(LifeSiteNews) — January isn’t even over yet, and it’s been a brutal year for freedom of speech in Canada. For starters, the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed Dr. Jordan Peterson’s court challenge to the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s demand that he undertake “remedial social media training” for his “dishonourable” expressions of wrongthink online. At stake is his license to practice psychology. Peterson argued that professionals have the right to “otherwise lawful public expression on matters unrelated to the practice of psychology.” The court disagreed, and he now must decide to submit to re-education or lose his license.
Almost simultaneously, another, perhaps more consequential case, unfolded in Montreal. There a doctor has been suspended from practicing for three months after refusing to use a trans-identifying patient’s “preferred pronouns.” The suspension, according to the National Post, “lists one count of failure to behave irreproachably towards a patient and one count of failure to ensure medical follow-up of a patient.” Dr. Raymond Brière, who has been a physician since 1980 and a specialist in family medicine since 2010, opted to enter a guilty plea on both counts.
Brière had been the family doctor of the trans-identifying patient since May 2018; in May 2022, the patient told Brière that she was transgender, said her pronouns were now “he/him,” and requested that he give her a prescription for testosterone to facilitate her transition. According to the Post, Brière told her that he had never prescribed testosterone to someone who wanted to “transform into a gentleman” and warned her about potential side effects, including character changes and aggression. The patient, who is not a doctor, informed him that this was merely a “stereotype.”
This triggered a debate in which the patient told Brière that she was a “trans man” and the doctor informed her that she is “genetically female” and that the belief that she was male came from “your brain.” Frustrated, Brière told her that she could leave if she wished, as he had nothing to learn from “une patiente,” which, in French, is the female form of patient. She promptly corrected him with the male phraseology, to which Brière stated: “A [female] patient until this day, you were a woman, dear madam.” He also pointed out that she was “biologically a woman.” He told her to ask his colleague for the prescription, refused to make the referral himself and stated that he could no longer act as her family doctor.
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During the meeting, Brière noticed that he was being recorded — something that is standard practice for trans activists. He wrote in the patient’s file after she left: “Recorded on her cell conversation which is illegal. Absolute breaking of confidence.” His suspicions of her intention were correct, and the college subsequently ruled, after her complaint, that “this case calls into question the rights of the patient, the doctor’s obligations towards the patient to whom he provides services and care, and the doctor-patient relationship.”
Further, the college stated that:
[I]f the patient believes that their gender identity does not correspond to the sex appearing on their birth certificate, they can request that they be designated by the identity they express. The medical encounter must then take place while respecting this identity of gender, whether or not the patient has undergone any medical treatment or surgical intervention in connection with this identity.
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The implications of this case are many. Canadian medical professionals have been sent a clear message: they are service providers and have no right to refuse to provide services they feel conscience-bound to reject. Further, compelled speech with regards to “preferred pronouns” is mandatory. There is an irony to the fact that Dr. Jordan Peterson — who rose to fame for his warnings about the inevitable consequences of compelled speech regarding “preferred pronouns” — has been targeted for his speech in the same month that a doctor is disciplined for failing to use the preferred pronouns of a trans-identifying woman. Peterson warned that this would happen, and here we are.
