A fairly pervasive strain of MAGA-ism that infected the Conservative Party of Canada fairly early in Pierre Poilievre’s time as leader was the constant focus on “wokeism” that they would frequently use to bash the Justin Trudeau-led government. Poilievre denouncing “woke ideology” has been a common refrain in his speeches, and his finance critic, Jasraj Hallan, even uttered variations of the phrase “Go woke, go broke” in debate in Question Period on a number of occasions while hectoring now-former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, with the implication seemingly being that a certain amount of bigotry is required for the economy to function smoothly. Nevertheless, as Trumpism is now causing chaos globally, one of the very Trumpian things that Poilievre continues to draw upon in his policies and in his rally speeches is the continued insistence on fighting “woke ideology.”

Of course, Poilievre won’t actually define what he considers to be “woke ideology,” but you can be pretty sure that it’s somewhere between the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) that U.S. president Donald Trump has successfully vilified, and anything else Poilievre doesn’t like, no matter how far it strays away from the original definition of “woke,” which was being aware of racial inequities. “Fighting the woke ideology” features in the party’s Quebec-specific party platform.

“A Conservative government would put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research,” the document says, per the Montreal Gazette. You can see Poilievre in a speech talk about how he plans to ensure that funding for university research goes to science and technology and not to “radical political ideology.”

To an extent, the inclusion in the Quebec-specific platform references particular bugaboos that the Bloc Québécois raised during Question Period, where they denounced the fact that the prime minister’s special representative on combatting Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, suggested that Quebec universities could hire more Muslim professors. Conservatives are not above winking and nodding to xenophobia, particularly in Quebec, where Premier François Legault has outright said that his “secularism” laws are targeting “Islamists” with things like public prayer bans. It also is somewhat ironic because the focus on requiring bilingualism within federal positions is in and of itself a kind of DEI measure for Quebeckers and francophones within the federal government, but it wouldn’t be the first time that this kind of hypocritical stance is rationalized away.

The mention of the federal civil service, however, is certainly the bigger concern as we look at the damage that Elon Musk’s “DOGE” crew has been wreaking on the American government. As Poilievre is promising to “cut bureaucracy,” there are likely targets within government department that would fill both that mandate, as well as his pledge to fight “woke ideology,” starting with the elimination of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) as a department, and doing away with things like Gender-Based Analysis Plus, which is supposed to measure how women and minorities are affected by government policies (even if the government has been pretty poor at actually doing the work of measuring it). You can also bet that eliminating WAGE would also ensure the destruction of initiatives like the 2SLGBTQI+ Secretariat, or the Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat within the government.

It could likely mean the end of employment equity legislation (which is already lacking when it comes to queer and trans people) and the Canada Labour Code, though that would only apply to federally regulated workplaces, which constitutes around 10 percent of businesses around the country. Any diversity initiatives within government, whether that has to do with hiring targets or program assistance designed to help under-served minority communities would need to be excised, whether that’s in funding applications or other criteria.

It could very easily be argued that things like Crown-Indigenous Relations or the treaty claims processes undertaken by the Department of Justice would fall under “woke” categories, and rationalized away with things like Poilievre claiming he’s advancing “economic reconciliation” by giving First Nations a greater share of resource revenues from major projects like oil and gas wells or pipelines (which is also treated as a kind of bribe to ensure that the don’t participate in or hold up any environmental assessment process). After all, things like land acknowledgements are often derided by the “anti-woke” crowd as “virtue-signalling,” which they make a point of stamping out.

As for federal funding for universities, Poilievre has previously said the wants to ensure that federal funds are withheld from universities that don’t allow “free speech” on their campuses (and by “free speech,” they mean things like talks by “controversial” figures such as “gender critical” speakers or anti-abortion activists, rather than anyone speaking out about the situation in Gaza, because of course, that’s different). It would mean directing Tri-council grants to go on a witch hunt for “woke terminology” in their funding applications, and we’ve already seen how that turned out in the U.S., where terms like “diversity” were singled out when it could refer to things like studies in biodiversity, or the infamous example of cancer studies that use transgenic mice being defunded because they tripped the keyword of “trans” in their funding applications.

The irony in all of this is the fact that going on these hunts for “woke ideology” in government is almost certainly going to take up even more time and resources than they would claim to save by eliminating it, even though we know that the savings are not actually the point, even if they claim that they are. Poilievre may be trying to outwardly distance himself a bit more from Trump since the advent of the trade war (though even then, he has been tepid in his denunciations and keeps insisting that there is a rational path to an even closer trading relationship). But he has relied so heavily on Trump-like tactics and tropes as part of his appeal to the far-right base, he must rely upon them even more heavily now that the centrist vote in the country has swung hard toward the direction of Mark Carney and the Liberals. Nevertheless, Poilievre keeps bringing up his war on woke ideology in his speeches, meaning that he thinks it’s a winner for his voters, and that should have us all concerned.

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