Absurd Ideologies Have Lost The Public Square But Still Control Canadian Institutions

Editor’s note: This piece was originally published on October 9th in the Epoch Times.

Social media is less censored than it was a few years ago, corporations are more hesitant to take divisive political stances, and the public is more emboldened to voice unorthodox views.

Yet key institutions such as schools and government bureaucracies are still controlled by adherents of fringe views which claim that society is fundamentally racist and sexist, that race should be woven into policy, and that discrimination is justified in the pursuit of “equity.”

Many Canadian universities continue to instill a brittle conformity with this worldview rather than an open-ended search for truth.

The same is also true for Canadian public schools, where unfounded ideologies continue to play a part in the formation of young minds.

In a post on X on Sept. 16, Canadian writer and commentator Jonathan Kay shared an image of a slide from an all-staff meeting at a York Region District elementary school. The slide, titled “Anti-Oppressive Agreements,” featured a number of bizarre statements such as “I will accept that the institution of Education is an instrumental tool for maintaining and furthering the ideology of white supremacy.”

The trend of ideological influence in classrooms has become so pronounced that it has become a hot-button political issue in several provinces.

In January of this year, a viral clip circulated of an Edmonton teacher giving a long monologue to his students criticizing conservative politics in Alberta. Premier Danielle Smith responded by saying she was “deeply disappointed” and that “teachers have a duty to remain professional and politically neutral in the classroom.”

Smith’s government pursued the issue of ideology in schools with An Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms and Amend the Education Act. The bill, which came into effect in May of this year, seeks to ensure lessons are “fair, impartial, neutral and free of personal bias.”

Ideology in classrooms has become one element of the election in British Columbia, with B.C. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson pledging to end the province’s controversial Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) program in schools. “I think the province needs to get back to teaching arithmetic and reading and things that I think most parents see to be very important,” he said.

While absurd ideologies reign on university campuses and in public school classrooms, adult citizens are regularly punished for non-conformity with said ideologies long after graduation by human rights tribunals.

One of the most recent cases handed down by one of these bizarre, quasi-judicial bodies came in September, when the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered a family doctor to pay $28,100 in legal costs and fines after he refused in 2021 to inject a transgender teenager with the puberty-blocking drug Lupron.

At the federal level, the Carney government is prioritizing economic considerations over the identity issues favoured by the previous Trudeau government. Yet, Ottawa continues to incorporate race and gender into hiring and funding decisions just as before.

Canadian universities, for instance, are told to meet identity quotas in order to obtain federal research funding. The Canada Research Chairs Program (CRCP) is explicit about this, calling these quotas “Population-Based Institutional Equity Targets.” The CRCP actually keeps a public list of their current “targets.” Currently, the quota is “50.9% women and gender equity-seeking groups, 4.9% Indigenous Peoples, 7.5% persons with disabilities and 22% racialized individuals.”

Ideologies centred on equity, decolonization, race-based policymaking, the prioritization of lived experience over evidence, and the rejection of a colourblind society have lost major ground in the public consciousness, but are alive and well in their last bastions of power: the institutions claiming to represent the public.