Update, January 7, 2021:
After some procedural back-and-forths, a deadline of December 2nd was set for the submission of my final "Statement of Points" to the HPRB, in preparation of its Stage 1 review. I submitted on that date, and now await the outcome of the panel's Stage 1 review. The purpose of this stage is to establish whether the complaint can simply be dismissed at this stage, that is, whether the material I've submitted raises enough doubt about the College's investigation and disposition for the review to proceed to Stage 2.
Update, June 19, 2020:
My request for review of the College of Psychologist's decision has been filed with the Health Professions Review Board.
Update, May 31, 2020:
On May 22, I received a lengthy letter from the College of Psychologists of BC declining to investigate Dr. Wallace Wong.
I have 30 days from that date to appeal to the Health Professions Review Board, which I plan to do.
Original Post:
Yesterday, I posted about my participation in a court case in which a series of trusted occupations - school counsellors and teachers, psychologists, endocrinologists, and lawyers - had joined forces to oust a concerned father from his legal duty to protect his child from a conspiracy to lure the child into believing she was born in the wrong body and needs medical procedures to alter it in order to be happy.
I know that sounds stupid. It is stupid. But not only do these trusted occupations appear to believe this improbable narrative themselves, but also, they expect the public and families to believe it, and they have induced judges, on more than one occasion, to believe it.
During the hearings in this case, frequent reference was made to a public speech given at a library branch by a BC psychologist, in which he claimed to have, as patients in his gender practice, as many as 1001 juvenile patients in the province of British Columbia. Of these, he claimed that 500 were foster kids, being raised in the care of the government.
The speech was cited in court to underline how over-the-top this transgender belief system has become, and how unlikely it is that any of the children being "diagnosed" and "treated" really belong to this vanishingly small demographic for whom their biological sex generates significant emotional distress.
It was also cited because the court had initially bought into the transgender narrative out of an apparent fear of suicide risk for the child, and in the speech, the psychologist appears* to advise his audience, who he presumes include some people who want transgender services, to threaten suicide to enhance their chances of a referral to a transgender clinic and to their drugs or surgery of choice. The point being made was that threats of suicide are not to be taken as factual evidence of suicidality.
When the transcript of the speech became publicly available, I had read it with interest, and very quickly became concerned about the competence of the psychologist giving the speech, Wallace Wong. I am a former health care practitioner who is very familiar with professional standards of practice, and with the medical diagnostic process, and I was not impressed with what I read.
The speech was more of a sales pitch than an information session, and the information that was provided left me with plummeting confidence in the BC medical system and in the licensing process of the College of Psychologists of BC.
So, I made a complaint to the College of Psychologists of BC about this psychologist on the basis of this speech, asking that his work be investigated for whether it met the standards of practice for their licensing requirements.
The processing of this complaint has become another of those ghastly comedies often described as Kafka-esque. I don't think a single child's file has been reviewed, although it is 9 months since I complained. Heaven knows how many more children have been put through this toxic process while the College has dithered and doubted and delayed.
My most recent communication from the College states that, under their enabling legislation, the Health Professions Act, if they have not yet completed their investigation within 255 days, they are required to pause the process for 30 days to give the parties an opportunity to appeal the delay to the Health Professions Review Board.
I very much doubt that such an appeal would be worth my time. None of these organizations is in the business of saving foster kids. They are all in the business of preserving and growing their bureaucratic empire, and securing their income and pensions.
This is a severe disappointment to me, and I will tell you why. When I worked as a dietitian in the 1980s, we were not a fully self-regulated profession. As we could not carry our own liability insurance, we could not work independently; we worked under doctor's orders. We were one of several occupations known as a semi-profession, or para-profession.
Through our association (it was not a College) we were lobbying for self-regulatory status. We wanted to be able to open our own practices, or work for a more diverse selection of employers, and we wanted to be responsible for our own work. Although dietetics already took continuing education and standards of practice quite seriously, we needed enabling legislation to put us in control of our own destiny.
There were about 8 other occupations treading the same path, such as dental hygienists and physiotherapists. (Psychologists had been self-regulating since the 1970s) I didn't remain a member of the dietetic profession past 1990, but the group finally got its wish with the 1996 passage of the Health Professions Act.
Because I know that we had such high hopes for self-regulation, it is a real disappointment to me to experience how, in response to complaints, the College of Psychologists has little to offer the public interest except, apparently, protectionism. It is actually even more of a disappointment that being an autonomous, self-regulating profession did not endow the College of Psychologists with the capacity to autonmously resist the onslaught of transgender ideology into its collective psyche.
As I wrote to the College, I should never have had to write my complaint after hearing that 500 foster kids, and 1000 kids in total, had been put through this toxic "transition" process. The College is empowered, under its enabling legislation, to ensure that dangerous emerging practices are nipped in the bud. The College should have reacted with clinical practice reviews after 200 kids... or 100. Or maybe even 50. What number should have alarmed an organization that is mandated to manage licensing & practice of psychologists in the public interest?
If dietitians started recommending a koolaid and poptart diet, and mandating that it be served in provincial foster homes, how long do you think it should take before the College of Dietitians investigates the competence of the dietitians who are working on those files? Should it be when 10 foster kids become obese and ill with related conditions, such as high blood pressure? Or should it be when 100 foster kids are affected? I would argue that by the time FIVE HUNDRED foster kids are obese under the supervision of dietitians, without a collective occupational response, that some severe incompetence is at play in the regulatory body.
Of course, the fact that foster kids are involved also exposes a problem at the responsible ministry in the provincial government. How this is getting past the minister responsible for foster kids, and the minister of health, without alarm bells is a mystery to me. But they may be milking political currency from appearing to be "trans-affirmative," and thus may not care about the kids. By the time the lawsuits begin and the ritual government apology has to be offered for this Sixties Scoop 2.0, they will probably be long out of politics.
But my concern at the moment is the failure of the professional self-regulatory body for psychologists to, well, self-regulate.
It is not a secret that these bodies have trouble keeping their eye on the public interest, even though they are mandated to exist only for that reason. From time to time, scandalous events force political attention to these institutions, and that actually happened just last year in BC. The College of Dentistry reached a state of apparent non-functionality, and the Minister of Health, Adrian Dix - to his credit - requested a detailed review from a British professional regulations expert, Harry Cayton.
The resulting report, published in December 2018, the Cayton report, showed that the flaws in these organizations are structural; that their very make-up precludes attention to the public interest and enables cronyism and corruption.
Most of the Colleges in the health profession have taken notice of the Cayton report. The College of Psychologists is not one of them. There is no more evidence of serious self-awareness in their responses to me than there would have been had the Cayton Report never been written.
Here is a nice little summary of the Cayton Report: https://www.sml-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Greyar236.pdf.
The speech by Dr. Wong can be found here: https://www.docdroid.net/E9rCRzD/dr-w-wong-transcript-feb-28-19.pdf.
I am not entirely comfortable publicizing the contents of my complaint. What I will do is relate the sequence of events:
June 2019
- complaint submitted
- College sends me a form to fill out
August 2019
- College sends me a "to ensure that the College adequately understands your concerns" letter, asking me to provide line and page references to each of the allegations in my complaint, on a 2-week deadline.
- I write back declining to spend additional time reading the transcript again for them.
- a further two letters are sent by the College affirming that they are proceeding without additional information from me.
October 2019
- College sends me a response to my complaint from Dr. Wong, and a separate one from his lawyer, with an option to reply by November 5th.
- College also sends a statement of intention to complete its work by December 24th, 2019.
- I send my response to the responses (!) at the end of the month.
January 2020
- I send some supplementary information to the College, since I have not heard from them and presume the deadline has been missed.
- the College responds with two letters. In one, they explain that under the Health Professions Act, they now have to pause the investigation for 30 days in case I or Dr. Wong want to appeal to the Health Professions Review Board. In another, they ask for more information about the supplementary information I've sent in.
At this moment, I have written back to the College to say I will think about appealing, and declining to send them more information. The inquiry (if any has been started) is on pause until March.
More news when I have it!
*the real interpretation of what he says about suicide is more complicated than this. But due to colloquial speech, this interpretation is common, and the real intent of the comment is subverted. The comment occurs on page 71 of the pdf (or page #70). (edited to add, March 16, 2020)
My request for review of the College of Psychologist's decision has been filed with the Health Professions Review Board.
Update, May 31, 2020:
On May 22, I received a lengthy letter from the College of Psychologists of BC declining to investigate Dr. Wallace Wong.
I have 30 days from that date to appeal to the Health Professions Review Board, which I plan to do.
Original Post:
Yesterday, I posted about my participation in a court case in which a series of trusted occupations - school counsellors and teachers, psychologists, endocrinologists, and lawyers - had joined forces to oust a concerned father from his legal duty to protect his child from a conspiracy to lure the child into believing she was born in the wrong body and needs medical procedures to alter it in order to be happy.
I know that sounds stupid. It is stupid. But not only do these trusted occupations appear to believe this improbable narrative themselves, but also, they expect the public and families to believe it, and they have induced judges, on more than one occasion, to believe it.
During the hearings in this case, frequent reference was made to a public speech given at a library branch by a BC psychologist, in which he claimed to have, as patients in his gender practice, as many as 1001 juvenile patients in the province of British Columbia. Of these, he claimed that 500 were foster kids, being raised in the care of the government.
The speech was cited in court to underline how over-the-top this transgender belief system has become, and how unlikely it is that any of the children being "diagnosed" and "treated" really belong to this vanishingly small demographic for whom their biological sex generates significant emotional distress.
It was also cited because the court had initially bought into the transgender narrative out of an apparent fear of suicide risk for the child, and in the speech, the psychologist appears* to advise his audience, who he presumes include some people who want transgender services, to threaten suicide to enhance their chances of a referral to a transgender clinic and to their drugs or surgery of choice. The point being made was that threats of suicide are not to be taken as factual evidence of suicidality.
When the transcript of the speech became publicly available, I had read it with interest, and very quickly became concerned about the competence of the psychologist giving the speech, Wallace Wong. I am a former health care practitioner who is very familiar with professional standards of practice, and with the medical diagnostic process, and I was not impressed with what I read.
The speech was more of a sales pitch than an information session, and the information that was provided left me with plummeting confidence in the BC medical system and in the licensing process of the College of Psychologists of BC.
So, I made a complaint to the College of Psychologists of BC about this psychologist on the basis of this speech, asking that his work be investigated for whether it met the standards of practice for their licensing requirements.
The processing of this complaint has become another of those ghastly comedies often described as Kafka-esque. I don't think a single child's file has been reviewed, although it is 9 months since I complained. Heaven knows how many more children have been put through this toxic process while the College has dithered and doubted and delayed.
My most recent communication from the College states that, under their enabling legislation, the Health Professions Act, if they have not yet completed their investigation within 255 days, they are required to pause the process for 30 days to give the parties an opportunity to appeal the delay to the Health Professions Review Board.
I very much doubt that such an appeal would be worth my time. None of these organizations is in the business of saving foster kids. They are all in the business of preserving and growing their bureaucratic empire, and securing their income and pensions.
This is a severe disappointment to me, and I will tell you why. When I worked as a dietitian in the 1980s, we were not a fully self-regulated profession. As we could not carry our own liability insurance, we could not work independently; we worked under doctor's orders. We were one of several occupations known as a semi-profession, or para-profession.
Through our association (it was not a College) we were lobbying for self-regulatory status. We wanted to be able to open our own practices, or work for a more diverse selection of employers, and we wanted to be responsible for our own work. Although dietetics already took continuing education and standards of practice quite seriously, we needed enabling legislation to put us in control of our own destiny.
There were about 8 other occupations treading the same path, such as dental hygienists and physiotherapists. (Psychologists had been self-regulating since the 1970s) I didn't remain a member of the dietetic profession past 1990, but the group finally got its wish with the 1996 passage of the Health Professions Act.
Because I know that we had such high hopes for self-regulation, it is a real disappointment to me to experience how, in response to complaints, the College of Psychologists has little to offer the public interest except, apparently, protectionism. It is actually even more of a disappointment that being an autonomous, self-regulating profession did not endow the College of Psychologists with the capacity to autonmously resist the onslaught of transgender ideology into its collective psyche.
As I wrote to the College, I should never have had to write my complaint after hearing that 500 foster kids, and 1000 kids in total, had been put through this toxic "transition" process. The College is empowered, under its enabling legislation, to ensure that dangerous emerging practices are nipped in the bud. The College should have reacted with clinical practice reviews after 200 kids... or 100. Or maybe even 50. What number should have alarmed an organization that is mandated to manage licensing & practice of psychologists in the public interest?
If dietitians started recommending a koolaid and poptart diet, and mandating that it be served in provincial foster homes, how long do you think it should take before the College of Dietitians investigates the competence of the dietitians who are working on those files? Should it be when 10 foster kids become obese and ill with related conditions, such as high blood pressure? Or should it be when 100 foster kids are affected? I would argue that by the time FIVE HUNDRED foster kids are obese under the supervision of dietitians, without a collective occupational response, that some severe incompetence is at play in the regulatory body.
Of course, the fact that foster kids are involved also exposes a problem at the responsible ministry in the provincial government. How this is getting past the minister responsible for foster kids, and the minister of health, without alarm bells is a mystery to me. But they may be milking political currency from appearing to be "trans-affirmative," and thus may not care about the kids. By the time the lawsuits begin and the ritual government apology has to be offered for this Sixties Scoop 2.0, they will probably be long out of politics.
But my concern at the moment is the failure of the professional self-regulatory body for psychologists to, well, self-regulate.
It is not a secret that these bodies have trouble keeping their eye on the public interest, even though they are mandated to exist only for that reason. From time to time, scandalous events force political attention to these institutions, and that actually happened just last year in BC. The College of Dentistry reached a state of apparent non-functionality, and the Minister of Health, Adrian Dix - to his credit - requested a detailed review from a British professional regulations expert, Harry Cayton.
The resulting report, published in December 2018, the Cayton report, showed that the flaws in these organizations are structural; that their very make-up precludes attention to the public interest and enables cronyism and corruption.
Most of the Colleges in the health profession have taken notice of the Cayton report. The College of Psychologists is not one of them. There is no more evidence of serious self-awareness in their responses to me than there would have been had the Cayton Report never been written.
Here is a nice little summary of the Cayton Report: https://www.sml-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Greyar236.pdf.
The speech by Dr. Wong can be found here: https://www.docdroid.net/E9rCRzD/dr-w-wong-transcript-feb-28-19.pdf.
I am not entirely comfortable publicizing the contents of my complaint. What I will do is relate the sequence of events:
June 2019
- complaint submitted
- College sends me a form to fill out
August 2019
- College sends me a "to ensure that the College adequately understands your concerns" letter, asking me to provide line and page references to each of the allegations in my complaint, on a 2-week deadline.
- I write back declining to spend additional time reading the transcript again for them.
- a further two letters are sent by the College affirming that they are proceeding without additional information from me.
October 2019
- College sends me a response to my complaint from Dr. Wong, and a separate one from his lawyer, with an option to reply by November 5th.
- College also sends a statement of intention to complete its work by December 24th, 2019.
- I send my response to the responses (!) at the end of the month.
January 2020
- I send some supplementary information to the College, since I have not heard from them and presume the deadline has been missed.
- the College responds with two letters. In one, they explain that under the Health Professions Act, they now have to pause the investigation for 30 days in case I or Dr. Wong want to appeal to the Health Professions Review Board. In another, they ask for more information about the supplementary information I've sent in.
At this moment, I have written back to the College to say I will think about appealing, and declining to send them more information. The inquiry (if any has been started) is on pause until March.
More news when I have it!
*the real interpretation of what he says about suicide is more complicated than this. But due to colloquial speech, this interpretation is common, and the real intent of the comment is subverted. The comment occurs on page 71 of the pdf (or page #70). (edited to add, March 16, 2020)
This post was edited, January 7, 2021
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