The Conservative leader's vow to eliminate poorly-defined "ideology" from public university research funding is an echo of the rhetoric used by US President Donald Trump to justify massive funding cuts to climate research south of the border and alarming researchers.

The Conservative Party will end public funding for university research that addresses “woke” topics, according to the Quebec section of the party platform. The platform doesn’t define the term “woke,” and Poilievre hasn’t given a clear answer when asked by reporters.

However, in recent years, the party has increasingly used the term “woke” in speeches, petitions and policy statements to attack the Canadian government’s climate policy.

The right uses the threat of “wokeism” to invoke fear that liberal elites are “remaking the world” and will curtail people’s liberties and status, said Imre Szeman, director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability at the University of Toronto.

One of the most worrisome parts of the Conservatives’ pledge is that “woke” is a category that it can fill with whatever it wants, he said. “This is why “woke” is an adjective that is able to link up all kinds of unrelated practices, beliefs, opinions, and outlooks. What’s 'woke’ is, in the end, anything and everything that bothers them.”

  • brax@sh.itjust.works
    10·
    1 day ago

    It’s wild to me that anybody would vote these morons in. Their platform is nothing short of crying about Trudeau, and their policy declarations literally struggle at the best of times to go more than a point or two without contradicting themselves.

    One of the dumbest was how it goes on to talk about both - how the government shouldn’t interfere with the raising of a child blah blah blah and then goes on to talk about how it won’t allow HRT or gender-affirming care.

    The liberal platform actually has quite a bit of overlap with the conservative platform, but the difference is that they focus a lot on making the country better through reducing regulations on shipping goods between provinces. They also give a lot of examples for points they make, and any time there is potential for a negative, they managed to catch it and state that they would be making sure the negative doesn’t happen - things like cutting back regulations while still ensuring consumer/environmental safety.

    So while cons want to go after our pensions, make us work to our death, and suffer as much as possible, Liberals want to actually strengthen the country and give everybody a better life.

    This country has been plagued by zombies or something.