As the federal election campaign tightly focuses on the ongoing trade war with America, we must also consider the implications for Canada of the culture war – in particular Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s weaponization of the word “woke” and what he means by promising action against it.

The term woke is rooted in the African-American experience of racialized violence and originally meant being aware of racial injustice. Progressives then adopted it to encompass broader societal injustices related to feminist, LGBTQ+ and intersectional concerns.

However, Poilievre and his party are following the lead of Donald Trump and the far right in the U.S. by purposefully inverting its meaning, recasting social justice advocacy as an authoritarian threat.

As Canadians head to the polls in the April 28 election, it’s important to reiterate what Poilievre’s anti-woke crusade is – an exploitative strategy designed to stoke fears and resentment, entrench divisions and legitimize extreme positions in mainstream politics.

In addition, his repeated use of the term, coupled with a lack of detail about his anti-woke policies in key areas, evoke fears that he could emulate Trump’s policies against equity-deserving groups in Canada.

For example, in a recent interview, Poilievre said he wants to eradicate the woke culture which he said was forced into the Canadian Armed Forces by the Trudeau Liberals. “We will rebuild our military, and our soldiers will once again, have a warrior culture, not a woke culture.”

He provided no details but does that mean mass firings of top Canadian military leaders who enacted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, or attempts to remove LGBTQ+ members from military service, as Trump did?

Poilievre has also argued that wokeism “invented in many ways” race, arguing it “seeks to divide people into different groups.” He urged Canada to “put aside . . . this obsession with race.”

Does that mean he would try to delete historic references to discrimination, as Trump is doing in the U.S.?

Use of woke as insult

Our recently published research analyzing Canadian parliamentary uses of “woke” underscores how calculated this shift has been.

In 2019, Hansard records show just two mentions of the word. By 2023, Conservative use had surged to 63 times. Poilievre alone was responsible for 33 instances that year, making woke a pillar of his political rhetoric.

Now, in campaign communications, Poilievre and the Conservatives continue to use woke as shorthand for a supposedly dangerous ideological enemy that they promise to defeat through a “Canada First” agenda – a clear echo of Trump’s “America First.”

This isn’t just talk. In 2022, Poilievre hand-delivered coffee and donuts to so-called Freedom Convoy protesters who occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks, legitimizing a movement with documented extremist connections while positioning himself as a defender of freedom against woke control.

More recently, while launching his Quebec election platform, Poilievre pledged to end “the imposition of woke ideology in the federal public service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

This pledge closely mirrors Trump’s unfolding war against DEI, which has included direct attacks on academic freedom, defunding research and threats to universities for not conforming to his ideological agenda.

In Canada, shades of what Poilievre is pledging are already taking shape.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government – closely aligned with Poilievre’s federal ambitions – has used anti-woke language to justify sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, echoing Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s restrictive Parents’ Bill of Rights.

Echoes of the U.S. far-right are no coincidence

Poilievre’s strategy of portraying woke as an existential threat isn’t unique. It’s part of a broader, troubling alignment with American far-right politics. Just recently, Smith praised Poilievre on the far-right platform Breitbart, explicitly positioning herself and the federal Conservative leader as “in sync” with Trump’s politics.

This then garnered endorsements from notable right-wing figures, including Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Conrad Black and Alex Jones.

While Poilievre portrays himself as defending Canada against Trump’s economic aggression, his cultural rhetoric tells a different story. He’s not resisting Trump’s tactics. He’s importing them.

When Poilievre declared in Parliament that woke has “one purpose . . . control,” he deliberately and dishonestly twisted a term rooted in principles of social justice into something sinister.

According to this distorted framing, being woke means dividing Canadians by race, gender, ethnicity, religion and vaccine status to justify increased government control. The irony is, of course, profound.

While Poilievre conjures imaginary woke authoritarians, a real authoritarian threat is unfolding south of our border. Trump’s presidency has seen unprecedented attacks on judicial independence, democratic norms and fundamental rights, yet Poilievre conspicuously avoids criticizing this genuine democratic erosion.

The normalization of such discourse has tangible consequences. Police-reported hate crimes surged by 32 per cent between 2022-23, totalling a staggering 145-per-cent increase since 2019. As well, attacks motivated by sexual orientation were up nearly 70 per cent in one year alone.

Politicians demonizing marginalized groups under the guise of opposing woke culture embolden acts of discrimination and violence.

Action is needed to counter this abuse of language

All political leaders share responsibility for confronting this dangerous rhetoric, yet they have largely failed to meet this challenge.

What is particularly concerning is the ineffectiveness of responses to this rhetorical strategy. Our research reveals that when Liberal, NDP and Bloc MPs challenged Conservatives’ use of woke, they often inadvertently reinforced its negative framing.

Most responses either accepted the term as an insult without questioning its meaning or attempting to reclaim it through positive self-presentation and without addressing its appropriation by the far-right. Only once in our study did an MP explicitly identify this language that way.

Politicians must confront the normalization of far-right language. Rather than treating woke as merely a partisan insult, they must explicitly call out the strategic inversion of its meaning and reject attempts to normalize extremist discourse.

By failing to do so, they become unwitting participants in the normalization of rhetoric undermining the foundations of the inclusive democracy they claim to defend.

If we allow language to be hijacked and truth to be inverted, we risk more than polarization. We risk erasing the values of inclusion and fairness that underpin Canada’s democratic fabric.