Polling proves they dislike the ideology just as much as Americans and Brits do
Canadians have nearly identical views on culture war issues to Americans and Britons. Across some fifty questions concerning free speech, national heritage, and transgender issues, Canadians, like Britons and Americans, lean around two-to-one against the “woke” cultural socialist option and in favour of cultural liberalism or conservatism. This is the story that emerges from my new report for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, “The Politics of the Culture Wars in Canada.”
Woke refers to the sacralization of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups. This belief system elevates equal outcomes and emotional harm protection for such groups as its highest value. As a result, woke activists seek to cancel speakers or historical figures deemed to be offending the sensibilities of the most hypothetically sensitive member of a minority group. In this clash of values, cultural socialism trumps expressive freedom and symbolic attachment.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has distinguished himself on the world stage as the paragon of this belief system, and many outside Canada assume he reflects an equally woke Canadian public. But is this truly the case? To better understand Canadian views, The Macdonald-Laurier Institute asked Maru Public Opinion Polls to conduct a nationally representative survey of 1,500 adults, in which I fielded numerous questions previously put to American and British samples.
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Eric Kaufmann is professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute.
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