Christopher Dummitt: Four ways Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives can fight woke ideology

By this point it ought to be clear that a future Pierre Poilievre government—despite Liberal fear-mongering—isn’t going to undo Canada’s widely accepted status quo on things like gay marriage and abortion.

But this leaves us with a question: if older social conservatism is out, what could a modern conservative social policy look like?

A new book by British-based Canadian political scientist Eric Kaufmann shows one possible way forward. For several years now, Kaufmann has been at the forefront of those explaining the takeover of our politics and institutions by woke activists and ideas.

Canada is the canary in the coal mine, an example of what happens when a country gets taken over by woke ideology. Whether it’s legally enshrined discriminatory hiring based on DEI quotas or racially based sentencing in the courts or the wholesale takeover of our schools by progressive woke orthodoxy or the public rituals of national humiliation as we saw with the mass graves moral panic, again and again, Canada has been an international symbol of a country that has shown almost no resistance to this illiberal mind virus that sells itself as progressive.

So far conservative premiers and federal Conservative leaders have largely stood back and allowed it to happen. They seem to fear a possible blowback with the inevitable accusations of racism, sexism, or homophobia.

Kaufmann calls this woke’s “radioactive velvet glove.” It hides its illiberalism under the gauze of liberal ideas of inclusiveness and non-discrimination. But not so fast, Kaufmann says. The new woke issues aren’t like those in the past. Fighting discrimination against women and the LGBT community was part and parcel of good liberalism that goes hand in hand with economic fiscal liberalism.

But on topic after topic, from so-called gender-affirming care for adolescents to discriminatory anti-white or anti-Asian DEI policies, wide swathes of the public are not with the woke elite. And, what’s more, the woke ideas don’t align with good liberal beliefs held dear by most Canadians, conservative and many non-conservative alike.

The real question is: what can be done? What could a Poilievre government do to counteract the woke movement?

Kaufmann outlines a 12-point plan but I’ll simplify it to four points and a coda.