According to Brenda Cossman, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, Peterson is “fundamentally mischaracterizing” Bill C-16.
“I don’t know if he’s misunderstanding it, but he’s mischaracterizing it,” Cossman says.
(Brenda Cossman spoke to Torontoist about this, but you can find what else she’s said on the issue here.)
Cossman says it seems Peterson is trying to argue that the misuse of pronouns could constitute hate speech.
“I don’t think there’s any legal expert that would say that [this] would meet the threshold for hate speech in Canada,” she says.
Our courts have a very high threshold for what kind of comments actually constitutes hate speech, and the nature of speech would have to be much more extreme than simply pronoun misuse, according to Cossman.
“The misuse of pronouns is not equivalent to advocating genocide in any conceivable manner,” she continues. “If he advocated genocide against trans people, he would be in violation, but misusing pronouns is not what that provision of the code is about.”
Cossman, who has participated in a debate with Peterson, takes issue with the way he uses the language to describe what could happen if he was found in violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
“If he was found guilty by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, he would have been doing something illegal but not criminal,” Cossman says. In other words, he wouldn’t go to jail. Jail is only a punishment for committing a criminal offence—a violation of the Criminal Code.
If Peterson was found to be in violation of the code, there are different possible remedies. He could be ordered to pay money, he could be ordered to correct the behaviour, he could be ordered to go to training, etc.
That's a huge YIKES for your argument.