Controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has filed a legal suit against the College of Psychologists of Ontario after he said the governing body threatened to revoke his license to practice if he retrained on social media for comments he made on Twitter and the Joe Rogans did not complete podcast.
Peterson, 60, filed a motion for judicial review in Ontario Divisional Court, The Toronto Sun reported on Wednesdayas the clinical psychologist said, he will refuse to comply with the regulator’s demands.
The CPO, which oversees practicing psychologists in Ontario to protect patients from professional misconduct, ordered Peterson to complete a mandatory “specified continuing education or remedial program” to “review, reflect and improve.” [his] Professionalism in public speaking,” is a long list of College Peterson requirements divided on twitter.
He has to meet with a psychologist for coaching courses, which he has to pay for pending a final report from the coach stating his concerns have been “adequately alleviated”. The CPO made its decision on 11/22 after an investigation.
“I do not follow. I do not submit to re-education. I do not admit that my views – many of which, incidentally, are fully justified by the facts that have become known since the complaints were made – were either wrong or unprofessional,” he said wrote in the National Post Wednesday evening.
“I’ll say what I have to say and drop the chips where they will. I have done nothing to compromise those in my care; quite the contrary – I have served all my clients and the millions of people with whom I communicate to the best of my knowledge and good faith and that’s it.
“If it becomes necessary” that he attend classes, hey pledged to make available to the public all the details of what they teach.
Twitter in June Peterson suspended for a post about transgender actor Elliot Page violating the platform’s anti-hateful behavior rules.
“Remember when Pride was a son? And Ellen Page just had her boobs removed by a criminal doctor,” Peterson tweeted.
Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk reinstated Peterson’s account in November after he took over the company.
A month earlier, he announced he was retiring from social media after getting upset for retweeting a New York Post article about plus-size Sports Illustrated model Yummi Nu and telling her ” not pretty,” adding that “no amount of authoritarian tolerance will change that.”
In January, the former University of Toronto researcher claims on Joe Rogan’s podcast that transgender was the result of “social contagion” and similar to “satanic ritual abuse,” and suggested that acceptance of the trans community was a sign of “the collapse of civilizations.”
In response, critics once again denounced Spotify’s “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “dispelled harmful anti-trans rhetoric.” The CPO cited the 1.25 podcast appearances in his note to Peterson.
Peterson also claimed in the National Post he was targeted for supporting Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre’s criticism of the COVID-19 lockdowns, criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his chief of staff Gerald Butts, criticizing an Ottawa councilor and himself Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made fun of New Zealand.
“Every single allegation is not only independent of my clinical practice, but explicitly political — and not only that: unilaterally explicitly political,” wrote Peterson, a free speech advocate. “Every single statement I have been sentenced to correct for is politically insufficiently left-leaning. I’m just too classically liberal – or even more unforgivably – conservative.”
In May 2022, Peterson berated Trudeau on Twitter for his travel ban.
“I’m at my daughter’s wedding in California. I will never forget [sic] @justintrudeau my father is not here because of your absolutely unscrupulous, unconstitutional and vindictive travel ban,” he said at the time.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal defended Peterson for “voicing his opinion” in an opinion piece published Wednesday night.
“Professional organizations are designed to ensure practitioners are competent, not to enforce political orthodoxies or act as language police outside the office,” the board wrote in a scathing column.
Peterson, who has over 15 million followers on his social media platforms, told The Toronto Sun that he never faced any complaints until he attracted international attention in 2016. He said he has since had to hire lawyers to handle the college’s complaints.
“I practiced for 20 years without investigation, that only started when I became a prominent public figure,” Peterson said in a telephone interview with the news agency on Wednesday morning.
He has ceased private clinical practice since 2017, when he said his notoriety made it unethically impossible to continue.
Peterson wrote a letter to Trudeau, which he published in the National Post, urging him to deal with government regulators.
“I am not suggesting or even suggesting that you or any of those associated with you had anything directly to do with it,” he wrote. “The fact that it’s happening (and that doctors and lawyers are as scared as psychologists are now of their own regulators) is something that definitely happened under your watch, as a result of your own behavior and the increasing coercion-based and ideological pure politics that you promoted and legislated.”
