CBC's Coordinated Attack on Amy Hamm

BARBARA FINDLAY plays dirty

This week, the witch trial of Amy Hamm resumed after 10 previous days of proceedings in late 2022 and early 2023. You can check out my overview of the first half of the hearing over on Reduxx: A Canadian Nurse Understood Biology… Now She Risks Losing Her License.

It continues to be infuriating to watch a regulatory body try to take Amy’s nursing license away because a couple of aspiring Stasi didn’t like that she recognizes biological facts and expressed support for J.K. Rowling. What has been particularly abhorrent this time around is the fact that Canada’s national broadcaster, CBC, has joined the witch hunt with gusto.

It started the weekend before the hearing resumed when CBC published an article by Jonathan Montpetit and a 10-minute video segment on CBC’s The National on Toronto psychologist Dr. James Cantor: U.S. conservatives are using Canadian research to justify anti-trans laws. Dr. Cantor was about to be called as a witness by Amy’s defense team—something that was not public knowledge at the time.

The article and video insinuate that Dr. Cantor, who has testified in 25 cases relating to trans issues in the U.S., is not qualified to speak on the issue and is doing it only for the money.

Might the timing of Montpetit’s article and The National segment have been a coincidence? It was possible, but I highly doubted it.

After the first day of the hearing, CBC also published a hit piece by Bethany Lindsay on Amy herself: Nurse's 'discriminatory and derogatory' comments on transgender people at issue in B.C. hearing.

In the piece, Lindsay not only attacks Amy for the crime of referring to men with male pronouns, but she also defames J.K. Rowling by claiming that the beloved author has made “public anti-trans statements.”

(Some time after Amy pointed this defamatory claim out on X, the piece was edited to say that Rowling’s public comments have been “criticized as anti-trans.” Thankfully, the original wording was archived.)

Original wording in Lindsay’s article.

Edited version.

Lindsay also references Dr. Cantor as “a Canadian psychologist who has become increasingly popular with U.S. conservatives implementing anti-trans laws,” linking back to Montpetit’s article, which was now looking like less of a coincidence.

Then, on the second day of the hearing, I became pretty much convinced that there was collusion going on here.

When it came time for British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) counsel Barbara Findlay (who spells her name without capital letters, but I don’t) to cross-examine Dr. Cantor on his qualifications, she attempted to play the CBC video segment.

Amy’s lawyer, Karen Bastow, objected on the basis that the video was inflammatory. The panel ruled in favor of the objection, but Findlay continued to insist that she had to show the video because Dr. Cantor could not remember, word-for-word, a particular statement he had made in it. Bastow objected again, and the panel suggested forwarding the video to Dr. Cantor over lunch for review, with Bastow registering another objection to the video’s potential future use.

On day three, the CBC segment, or rather the information in it, came up again when Findlay noted that Dr. Cantor’s income had doubled appearing as an expert in cases about transgender issues.

Dr. Cantor agreed that it had and said that he had essentially taken a sabbatical from seeing clients in order to make room for these cases. He did, however, note that Amy’s case is different from almost all of the others that he had done, which were all funded by governments. He was appearing here at a rate “far, far less” than he would typically earn for seeing clients, meaning that he was appearing at a financial loss. He also noted that he has greater flexibility than most experts on this topic, so he made himself available.

We will know if Dr. Cantor has been qualified as an expert witness when the hearing resumes on October 31. Hopefully, the panel will make the correct choice.

Since this hearing started, BCCNM counsel has been desperate to disqualify Amy’s witnesses—all of them incredibly knowledgeable and respected people in their areas of expertise—because their entire narrative is that there is no debate around these issues. In her closing words during the first round of the hearing, BARBARA FINDLAY even said, verbatim, “There is no debate here.”

If that were the case, she wouldn’t have to stoop as low as she has to prevent Amy from having any sort of defense. The apparent collusion with CBC and other shenanigans that have taken place during this hearing smell of desperation. These are the antics of wannabe authoritarians who thought they controlled the narrative and who think they alone deserve to control the narrative, which makes them justified to hang on to that power at any cost.

The mask is slipping, it’s just a question of whether enough people will wake up and see it.

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