DEI is ‘illiberal, anti-merit,’ says analyst as Poilievre pushes to end government DEI programs

2025/10/20 2 Comments

The echo chambers reinforce each other. While some measures of merit are objective, character measures are more challenging. And of course the irony given that much of this discourse comes from South of the border, where merit and character are sorely lacking among many politicians and political appointees:

Bringing an end to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within Canada’s government, as proposed by Pierre Poilievre, would allow people to be chosen for roles based on merit and character, says the founder of a Canadian think tank.

It goes to the basic question of what kind of society you want and what governments should be doing. Governments should not have bureaucracies whose job it is to discriminate based on skin colour, ethnicity, gender,” Mark Milke told National Post.

Milke is the president of Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, which is dedicated to renewing a common-sense approach to public discourse and policy.

He said diversity, in general, within Canada “adds to the potential for greater understanding, for greater economic growth.” But used within the context of DEI, it can lead to restrictions of Canadian identity based on skin colour.

Milke’s comments come after the Conservative leader urged Canadians to show support in shuttering such programs within the government by signing a petition. Poilievre said he wants to “restore the merit principle” in a post on X….

Source: DEI is ‘illiberal, anti-merit,’ says analyst as Poilievre pushes to end government DEI programs

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Ivison: DEI screening comes before merit questions in Canadian university hiring

2025/02/10 Leave a comment

Disappointing that Ivison would cite this tendentious study without background, context, nuance and deeper analysis. And, of course, no real assessment of whether the quality of academics hired has decreased or increased given various inclusion and equity policies. Suspect a mix, as in most hiring:

…But Milke suggested the point is made just as effectively by pre-screening. 

“What they do at the front end is to try and sort through people who they may consider overrepresented, to use an awful word, in a certain profession or faculty.”

He said that merit-based appointments would naturally become more diverse, reflecting the more ethnically diverse country that Canada has become. 

“The problem with diversity, equity, and inclusion, and this attempt to make everything exactly equal at the end and discriminate at the front end to do that, is you’re not looking at merit and qualifications the way that universities claim they are. Instead, you’re basically banning people from the position who don’t fit some irrelevant, non-changeable category.”

Milke said DEI policies entrench the notion that Canada is a systemically racist state. 

“Now, 100 years ago, there was systemic racism. If you were Chinese, for example, you could not get into a white hospital. They had to set up their own hospital. The same with Jewish people in Toronto, which is why Mount Sinai Hospital was set up. But that was 100 years ago. Systemic racism has been outlawed in Canada since the 1950s. You still find individual cases of prejudice, but systemic racism as a policy, as a law, began to be abolished in places like Ontario in the early 1950s.”

Ivison noted that the Trump administration is moving quickly to dismantle DEI in its areas of jurisdiction but that in Canada, the Liberal government has been an enthusiastic cheerleader of the policies, linking DEI hiring to federal funding. 

Milke said he would like to see the federal government reverse direction and admit students and professors based on merit and achievement. 

“The fundamental nature of DEI is flawed and what governments and universities should be doing is saying, ‘look, how can we restructure this? We do want people of all colours, creeds, backgrounds to succeed and help them to do that, but not by focusing on irrelevant characteristics’.

“The more they go down the DEI path, universities are going to capture a segment of the population that believes racism explains all, or mostly all. So, I think a federal government should strongly consider going back to not only Martin Luther King’s vision of equality of the individual (but to) Pierre Trudeau’s vision, in which he believed in the equality of the individual.”

Milke said he believes diversity is a very positive quality and that successful cultures and civilizations need an array of ideas to flourish. 

“These days, we may be admitting too many immigrants at once to have everyone get or provide housing, (but) that’s a separate issue. In the main, cultures that beg, borrow, and steal from each other generally succeed. Diversity is not a bad thing. It can be a very good thing. But not when it’s top down and people look at you and assume because you’re a certain skin colour, you’ve got privilege. I mean, it’s a fallacy.”

Source: Ivison: DEI screening comes before merit questions in Canadian university hiring

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The casual indifference of Dachau’s selfie-taking Holocaust tourists: Mark Milke

2017/06/14 Leave a comment

We did not have the same experience as Milke at Dachau during a fall visit.

However, his points are valid, as selfies and other photos are about the person visiting, not about the place and history, whether it be a concentration camp, great works of art at the Louvre or other galleries etc:

So how to explain this unfortunate phenomenon? I’d like to hope it was only the day I visited: it was sunny that morning which can produce a parallel optimism; perhaps overcast or rainy weather would better provoke a somber mood in those walking around the first Nazi death camp. Or maybe it’s the camp’s proximity to Dachau, the town. Neatly arranged townhouses overlook the bunker, with only a fence and a few metres separating them. Normality long ago returned to Germany, including Dachau, and perhaps it is difficult to sustain a sense of unique horror when everyday life continues around the 84-year-old camp, and when so many of those with direct memories of the horrors are no longer with us.

Whatever the explanation, the casual indifference at Holocaust sites is something others have also begun to notice. Last year, Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa set up cameras at Dachau and also at Sachenhausen (near Berlin) and let them roll. He recorded selfie after selfie, along with all the other self-obsessed behaviour all too common in what he labeled “Holocaust tourism.”

One Guardian columnist, reviewing Loznitsa’s documentary, Austerlitz, suggested selfies be banned at concentration camps, though not photography. That’s a sensible proposal, though I found myself unable to even take my camera out of my backpack; to snap a photograph seemed too casual.

Another approach to confronting self-absorbed selfie tourism: shame. Earlier this year Israeli artist Shahak Shapira superimposed cut-outs people had taken at the Berlin Holocaust memorial (including people engaged in yoga and rap poses) over ghastly Holocaust images of starved camp prisoners and corpses in trains. It helped show the disrespect that Holocaust tourism communicates to the dead and to those who were fortunate enough to survive.

It would be too easy though, to blame the young and engage in generational stereotypes. To complain of the ignorance of youth is to engage in circular reasoning—why should young people be expected to know that which they have not been taught? Or that which has not been emphasized? Fact is, if some children or young adults lack historical knowledge and awareness of why such sites should be treated as akin to holy shrines, with the greatest of reverence and respect, the blame falls elsewhere: on adults who by a lack of instruction, presence or example, fail to signal the importance of sober, even somber, remembrance.

Thus, examples matter: As I exited Dachau, walking along a path from the main gate back to the visitor centre, a forty-something fellow trotted by in the opposite direction. He walked casually, licking a fudgesicle, or popsicle or some similar frozen creation. His gait and casual cluelessness said it all: he was approaching just another “attraction” of sorts, as if he were about to enter Disneyland and not Dachau.

Source: The casual indifference of Dachau’s selfie-taking Holocaust tourists – Macleans.ca

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Why Canadian norms and values matter: Mark Milke

2017/01/07 Leave a comment

Hard not to agree with his general comments but equally hard to square this with the evidence we have that shows the vast majority of new Canadians share these values. But beyond the general values cited – freedom of speech and religion, property rights, the equality of individuals before the law – most of the debates, among ‘old-stock’ and new Canadians alike take place around implementation issues.

And using language like ‘barbaric cultural practices,’ while making some feel better, does not address or engage the people from communities where these are issues. A better approach – one that I suggested without success – was to have a paragraph that talked about the history of greater gender equality, and then note that gender-based violence such as ‘honour killings’ were against the law and values:

Canada’s credo is not robustly “idea obvious,” but it is derived from British and French influences and thus includes assumptions about freedom, the rule of law, the necessary division of power and so forth.

To place these ideas at the pinnacle of a country’s self-understanding means anyone is potentially welcome – provided they commit to the ideas and the norms that flow from them: freedom of speech and religion, property rights, the equality of individuals before the law. Anyone can rally to these; it matters little whether one was born in Buffalo, Beijing, Beirut or Barrie.

Critically, and however imperfectly, countries that practise civic-based citizenship are able to integrate and unite otherwise diverse peoples if the focus is kept on shared, defensible concepts. They run into trouble when they forget that or pretend that all ideas are created alike.

But this assumes a robust defence of desirable norms and a frank hostility to cultural or religious practices that, for instance, subjugate women.

This also has ramifications for immigration and the unrealistic assumption that any potential applicant will eventually integrate and accept existing Canadian norms. (For those who glibly believe this, invite 10 million Texans who believe in the right to bear arms to settle in Toronto, then see if policy discussions and voting patterns are not permanently affected.)

None of this means Canada should end immigration from certain countries. It means being realistic about who is likely to integrate and who will not: A young female physician from Islamabad who wishes to escape oppressive cultural and religious assumptions should be welcome; a 60-year-old village elder from Kohistan in northwestern Pakistan, where five girls were reportedly killed for dancing, probably not.

The least we can do is insist that certain Canadian norms do matter – and without apology.

This is why Justin Trudeau, then the Liberal immigration critic, was wrong to shy away from revisions to Canada’s citizenship guide in 2011 that read: “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, ‘honour killings,’ female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.” Mr. Trudeau objected to the term “barbaric.” He argued that a government guide should make an “attempt at responsible neutrality” in language, a position he later backed away from.

Countries cemented on a shared set of ideas and ideals will always need to unapologetically demand that anyone who wishes to join subscribe to those ideas and ideals.

Unite around laudable ideas and people will be less likely to fall into the abyss of division created by irreconcilable and unchangeable characteristics.

Source: Why Canadian norms and values matter – The Globe and Mail

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Jason Kenney and a guy at the Fraser Institute trade blows in Twitter cat fight | Press Progress

2014/09/15 Leave a comment

A great example of how to use Twitter to debate, and another demonstration of why Jason Kenney is such a strong minister (his series of tweets with Bob Rae is another example Jason Kenney Blasts Bob Rae’s ‘Obscene’ Temporary Foreign Workers Tweet).

Kenney  engages equally with those on the right as with those on the centre and left:

Jason Kenney and a guy at the Fraser Institute trade blows in Twitter cat fight | Press Progress.

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