Regulatory professional bodies in Canada often demand Canadian professionals stay quiet about their opinions— even if they're expressing them off the job.Lisa Bildy would know — she specializes in free speech cases as a lawyer at Libertas Law and Executive Director at the Free Speech Union of Canada. Bildy was the lawyer to Amy Hamm, who was suspended from her job as a nurse by the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives, and was ordered to pay $93,639.80 in legal costs after making public statements about women's rights and single sex spaces.Bildy tells the Western Standard more about her experience with the case and other free speech cases....Hamm was accused of transphobia and hate speech and two formal complaints were filed against her by the college. On Hamm's case Bildy states, "she wasn't out there saying, 'I'm speaking as a nurse, and this is what you should do medically.'""She was just being an ordinary citizen.""But in a couple of places online, there were references to the fact that she also was a nurse.""So the college used that as the basis for pulling her, what they thought was bad behavior, under their sort of auspices.".WATCH: Alberta's automobile insurance regulator weighs in on care first system.Bildy says there is a distinction to be made in Hamm's case because, "Her coworkers ran a little bit of an online campaign to have her lose her job, which was another separate issue." "Her regulator is the college which regulates all the nursing profession.""They had a whole disciplinary process, but also her employer, when this campaign started against her, conducted an investigation and decided basically to fire her for her views.""So she's got two separate problems here, both of which were the result of cancel culture and neither related to her performance on the job at all.".BC nurse suspended, fined nearly $94,000 over ‘I ♥ JK Rowling’ billboard.Hamm was investigated and questioned by the college for her public statements made between 2018 to 2021 resulting in a 332-page report including her tweets, articles, and podcasts.Hamm was found guilty of unprofessional conduct back in March where the disciplinary panel ruled four of Hamm's statements as unprofessional conduct.Overall, Bildy says, "I think a lot of times professionals are self -censoring, or if they do get caught, they'll sign an undertaking with the college to promise never to go public with their accounts, or to refrain from discussing certain things, or to take a reeducation program.""But I think that's actually damaging to our cultural fabric, because we're missing out on the opinions and views of people that maybe would bring some value to the marketplace of ideas," she adds.If this is at all enticing, learn more about professional board censorship by watching the clip above.
