WHAT IS WOKE ?

The origin of the term woke actually goes back to the 1940s and was used by African Americans to describe awareness to the injustices of discrimination. It gained prominence during the Black Lives Matter movement that was in response to police violence against black Americans. The definition, according to the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary, is aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice) . In actual use it is the updated version of politically correct but with added militant zealousness and an increase in the extent of aggrieved parties. It has grown to include all social injustices and prejudices, including the treatment of ethnic, racial, religious or sexual minorities.

But the idea has been co-opted by people calling themselves "progressives" who say that you are automatically an oppressed victim if you are black, indigenous, LGBTQ, or a woman. The concept of a victim has also been expanded to include anyone who has been made to feel uncomfortable, or been disrespected or offended in any way by someone or something. If you are white, and are not in one of those victim categories, then you are automatically a racist, oppressor, colonizer. Victimhood endows the victim with status in the woke world. "Cancel culture", is used when someone who disagrees with the woke ideology is vilified in mob-like reprisals involving harassment, public shaming, boycotts, and professional scorn. They can be fired from their job or have a human rights complaint made against them.

This ideology is actually being promoted in some programs of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) or (DEI) conducted by corporations and educational institutions or mandated as reeducation for an offending party who disagrees with or questions the woke agenda. It has resulted in reverse racial and ethnic discrimination where the "victims" have been given preferential treatment in hiring or career advancement.

The Employment Equity Act sets quotas for women, visible minorities, Indigenous and disabled people in the federal public sector. It will be expanded so that Black and LGBTQ people will each get their own quotas. The Canada Summer Jobs Program is being funded $230 million for prioritizing work opportunities for disabled, non-white, and LGBTQ youth. Canadian Heritage is getting $10 million to develop a program for subsidizing newsroom positions for non-white journalists, $25 million for "anti-hate" and "anti-racism" (i.e. any disagreement with the woke agenda) programming, and $16 million for advancing DIE in sports. Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) gets $15 million for security at Pride festivals and to fund pro 2SLBTQI+ projects. There is also $25 million for an 2SLGBTQI+ Entrepreneurship Program. $8 million would go to the 2SLGBTQI+ Ecosystem Fund of which $5.2 million is for 17 organizations for programs and resources to promote 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurs. Indigenous mental health, investigations of residential schools, combating residential school denialism, and Indigenous justice initiatives will receive $960 million in 2024 and 2025. This will all total up to at least $800 million per year and will likely be much higher.

There is also something called the Black Justice Strategy by the Liberal government with a report that has recommended a separate judicial system for Black Canadians that includes a Black-dedicated branch within the federal justice and public safety departments. Black identity would be made a factor in sentencing and bail decisions. The agenda would include more employment programs, prioritization for housing, inclusion in school curriculums, black courts, and funding for black businesses, mental health professionals, parental supports, court workers and lawyers. Historic injustice, systemic racism and trauma caused by slavery are given as the justification for these measures, even though most Black Canadians are immigrants from elsewhere and do not have the legacy of slavery in Canada. Many came with the fleeing United Empire Loyalists refugees during the American Revolution. Some were escaped slaves from American masters that were freed by the British. Inexplicably, the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in the United States in 2020 is used as an example of mistreatment in Canada of Black Canadians by police.

Some of the worst supporters of woke ideology are at universities. Wokeness now terrorizes intellectual freedoms on campus. Recent examples include the firing of tenured Mount Royal University Prof. Frances Widdowson for expressing unpopular views on Indigenous issues, the proliferation of race-based hiring programs and the killing of free speech and open discourse by anyone with a contradictory viewpoint. The administrators and educators see themselves instilling in students a set of approved understandings and values that will enable them to conform to a particular social justice perspective and promote social justice goals rather than educating.

Some Canadian medical schools have even joined the DIE lunacy. Queens University has limited the school's accelerated-track admission to Black and Indigenous students only. The University of Calgary, McGill, Dalhousie, and the University of Alberta have created a special admissions path for Black students. There are racial and gender requirements for professors as well. The University of British Columbia's search for a spinal-cord rehabilitation scholar and a research chair for its faculty of dentistry is only open to certain specified groups-people with disabilities, Indigenous people, racialized people, women, and people from minoritized gender identity groups. Unbelievably, this discrimination is legal under Section 42 of the BC Human Rights Code. Similarly, University of Alberta's hunt for a clinician-scientist in medicine isn t open to white men. The federal government strong-arms educational institutions to restrict hiring for federal research grants and other opportunities to members of groups it considers disadvantaged. Specfically excluded are white males. The medical system itself is under attack by activists who want DIE ideology instruction mandatory for doctors and other medical practitioners.

There is a interuniversity agreement called the "Scarborough Charter" which demands that race be intergrated into all aspects of university operations - budgeting, data collection, teaching, professional development, research, etc. Recently, in an attempt to avoid the backlash against DIE policies, and despite being a signatory to the agreement, the University of Alberta put lipstick on a pig by renaming it Access, Community and Belonging (ACB).

The legal profession has also become infected with the same wokeness. The Law Society of Ontario now requires if a legal workplace has 10 or more licensees, the workplace must have a human rights and diversity policy that addresses, at the very least, fair recruitment, retention and advancement. The licensees must appoint a representative (who is a licensee) to report in their Annual Report Filing on the development, implementation and maintenance of that policy.

The Law Society of Alberta has adopted the view that there is systemic discrimination, which is policies, procedures and practices within systems and institutions that result in disproportionate opportunities or disadvantages for people with a common set of characteristics such as age, culture, disability, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and/or socio-economic status in society and in the legal profession. As part of its Cultural Competence and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, it mandates that lawyers complete its Indigenous Cultural Competency Education program. This is despite the fact that the Canadian Criminal Code requires that judges consider aboriginal ethnicity in passing sentences in criminal cases, in other words reducing or eliminating jail time for aboriginal offenders.

Parks Canada has embraced the woke ideology by rewriting history at the sites that it manages by that removing or editing historical references to anyone who isn't Indigenous by labelling them as a racist, oppressor, colonizer. The Anne of Green Gables sites on Prince Edward Island are to have more inclusive histories and "the number of opportunities at the site to engage visitors in learning about and connecting to a diversity of cultures will increase". This is even though they are works of fiction and the novels were written about a white girl in her white community.

The opening of the one-time residence of the first prime minister of Canada Sir John A. Macdonald's Bellevue House in Kingston, Ontario to the public by Parks Canada was a bizarre scene. The speakers at the event, rather than the expected commemoration of the man and his achievements, indulged in Macdonald and Canada bashing. Parks Canada director Jarred Picher said Macdonald's "prime ministership has left deep harms that continue to be felt over 150 years later". Channon Oyeniran, a vice-president of the Ontario Black History Society continued the theme by saying that Macdonald, despite his role on building the country "is also remembered for his harmful, discriminatory and exclusionary views and policies toward various racialized groups of people including Indigenous peoples, Chinese Canadians, Black Canadians and many more". She claimed that Canada was "steeped in racism, colonialism, white supremacy and other legacies of enslavement". She was very confused and historically illiterate by equating slavery that existed in the United States with the Canadian colonies that abolished slavery long before it became a country and before Macdonald became prime minister. Restrictions on the slave trade started in 1793 until slavery was completely abolished in 1834. Canada was the main terminus for the Underground Railroad that helped 30,000 to 40,000 American blacks to escape their enslavement in the United States.

Amy Go, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, claimed that anti-Asian occurrences during the COVID-19 pandemic "can in many ways be traced back to the time when John A. Macdonald and other politicians of the day had portrayed Chinese as foreigners", in a real stretch of her fervent imagination to link the two.

Everything was done to disparage his legacy short of burning him in effigy. The architect of the only transcontinental, bicultural, parliamentary Confederation in the history of the world, his diplomatic achievements with Great Britain and the United States, the building of the trans-Canada railway, and not perfect but reasonable relations with Native people were all ignored. It's a mystery why Parks Canada chose these speakers with an axe to grind and why they bothered to open Macdonald's Bellevue House at all.

One of the battlegrounds between the woke and unwoke is the area of transgenderism, where the practice of using surgery and hormone treatment to change your gender is promoted as a valid biological procedure, even to young teenagers, despite being scientifically impossible and abused by men masquerading as women in sports, women s bathrooms and change rooms, and other areas. See the webpage with the disturbing details on this, kingofwoke.ca/woke