Conservatives launch petition to end DEI programs and restore merit

The Conservatives are giving Canadians a way to push back against the wave of woke DEI initiatives.

Source: True North, Facebook

The Conservatives are giving Canadians a way to push back against the wave of woke DEI initiatives.

A petition to get rid of the Liberal government’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs is the latest effort by the federal Conservatives to push back against far-left ideology.

They allege the programs wasted over a billion taxpayer dollars and undermined merit across the country.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre urged Canadians to sign the petition on Thanksgiving Monday.

“Sign here. End DEI. Restore the merit principle,” he said.

The petition was shared four days earlier by Conservative MP Vincent Neil Ho.

“DEI should be dismantled and meritocracy should be restored. Sign here if you agree,” he said.

The petition explains the Liberals spent $1.049 billion on DEI bureaucracy while Canadians struggle to make ends meet.

Recently revealed records show the Liberals spent $1.04 billion in taxpayer money on DEI programs across 29 departments and agencies since 2016.

Some of the spending funded a study exploring how gaming communities on Minecraft and Roblox led to “radicalization” and “violent extremism.”

Another instance showed that over $3.2 million was given to the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce to develop virtual-reality software allowing “intersectional” and women entrepreneurs to practice asking investors for money.

The figures highlighted were requested by MP Neil Ho last year.

He emailed Canadians Tuesday morning, saying the billion-dollar DEI bureaucracy was diverting money away from services Canadians require.

“Under the Liberals’ DEI bureaucracy, research is funded based on checking off enough identity checkboxes. This is incredibly dangerous to science and progress,” he wrote.

“Research funding must reward the best ideas, not political ideology; this is common sense. This approach has undermined academic freedom, silenced dissenting voices, and eroded trust in our Canadian institutions, which were once admirable. Hard-working taxpayers can’t afford to fund ideological activist projects while we face the highest cost of living in decades.”

Conservatives have pledged to restore fiscal discipline in government and end DEI bureaucracies, reallocating taxpayer money to services Canadians need.

“This Liberal government is out of touch, wasting billions on bureaucracy and ideological projects while Canadians face the highest cost of living in decades,” the petition reads.

Neil Ho shared a clip Tuesday morning of himself questioning Anne-Marie Thompson, Vice-President of Discovery and Research Scholarships for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

“She admits she has no research experience — yet the Liberal government put her in charge of handing out $1.4 billion in taxpayer-funded research grants every year,” he wrote. “So why was she appointed? Because under the Liberals, ideology matters more than merit.”

During her testimony, Thompson revealed that her organization’s DEI initiatives were priorities identified by the Liberal government.

However, she refused to comment on the fact that 88 per cent of faculty in Canadian universities are left-leaning, while only 12 per cent are right-leaning, highlighting a lack of viewpoint diversity.

The push to end DEI comes amid growing public scrutiny of taxpayer-funded initiatives promoting identity-based policies.

True North previously exposed a taxpayer-funded ad blitz promoting anti-Canada and pro-DEI views.

The Liberals similarly spent millions of taxpayer dollars on DEI identity-based “safe supply” drug programs.
True North’s investigative series, “Values,” also revealed that Prime Minister Mark Carney was a long-time advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion before pursuing politics.