Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre pounced on the Jordan Peterson drama by promoting free speech and saying censorship is something dictators enforce.
“So the Ontario College of Psychologists has told Jordan Peterson that he either undergo re-training for social media etiquette or lose his license to practice as a clinical psychologist,” he said.
One complaint was levied against Peterson because he re-tweeted a Poilievre tweet. Another complaint was made because he criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Poilievre said professionals in a free country shouldn’t lose their jobs “because they express a political opinion contrary to the licensing body that’s mandated by the government.”
The Conservative leader also said he doesn’t endorse 100% of anything anyone says — including Peterson — and that’s why freedom of speech matters.
“No one has ever tried to censor someone that they agree with.”
“That’s what distinguishes Canada in a free Canada from dictatorships. Dictators don’t censor things their citizens say that the dictator agrees with. Only things they disagree with.”
Poilievre didn’t call Trudeau a dictator directly, but over the past year, others prominent Conservatives have come close to doing so.
Last July, Conservative MP Rachael Thomas questioned whether Trudeau fit the definition of a dictator, which she read aloud in the House of Commons.
“According to the Oxford dictionary, a dictator is a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force,” she said.
“There are many Canadians that would believe — that would hold the view — that this does apply to the Prime Minister of Canada.”
And last March, just after Trudeau trampled out the Freedom Convoy by invoking the Emergencies Act, a member of the European Parliament, Mislav Kolakusic, delivered perhaps the most humiliating international thrashing to Trudeau.
“Canada, once a symbol of the modern world, has become a symbol of civil rights violations under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months,” she said.
“We watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes.”
