Commentary
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has introduced a bill to protect lawyers, doctors, and other professionals from censorship by their regulators. Bill 13 is being called the “Peterson Law” after psychologist Jordan Peterson, prosecuted by his regulator for speaking his mind, as Smith says, “on his own time.”
Great news, at least until you read the bill.
On close inspection, it seems more likely to make an already bad situation far worse.
The obvious root of the problem in professional regulation is politics. Regulators have been advancing political agendas including, most controversially, by mandatory political education and by censorship.
And yet, Bill 13 purports to solve these problems by authorizing the use of regulatory power for political reasons (the root of the problem) and by giving regulators new powers to mandate education, including in politics, economics, society, and culture….