Conservatives add ‘anti-woke’ pledge to English campaign platform

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at a press conference in Vaughan, Ont., on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor

The Conservatives have updated their English-language platform to include the party’s promised crackdown on “woke ideology.”

That pledge was included in the French-language version when the Conservatives published their much-anticipated platform on Tuesday morning, but was absent from the English one.

The latter has since been updated with an “anti-woke” promise to “put an end to the imposition of the woke ideology in the federal public service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

CTV News asked the Conservative Party why that item was initially omitted, but has not received a response.

Leader Pierre Poilievre had referenced the promise previously on the campaign trail, where he has criticized “woke ideology,” including what he called the Liberal government’s “woke agenda on spending.”

When asked recently to explain what he considers “woke,” Poilievre did not seem keen to define the term.

“Very simply, after a lost Liberal decade of dividing Canadians, turning people against each other and weakening our Armed Forces, we need to put Canada first,” he said, as part of a two-minute answer that touched on a number of his campaign’s regular talking points.

On social media, that part of the Conservative platform has drawn comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump, who vowed to crack down on “woke” policies during his second term, with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs being one key target.

Trump’s government has pressured universities to eliminate those programs, which the White House has called “illegal and immoral,” as part of a list of demands tied to billions of dollars in federal research funding.

With files from The Canadian Press