Pierre Poilievre is taking a page out of the global right-wing playbook with promises to tackle “woke ideology” in an ill-defined policy that may impact academic freedom.
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Source: Conservative.ca
With only days left in the campaign, the Conservative Party put out their costed platform on Tuesday. Only a day later, the Conservatives updated the document with a short paragraph about their plans to remove “woke ideology” from universities and the public service.
Titled “Change: For an Affordable Life. For Safe Streets. For Canada First,” the costed platform outlines a four-year plan with $75 billion in tax cuts and $35 billion in new spending. Extremely general on topics of national security and crime, a day after its release, a passage was added to the Québec section of the English edition.
Nestled between a promise to appoint a bilingual Governor General and not to fund a Québec City light rail system is a promise to end the imposition and funding of woke ideology.
“A Conservative government will put an end to the imposition of the Woke ideology in the federal public service,” the platform reads, “and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”
This is an almost word-for-word repeat of a promise Leader Pierre Poilievre made in early April while stumping at a campaign stop in Québec.
Reports by CBC say the party representative told them the phrase being left out of the English platform was an “oversight.” The sentence was included in the original French edition of the platform.
What is concerning is that neither Poilievre nor the Conservatives has defined what they mean by woke ideology, what these policies will look like, and how they will be implemented. The promise of a government to influence where universities allocate research funding has worried experts and educators alike.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) put out a statement, expressing alarm over the Conservative Party of Canada’s pledge to step in on matters of federal research funding.
“It’s worrying that a leader of a political party in Canada would try to dictate how research funds will be granted,” said David Robinson, CAUT executive director, in the press release. “We’ve seen the impact of this political meddling south of the border, where the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on universities and the scientific community. This kind of American-style culture war has no place in Canada.”
Woke, as it is meant now, originated from US Black culture as a term meaning “awake” to the realities of racial prejudice and violence. It appeared in the early 1900s, recorded in protest songs like “Scottsboro Boys" by Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, who called for people to “wake up” and “stay woke.”
While continuing to be used in Black revolutionary political literature and music, it broke through into wider usage during protests against police violence in the United States in 2014. The renewed use was expanded outside the Black racial struggle to include other issues of social justice.
Seized by US Republican politicians and media pundits, the term was quickly recast as an insult. When wielded pejoratively, "woke" can refer to anything the speaker dislikes, often with the implication that progressive policies, anti-racism initiatives, diversity, equity, inclusion, or affirmative action are to blame. It implies wasteful and misguided policy, an intrusion of progressive politics into people's daily lives, and is sometimes cast as authoritarianism.
Throughout his campaign, Poilievre has used woke to express his dismay at most Liberal policies or plans he opposes. An Ottawa University study this year found that in 2019, the term “woke” was used only twice in the context it enjoys now in Parliament. In 2023, MPs had used it 88 times during parliamentary proceedings, 33 times specifically by Poilievre.
Though it is often mentioned in association with policies Conservatives object to, there has not been a consistent definition offered by those who rail against it.
There is only one certainty: Whatever woke is, it is bad.
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network asked the Conservative Party of Canada for clarification of their definition, but did not receive a response to our request for comment by time of publication.
When asked at a campaign stop after the release of the platform to define woke, Poilievre reiterated his campaign talking points related to spending and crime.
In 2023, Poilievre was equally specific when asked a similar question by MP Jenica Atwin, as his response did not include a definition.
"Woke has one purpose and only one purpose. It has plenty of pretexts but only one purpose: control," Poilievre said in Parliament. "It is designed to divide people by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, vaccine status and any other way one can divide people into groups. Why? It is because then one can justify having a government to control all those groups."
More often, woke is something to affix to a sentence as Poilievre castigates anyone or anything he perceives as falling into the woke camp.
In May 2023, Poilievre claimed on the social media platform X that, “The woke wants to delete Mother’s Day.”
Calling it an “ugly and weird ideology,” he accused the Liberals of wanting to “delete everything except the state, which would control everything and everyone.”
The leader has also used the term to lambast people who might question when he pushes historical inaccuracies.
“Woke left goes crazy when people point out the undeniable historical fact that ‘national socialists’ in Germany and Italy were, as the name proves, ‘socialists.’”
National Socialism was a strictly German iteration of fascism and did not appear in Fascist Italy. After Hitler and the National Socialist Workers Party were initially voted into power, the Nazi Party purged communists and socialists from its ranks.
This fact was noted by many, including fellow Conservatives, who responded to the post.
Poilievre is not the only Canadian politician to have deployed the phrase. In a video released to social media, MP Lianne Rood bemoaned “woke paper lids that dissolve in your mouth,” used as part of a trial run at Tim Hortons. In 2022, during her campaign for Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith blamed the “global ‘woke’ establishment” for “causing economic chaos around the world.”
Blaming the woke ideology for the problems of the world has unfortunately become a common feature among conservative and far-right politicians alike. US President Donald Trump cites the “insane woke ideology” as a justification for his administration’s efforts to roll back academic independence. He has specifically threatened to punish academic institutions that do not comply with his orders to remove diversity programs and change admission requirements.
During the signing of executive orders by the president on Wednesday threatening the universities, White House staff secretary Will Scharf said the groups that accredit universities relied on “woke ideology.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pushed through the Individual Freedom Act, better known as the Stop WOKE Act, in 2022, only to have sections that sought to ban diversity and inclusion training permanently blocked by federal courts two years later. Regardless of this ruling, the act continues to prevent the teaching of topics of systemic racism, sexism, and oppression.
DeSantis cited “woke ideology” and “cultural Marxism” when signing the bill, claiming these attempts to “really delegitimize our history and our institutions.”
Outside of North America, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a longtime soldier in the war on woke, has received backing from his parliament for a series of constitutional reforms. These include banning what he called “woke pride parades” in his country. que
Elsewhere in Europe, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has argued that so-called woke policies are destroying the natural family.
Longer than many others, President Vladimir Putin, as well, has waged a campaign against what he views as wokeness inside and outside Russia’s borders.
One of the main battlefields that has been drawn within the “woke” circle has been LGBTQ+ rights, from sexual orientation and gender identity being taught in school to transgender people’s access to gender affirming care.
A contentious issue abroad and in Canada, politicians, including Poilievre, have made negative comments about transgender people. During a 2023 speech in Richmond Hill, ON, he was recorded accusing then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of imposing a “radical gender ideology” on children.
A representative for the leader's office told the Western Standard, “The video stands on its own.”
Rob McKee, a pastor at a controversial Ottawa church, claimed that an officer with the city’s police force invited him to “numerous” protests.
The 33 people standing together outside the Toronto Exhibition Place, chanting slogans, claim to be made up of members of multiple groups from Southern Ontario.
While the parties accept the final results, baseless claims of a stolen election began to circulate before the polls even opened.