“The fact that it’s potentially illegal for me not to participate in that is something that I think is absolutely dreadful. It puts a shudder in my heart as a Canadian that we could even possibly be in a situation like that.” -Dr. Jordan Peterson
Lianne Laurence : May 25, 2017 : LifeSiteNews
(Canada)—[LifeSiteNews] Canadians who disavow gender theory could be charged with hate crimes, fined, jailed, and compelled to undergo anti-bias training if the Trudeau Liberals’ Bill C-16 passes, critics told a Senate committee last week. (Screengrab via LifeSiteNews.com)
The Senate could vote as early as May 30 on Bill C-16, which adds “gender expression” and “gender identity” to Canada’s Human Rights Code and to the Criminal Code’s hate crime section.
Dr. Jordan Peterson and lawyer D. Jared Brown were among those warned the committee the bill is an unprecedented threat to freedom of expression and codifies a spurious ideology of gender identity in law.
Meanwhile, Campaign Life Coalition has issued an urgent call on Facebook for fasting and prayer that those senators in favor of the bill have a change of heart. As it stands, Bill C-16 is expected to pass.
CLC also commended Peterson for proving to be “a hero in this battle.”
A University of Toronto psychology professor, Peterson told the senate committee May 17 that “it’s unbelievably dangerous for us to move towards representing a social constructionist view of identity in our legal system.”
He believes “ideologues” are “using unsuspecting and sometimes complicit members of the so-called transgender community to push their ideological vanguard forward,” Peterson said.
“The fact that it’s potentially illegal for me not to participate in that is something that I think is absolutely dreadful. It puts a shudder in my heart as a Canadian that we could even possibly be in a situation like that.”
Peterson has become Canada’s preeminent critic of the Liberal bill after he produced three videos opposing the enforcement of gender ideology, one of which blasted Bill C-16, which he said “requires compelled speech.”
He also vowed he would not use “genderless pronouns” such as “zir” and “ze” for those who self-identify as gender non-conforming when requested.
Since then, the university sent him “two letters to cease and desist in my public utterances because they believed that not only was I violating the university’s standards of conduct but also the relevant provisions” of the Ontario Human Rights Code, Peterson told the committee.
The OHRC “explicitly states that refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun, which are the pronouns I was objecting to, can be interpreted as harassment,” he said.
“I think that’s appalling, first of all, because there hasn’t been a piece of legislation that requires Canadians to utter a particular form of address that has particular ideological implications before, and it’s a line we shouldn’t cross.” (Photo via Pinterest)
Moreover, “the very idea that calling someone a term that they didn’t choose causes them such irreparable harm that legal remedies should be sought,” is an “an indication of just how deeply the culture of victimization has sunk into our society.”
Bill C-16 also “devolves into a kind of absurdity” because the Liberals did not foresee that there would be “an absolute explosion of identities, first of all, and also of so-called personal pronouns,” Peterson said.
“It has become linguistically unmanageable. Words can’t be introduced into the language by fiat.”
Jail for those who don’t comply
Brown said he looked into Bill C-16 when “lawyers, academic lawyers, important people” criticized Peterson’s very public denunciations of the bill.
“What was happening is they weren’t defending the law but downplaying its effects. As a practicing lawyer, any time a lawyer, and particularly an academic, says, ‘Look away; there’s nothing to see here,’ it gets my antenna way up,” Brown told the Senate.
“I’m not an academic. I live with my clients in the land of legal reality and how the law actually works,” he noted.
“I knew, as a commercial litigator, that anyone can end up in jail if you breach a tribunal order. It is a simple, civil, contempt-of-court process. People go to jail for this.”
The federal department of justice has made clear it will use the Ontario Human Rights Code guidelines, and that these “mandate” the use of genderless pronouns on request, Brown said.
“Mandating use of pronouns requires one to use words that are not their own that imply a belief in or agreement with a certain theory on gender,” he added.
“If you try to disavow that theory, you can be brought before the Human Rights Commission for misgendering or potentially find yourself guilty of a hate crime. To sum up, on the subject of gender, we’re going to have government-mandated speech.”
Those who refuse to go along could be “brought before the federal tribunal,” Brown said.
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