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Roughly one million Canadians, mostly retirees, spend winter each year in the United States. That’s enough people that the country could be considered Canada’s de facto eleventh province although it’s uncertain how many snowbirds are finding themselves with cold feet about their regular annual migration due to *gestures broadly at everything.
One in 10 choose Arizona for their warmer home away from home, and the latest to join their ranks is psychotic psychologist and conservative culture warrior Dr. Jordan Peterson, who announced on a recent episode of his daughter Mikhaila’s podcast that he has bid au revoir to his homeland in part over feuds with his profession’s governing body and Governor Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (If you’re fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the guy, Robyn wrote a helpful Wonksplainer a few years back breaking down the supervillain origin story of this sour-pussed sexagenarian prone to dressing up like the Joker.) Peterson, a man known for his dual passions for beef and beefs, explained his reasons for taking off from the Great White North in a promo on Instagram:
There are decided advantages to being here. The issue with the College of Psychologists [of Ontario] is very annoying to say the least, and the new legislation the Liberals are attempting to push through, Bill C-63, I’ll be living in a totalitarian hellhole if that legislation passes, and it could well pass. The government in Canada at the federal level is incompetent beyond belief, and it’s become uncomfortable for me in my neighborhood in Toronto.
No further explanation is given for why Peterkins feels so ill at ease in one of the world’s most culturally diverse cities (nearly half of Torontonians are immigrants) but it’s possible he’ll feel more at home in his undisclosed location close to his daughter’s place in Scottsdale, which bills itself as “The West’s Most Western Town” and has a population that’s nearly 80 percent white. Although it’s fun to imagine he was driven out of the 6 because people kept beaning him with beer cans like the eponymous star of Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich.
Maybe locals will embrace the embittered expat more than they did the Winnipeg Jets, who rebranded as the underappreciated Phoenix Coyotes and spent nearly three decades trying in vain to bring the Stanley Cup to the Grand Canyon State before recently relocating through the desert as a hockey team with no name.
Bill C-63, also known as the Online Harms Act, is essentially a grab bag of proposals introduced earlier this year to crack down on digital hate speech and the sexual exploitation of children. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s the spreading hatred part that has him so concerned. Although the bill seems a lot less likely to become law after the ruling Liberal Party — currently tied with the hapless NDP in the polls with the support of a mere 21 percent of voters — saw their personal Doomsday Clock move that much closer to midnight after the bombshell resignation of finance minister and deputy leader Chrystia Freeland last week, the latest in a list of female MPs the self-described feminist has pushed out the door from Parliament, which includes Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes.
(Speaking of online hate speech, Vice President-elect Donald J. Trump quickly blorped out that Freeland is “totally toxic” and “not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada,” so don’t be surprised if she becomes the new party leader after Trudeau and his whimsical socks are hung out to dry in the next federal election, which could be announced at any moment.)
Peterson also took aim at the PM directly for accusing him and fellow troll Tucker Carlson of being bankrolled by the Russian state-owned news outlet RT to boost anti-vax propaganda and other nonsense at the recent Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference:
I think Trudeau got confused because that’s his permanent state of being. Me and Tucker Carlson, Russian agents! The problem with Russians is they promise you the moon and then they never pay you.
You probably shouldn’t trust the Russkies if they promise you the moon since there’s never even been a cosmonaut to set foot on it, but if you choose to bring up financial discussions with them that somehow didn’t pan out, it really doesn’t help make your case you aren’t actually on the receiving end of rabble-rousing Russian rubles.
Trudeau didn’t offer any evidence but the claim was made under oath, which could have something to do with why Peterson backed down from his threat to sue for defamation and fucked off to Arizona instead. Although, to be fair, his name didn’t come up in the Department of Justice’s recent indictment of two Russian nationals for lavishly funding prominent right-wing American smoothbrains such as Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson under the table.
Not that he’d be on the DOJ’s radar to the same extent given he’s not an American citizen. Presumably. The good doctor seemed uncomfortable talking about the big move and didn’t elaborate on his immigration status during the interview but — if he’s not here on some sort of work visa — officials may want to give the former Harvard professor a closer look given that the business address for his new online Peterson Academy is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming rather than somewhere north of the 49th parallel.
Surely he’d be near the back of the line if undocumented immigrants do indeed start getting rounded up by Stormtroopers given his high MAGAverse status and low melanin count but, if the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party has taught us anything, it’s that leopards aren’t particular about whose faces they eat.
[The Tyee / Utah Hockey Club / Blue Sky]
