NDP Cheri DiNovo is correcting the record about how Ontario’s transgender human rights legislation came to be — and it has nothing to do with the premier’s sexual orientation.

Tenured University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson released an hour-long online lecture against political correctness Tuesday, in which he airs his suspicion that Premier Kathleen Wynne is somehow linked to federal bill C-16, which adds gender identity or expression as a prohibited ground for discrimination in the human rights act and the criminal code.

He speaks, in a rambling fashion, about how the language is the same as Ontario’s similar legislation, and the same language that LGBT activists use.

Peterson speaks about Wynne in that context.

“I’m going to concentrate on Ontario, because I think a lot of this is emanating from a small coterie of people behind the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is a particularly pathological organization, in my estimation and perhaps the biggest enemy of freedom currently extant in Canada,” he says. “And I don’t say that lightly.”

“So, the reason I think the Ontario Human Rights Commission is an emblematic institution in this regard is partly because I think that the social-justice-warrior-type activists are over-represented in the current provincial government or the current Liberal provincial government and I can’t help but manifest the suspicion that that’s partly because our current premier is lesbian in her sexual preference," he continues.

“That in and itself doesn’t bother me one way or another, I don’t think it’s relevant to the political discussion, except in so far as the LBGT community has become extraordinarily good at organizing themselves and has a fairly pronounced and very, very sophisticated radical fringe and I can’t help but see the hand of that in what I’m going to read to you and you can make up your own mind and see if you think the same thing,” he continues.

He goes on to read the Ontario Human Rights Commission's definitions of gender identity and gender expression.

“I’m not saying this is right, it’s what I’ve been able to sort out, what I’ve been able to puzzle out,” he adds.

It’s not right, said DiNovo.

Ontario’s human rights code was amended to include gender identity and gender expression when all three parties supported Toby’s Act, she said.

“I tabled my bill five times over I don’t know how many years, and finally we got all party support, and it was an all-party bill,” she said. “That happened in 2012.”

And that was before Wynne was Ontario's premier.

“It’s hard to believe that this man has the job he has,” said DiNovo.

His comments are particularly disturbing because of the high rates of attempted suicide and the high rates of poverty in the trans community, she said.

“The types of inflammatory language he uses and the disdain with which he speaks about this community truly is cruel, and has devastating results. It’s despicable, and really, in a sense, is hate speech,” DiNovo said.

In his lecture, Peterson says he’s afraid that what he’s saying could be considered illegal hate speech. However, he goes on to say the concepts of gender identity and expression, as defined by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, are ill-informed and politically motivated ideas. He talks about not believing people can be transgender.

“I think it’s nonsensical, I think the formulation is absurd, I think it has no scientific standing, I think it’s ideologically motivated, I think it’s divisive, I think it’s dangerous, it causes chaos, it confuses people, there’s no upside to it,” he says. “For any one person that this potential transformation of legislation is going to free from oppression it’s going to deathly confuse a hundred more. And I say that as a clinician with some experience in this matter.”

Peterson says he’s scared by those things and says he can’t help but think he’s seen authoritarian and totalitarian state developing.

“The changes to the law scare me because they put into the legal substructure of the culture certain assumptions about basic human nature that not only do I believe to be untrue, I think they’re also dangerous and ideologically motivated,” he says.

That’s why Peterson says he won’t call students or colleagues by gender-neutral pronouns.

“I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that. I think it’s manipulative. I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them, I won’t do it,” he says. “I think that those gender-neutral pronouns are politically motivated. I think they’re connected to an entire underground apparatus of political motivations, radical left political motivations, and I think uttering those words makes me a tool of those motivations and I’m going to try to be a tool of my own motivations as clearly as I can articulate them and not some murderous political ideology.”

Contacted by phone, Peterson elaborated on his comments concerning the premier’s sexual orientation: “The only association there is it increases the probability that people who are practiced at activism for those sorts of causes are going to get access to the opportunity to do things like write the outlines associated with government policy and law. And I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He wouldn’t say how he believes the premier’s personal life causes this to happen.

A spokesperson for the University of Toronto, Althea Blackburn-Evans, said no complaints have been made, so far, about Peterson’s comments, but if the university receives complaints it will look into them.

“Our university, like all universities, is a place where people can express their opinions, and sometimes those opinions are controversial and sometimes they’re unsettling. This type of debate happens at U of T every day,” she said. “Professor Peterson’s views are his own and they don’t reflect the views of the university.”

The university expects all professors to abide by the university’s policies concerning a learning environment that’s free from discrimination and harassment, she added.

In the meantime, DiNovo said she’s hopping the LGBTQ community speaks up.

“I’m hoping he has a deluge of trans lobbyists and trans folk and LGBTQ folk who let him know exactly what their lives look like and what his words can mean, and that truly this is hate speech,” she said.

Controversial prof wrong on Ontario’s human rights legislation: Cheri DiNovo

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