is your sense that this will go to an appeal and that if so it could actually have

00:09:13.200 a strong basis of success yeah i think um so i think uh it's pretty clear that jordan peterson

00:09:20.140 he doesn't intend to appeal so um he'll take this to the court of appeal he'll ask them if uh it's

00:09:27.180 something that uh that they should hear and if they agree to hear it then you'll get a three panel

00:09:32.580 um a three-member panel of the court of appeal most likely deciding whether uh whether this

00:09:39.280 divisional court which is uh what what put out the judicial review decision today whether they got

00:09:44.260 that right yeah and i should say jordan peterson tweeted about this uh and he vowed to make every

00:09:50.500 aspect of this public and we will see what happens when utter transparency is the rule and i think

00:09:57.000 if the college gets its way and jordan peterson has to be subjected to this i think they may

00:10:02.000 uh find themselves on the losing end of that much like when ezra levant many years ago uh filmed the

00:10:07.580 entire proceedings before the uh alberta human rights tribunal so i i think uh very much something

00:10:13.880 that people want to see uh josh de haas council with the canadian constitution foundation good to have

00:10:18.780 you on thanks for doing it thanks so much thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:10:23.160 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - August 27, 2023

What the Jordan Peterson ruling means for free speech

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