Alberta conservatives seizing moral authority from progressive left

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It’s been called the Jordan Peterson Law, named after Canada’s most influential and divisive public intellectual. It could not be coming at a better time for Premier Danielle Smith’s government, says Peterson.

Smith is pressing forward with this new free speech initiative just as the conservative movement is rising up and seizing moral authority in Canada. “Smith is part of a conservative movement that’s going to take the moral upper hand away from the bloody progressives,” Peterson told me in an interview this week. “And thank God for that, because a more deceitful pack of scoundrels could barely be imagined.”

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Peterson continued. “The tide is turning. And Alberta is in the forefront of that, and the conservatives in Canada have grown a spine in the last 10 years, and they’re increasingly refusing to let the leftists have the moral upper hand — because the leftists are really good at that.”

The general issue around the so-called Jordan Peterson Law centres around where Alberta draws the line on free speech. If someone says something that many people find offensive and wrong-headed, is the poor opinion and harsh criticism of others enough of a penalty? Or should their employer also take action, even firing the offending speaker?

Smith’s government has started a public engagement process to ensure that professional regulatory bodies are limited to regulating members’ competence and conduct, and do not interfere with their ability to speak freely on the issues of the day. “Watching Dr. Jordan Peterson and other Canadian professionals being targeted by their professional associations for speaking their minds made it clear to me that Alberta has to act,” Smith said.

Peterson has considered these issues in depth, given his lengthy battle with the Ontario College of Psychologists, which is  attempting to discipline him for his numerous public pronouncements on everything from Justin Trudeau’s character and policies to modern standards of physical beauty.

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Peterson told me he’s spent $600,000 to fight a losing court battle. He now faces mandatory social media training. The college could not find anyone in Canada willing or able to do this training, so they’re attempting to hire a Brit to work with Peterson.

“They want an apology from me,” Peterson said. “That’s not happening, because I stand behind what I said. I know perfectly well that what I’m saying is what psychologists would say if they were trained and educated and they weren’t terrified of their colleges.”

The college’s goal is to take away his licence, he said. “They want me to fail the re-education process so they can describe me as ungovernable.”

The issue is bigger than his own case, Peterson said, since one in five Canadians are in a regulated profession. At the same time regulatory bodies have been swept up in an ideological movement that seeks to enforce a certain brand of thinking. “It’s part of a much broader pattern of radical progressive activism that’s invaded the universities and the HR departments of corporations and the government and the judiciary.”

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Great harm flows out of the inability of professionals to speak freely both in public and to their clients, Peterson said, pointing to the example of gender affirming care. “We’re bound by our ethics boards, let’s say, to adopt the gender affirming stance with regards to adolescents and children. And that means that if you bring your child to see a physician or a psychologist, and that child claims to be a member of the opposite sex, then it is incumbent on that professional to agree. The consequence of that could well be that your child will be placed on puberty blockers and scheduled at some point along the transition route for surgery, and it’s not possible for physicians or psychologists to object to that.”

Thirty years ago complaints could only come from a client, but in his case Peterson said they came from non-clients, some not even located in Canada. That’s one thing that Alberta should change, Peterson said. “How about you don’t get to complain about someone you haven’t had services from?”

I asked him about his argument for freedom of speech, because it’s clear many people are content to see folks they disagree with get disciplined and fired.

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Free speech isn’t just about the right to shoot your mouth off, Peterson said, it’s critical to correcting our own erroneous views. “We think and talk about everything that isn’t yet set in stone, right? That’s how we experiment and make our way forward. And so when you interfere with free speech, you interfere with the mechanism that keeps the state itself well and the individual healthy, hopeful and secure.”

We sort out what we think by talking, by debating and bouncing ideas off of others and getting feedback. “The suppression of free speech is the suppression of thought. Then you might ask, well, what happens if you suppress thought? And the answer is, well, you can’t experiment with new pathways forward if you can’t think, and so that means you abide by the dictates of the current moment. Basically the situation in a totalitarian state.”

Bottom line is that Peterson has it right on two things. The conservative movement has indeed grown in courage, having now formulated sounder, more humane arguments on numerous social issues. As for free speech, we’re doomed to stagnation without it. Professional colleges would be wise to disregard frivolous claims meant to silence partisan opponents, even ones as fierce as Peterson.

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