Last week in this space, I inveighed against the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s assault upon the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of my eminent friend and probably Canada’s greatest contemporary public intellectual, Dr. Jordan Peterson. Continuing in the same theme, I’ve been looking at this creeping and under-publicized phenomenon of professional and craft organizations stifling and regimenting their members, in particular the struggle that has been conducted for the last six years between the supporters of the Statement of Principles, the so-called SOP, and its resisters in the Law Society of Ontario, (the Bar of Ontario), generally known as StopSOP. No one would seriously dispute that these professions and all learned or skilled associations of specialists do require some level of group regulation to oversee admission and standards, and that, in principle, it is better to come from associations led by people elevated by and answerable to those pursuing the relevant occupations, rather than indulging the current ravening public sector ambition to impose its fiat on all of society like an attacking swarm of Sheridan battle tanks.
