Canada Doubles Down On Diversity, Equity And Inclusion
The Trump presidency has forced Canada to examine its political beliefs. The country has become a hub of left-wing liberalism. Medically assisted-suicide is the fifth leading cause of death. There are no federal laws restricting abortion, and open-door immigration has increased the population to such an extent that the government no longer knows how many hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants are in the country. The court system has become a revolving door for criminals where repeat offenders do not fear punishment, and the court views criminals as victims. Drug consumption sites proliferate, providing users with their high with no hope of recovery. While President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, Canada is doubling down on its vision of equity.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first entered office, he declared that diversity is our strength and began promoting the DEI movement. Canada had always been an inclusive multicultural society well before Trudeau arrived on the scene, and his government weaponized diversity to divide people, placing them into groups based on racial, gender, and ethnic backgrounds, creating resentment that could be leveraged for political purposes.
Trudeau made his cabinet not based on merit but along a fifty-fifty gender split. The country’s Employment Equity Act mandates that federal government agencies and their contractors prioritize diversity in hiring, specifically targeting women and visible minorities. However, the government insists that it does not impose quotas. This raises questions about whether the country’s fiscal crisis may be attributed to its approach of prioritizing equality of outcome in government operations.
According to a poll conducted by Leger for the Association of Canadian Studies, a majority of Canadians oppose equity hiring, more so than Americans. The Liberal government continues to spend tens of millions in taxpayer money funding their anti-racism programs. Trudeau declared that the country is systemically racist and the government’s anti-racism policy hammers home the point:
Racism and racial hierarchy have become institutionalized in many public policy systems and institutions. The legacy of colonialism is the foundation of today’s systemic racism. Racism has influenced the design of policy, programs, services, and legislation and shaped our society, communities, and institutions.
The Prime Minister may have struggled in running the country, but he has been successful in promoting Canada as a “post-national’” society replete with woke ideology.
Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies extend to the fishing industry in the Maritimes, where the federal government controls the industry by using identity-based re-distribution and quotas in reconciliation efforts with indigenous communities. Hundreds of millions are spent to subsidize the commercial Atlantic First Nations fishing business, which includes everything from licenses, boats, and equipment, while the nonindigenous community receives nothing. Jeff Edwards, whose family has run a business for thirty-two years in the area, says, “As a commercial fisherman, I feel like I don’t exist in the eyes of government.”
Mark Milke, the founder of the Aristotle Foundation, believes that there are other factors at work to explain differences between ethnicities. He points to Taiwanese Canadians, who are among the most educated in the country and Indigenous Canadians, who are less well-educated. He refers to geography as one key reason for the problems indigenous people face for their lack of social-economic mobility. And in the world’s second-largest land mass with its various native populations scattered north of the country, Milke states they are in the “middle of nowhere, with no property rights, no ability to build wealth and far from education and career opportunities.” He goes on to say that the Federal government strategy is divisive and it’s simply ill-liberal, and it’s not anti-racist. It is, in fact, promoting a form of racism, of “reverse racism.”
Toronto Metropolitan University, located in the heart of downtown Toronto, was planning to reserve seventy-five percent of its spots in its medical program to equity deserving people. The list includes black people, Indigenous, LGBT, and disabled people. It was on track to happen until Ontario Premier Doug Ford intervened, and the university backed down. “I’m not going to allow universities to use taxpayers’ dollars or students’ tuition money to pay for programs that discriminate against any group of Ontarians,” he stated. Ford achieved a minor victory over DEI, but as a conservative premier whose government invests billions annually in universities, Ford has done little else to curtail or limit the expansion of DEI. The number of highly paid individuals in DEI positions within Ontario’s public sector has increased dramatically over the last decade.
An additional example involves the Canada Research Chair, a prestigious position offered at post-secondary institutions for researchers and leaders. This position is funded by the Liberal government as part of millions allocated for research grants. The Research Chair announced more ambitious equity targets that universities must meet to avoid losing funding. As a result, the emphasis is not on excellence but on fulfilling quotas. Meanwhile, at the University of New Brunswick, the Research Chair in Physics sits empty and will not accept applications from white men. The same is true at Dalhousie University, where white people can’t apply for a chair in industrial engineering.
In the House of Commons, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner asked the president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Ted Hewitt, whether gender, sexual orientation, or race has ever been used to qualify or disqualify Canada Research candidates. Hewitt responded in Orwellian doublespeak: “We pursue policies that were established in the law by the Federal Court and subject to a mediation that was overseen by the Canadian Human Rights Commission,” he said.
One would have thought that equity programs would suffer a serious backlash when long-time school principal Richard Bilkszto committed suicide after a diversity training session went off the rails at the country’s largest school board, the TDSB. Bilkszto disagreed with the trainer, Kike Ojo Thompson’s assessment that Canada is more racist than America. He was told that his view was an example of white supremacy and was publically humiliated. There was little backlash, and in fact, DEI instruction continues to spread throughout the educational system, with concepts like “white privilege” and “implicit bias” ingrained in students’ minds.
David Haskell, associate professor of digital media and cultural studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, conducted a study for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy where DEI training materials and literature from the world’s top social scientific journals were analyzed in aggregate. Not only did DEI instruction fail to make a positive difference, Haskell pointed out that it is making things worse. “There’s clear empirical evidence that certain aspects of DEI instruction lead to greater prejudice and even harm,” he stated.
Martin Luther King had a dream that someday, his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Well, if he could only see what has happened in Canada he would be rolling over in his grave. The problem lies with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which confirms people’s equality but allows for affirmative action programs. The country’s Supreme Court, which is primarily comprised of liberal appointees, tends to favor equity over equality in its rulings. Unless a significant new legal challenge is brought to the court to reassess the status of affirmative action or Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is elected prime minister, DEI programs will continue to thrive and extend its influence throughout every aspect of Canadian society.
