Pierre Poilievre actually likes 'woke ideology', when it gets him votes

Commentators have rightly voiced alarm at Pierre Poilievre’s promise to ‘end woke ideology’.

As the Montreal Gazette reports in its story about the Conservative Party’s “Quebec platform,” Poilievre will “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research,” a promise strikingly familiar to policies of Donald Trump, who is currently at work destroying governing institutions and trying to crush universities.

But I want to offer a brief point I haven’t seen made anywhere else: at the same time as he is promising to ‘end woke ideology’, Poilievre is promising to protect the French language and promote Quebec culture.

Has it occurred to anyone that these two promises are diametrically opposed? What is official bilingualism policy and employment and promotion rules and practices of the federal public service if not DEI for francophones?

After centuries of attempting to assimilate francophones, Canada finally established new laws and approaches designed to ensure their equitable inclusion in the national government, including through the Official Languages Act of 1969 and the recognition of the importance of French in employment equity policies. This is, by any definition, part of a perfectly sensible DEI approach.

So, someone needs to ask Mr. Poilievre (and perhaps, Quebecers, who Poilievre apparently believes will strongly support his opposition to DEI), why is ‘woke ideology’ okay as it applies to francophones but not okay when applied to things like race or gender identity?