Debra Thompson, associate professor of political science and the Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University, is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Months before President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, American corporations began to bend the knee. Their sacrificial lamb of choice? The retraction or wholesale abandonment of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
In a flurry of announcements, Walmart, Meta, Amazon, McDonald’s and others have declared that they are rolling back their DEI initiatives. More will undoubtedly follow, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s first barrage of executive orders that terminated all federal DEI programs, suspended public servants in those offices, revoked an executive order from 1965 that prohibited discriminatory hiring practices for private government contractors, recognized male and female as the only two sexes, and threatened to investigate private-sector DEI initiatives for compliance.
Workplace diversity initiatives of all kinds that aim to promote hiring and advancement of racial minorities, women and other disadvantaged groups, such as LGBTQ employees and people with disabilities, are being rolled back. This includes things such as chief diversity officers, partnerships with external minority organizations, mandatory trainings and special events.
The writing is on the wall. The Trump administration is openly and viciously hostile to DEI, which he equates with incompetence, without any evidence whatsoever. Whereas those who are morally ambivalent about systemic racism, the gender wage gap and workplace protections for LGBTQ folks could once be persuaded (and yes, often shamed) into being on the right side of history, the scramble now is to get on the right side of a President who, like many autocrats, craves flattery and demands fealty.
Demonstrators in Toronto show support for integration in the southern United States with a march down Yonge Street on June 22, 1963.Harry McLorinan/The Globe and Mail
DEI’s undoing, however, precedes Mr. Trump by decades. This moment was wrought by the long-term strategy of conservative activists seeking to unravel the legislative victories of the civil rights movement. Affirmative action in college admissions, finally dealt a death blow by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023, didn’t just fall by itself; it was the handiwork of Edward Blum, a legal activist who had purposefully and meticulously leveraged the legal system since the 1990s to exactly this end. So, too, has the pressure to abandon DEI in corporate America been deliberately engineered by people like conservative commentator Robby Starbuck, who claims credit for causing the shift in policies in a number of American companies. Mr. Trump’s reign also provides a convenient cover to those organizations that were never really on board with the progressive pressure of post-2020. Last in, first out.
Corporations, C-suite suits and shareholders aren’t loyal to Mr. Trump per se; they’re loyal to the prospect of profitability. When the pluralistic vision of American nationalism was considered edgy and subversive, corporations jumped on board. Sometimes controversy, and the willingness to take on the haters, sells. Cheerios, for example, debuted a commercial featuring a mixed-race family in 2013 and Coca-Cola’s 2014 Super Bowl ad featured a multilingual rendition of America the Beautiful. Both brands got a lot of hate and calls for boycotts, but it was easy, in an era that coincided with the first Black president of the United States, to dismiss chatter as racist rantings left behind by the better angels of our nature. When the fight against racism and sexism was marketable, the private sector declared itself to be, unironically yet always problematically, striving toward becoming profitably woke.
But the anti-DEI backlash is now upon us. The once ostracized grumblings are now a tidal wave of resentment – and, since Mr. Trump won the election, equal parts jubilation and, here in Canada, foreboding.
The Canadian backlash against DEI cannot just be reduced to spillover effects from the changing political landscape in the United States. It is homegrown, locally inflected and rapidly intensifying.
During his interview with controversial culture warrior Jordan Peterson, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Canadians should abandon hyphenated identities and must “put aside race, this obsession with race that wokeism has reinserted.” A substantial part of the Conservative Party’s campaign strategy for the upcoming election is to increase the salience of those issues that define the so-called culture wars. Branding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “woke,” in this political moment, is playing a new kind of dog-whistle politics.
The backlash against DEI in corporate Canada is on the horizon. And in Canada, there’s a good chance that the backlash will be more substantial than our southern neighbours, because as much as the rhetoric of DEI has always been embattled, in Canada, it’s often just that – rhetoric. DEI in corporate Canada has never been government-mandated, has often been sabotaged or poorly implemented, and has rarely been the affront to merit and excellence that its detractors claim it is.
DEI isn’t just a sacrificial lamb. It’s a red herring. The critics of DEI purposefully misconstrue its purpose and power while simultaneously leveraging anti-woke rhetoric to fuel a simmering sense of grievance that is not based in any empirical reality. And while the loud minority overruns the comments section to condemn DEI without understanding what it does and doesn’t do, we all bear witness to the demise of the Canada that could have been.
Rhetoric, ruses, and reality
Civil rights demonstrators march in Toronto on June 22, 1963. Racial discrimination may be worse in the southern states, but it also exists in Canada, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, who was among the 200 marchers, declared.Harry McLorinan/The Globe and Mail
The arguments against DEI are stale and simplistic, which is why they are convincing. Opponents claim that identity politics are divisive and polarizing. They say systemic racism, sexism and homophobia don’t exist in Canada – that they are imported American ideas that are being applied in a country where they don’t belong. White, straight men are the real victims, now the most truly disadvantaged segment of the population. Minority groups are seeking special treatment. DEI gives preference to unworthy candidates at the expense of excellence and merit. And, invariably: We must judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.
These arguments are all, to varying degrees, straw men. Their proponents cherry-pick evidence to distort the reasons, realities and results of DEI. It’s not unlike how they shamelessly weaponize a single line from Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech while conveniently eliding his fight against all forms of systemic discrimination, including economic injustice.
Of these claims about the dangers of DEI, the meritocracy trap is the most pervasive and complex, and therefore the most harmful. It is tied deeply to the ideological core of Canadian democracy, those (small-l) liberal beliefs in the primacy of individualism, universalism and progress. Some tech leaders are now promoting “MEI” – merit, excellence and intelligence – as a challenge to DEI, and in doing so, implying that people from diverse backgrounds do not inherently possess those characteristics. And because in Canada we view ourselves as more reasonable than Americans – our racism less harmful and less institutionalized than in the United States, our intentions intractably good, our social safety net broader, our political leaders less insane – we also implicitly believe that our country is fundamentally more meritocratic.
We are hard-wired to believe that success in Canada comes through hard work, education, perseverance, talent and ingenuity, and not privilege, access to networks, socialization into white-collar professional norms or mere happenstance. Most people are excessively unaware of the extent to which government policies influence their fortunes, and that the largest benefits, often enshrined in tax codes, are reserved for the most affluent among us.
The past decade, however, has wrought three major global convulsions that have upended our ideas about the role of government in society: the first Trump presidency and the rise of right-wing populism worldwide; the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated controversial government mandates; and the global protests against police violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
Together, this confluence has led to a ubiquitous societal feeling that “the left” has gone too far in its demands for a different social contract. It’s an undeniably emotional response to what has been an unprecedented decade of social upheaval. Dr. Rupa Banerjee, Canada Research Chair and associate professor of human resource management and organizational behaviour at Toronto Metropolitan University, agrees. “The story of the backlash against DEI is that there was never really a spine to hold it up in the first place,” she said. “That’s why we didn’t see changes in hard numbers in terms of earnings gaps, leadership profiles and board memberships. If we compare outcomes for Canadian-born racialized workers across generations, the situation hasn’t improved.” The backlash, she said, is against progress that never really happened.
The anti-DEI sentiment is just that: a feeling. But emotions aren’t evidence. And what the evidence points to is the reality that our inequalities are deeply entrenched, puzzlingly pervasive and 100 per cent Canadian.
There is persistent racial economic inequality in Canada; depending on the racial group, earnings and wealth gaps persist even at similar levels of educational attainment and can last for generations. Nearly half of lesbian or gay people report experiencing discrimination in the workplace based on their sexual orientation. As of 2022, women earn, on average, 84 cents for every dollar earned by men. The gender pay gap is prevalent even at executive levels: on average, women executives make 56 per cent less than men executives, while racialized women executives make 32 percent less than white women executives. A recent survey indicates that a mere 32 per cent of Canadians surveyed believe their workplace is a safe environment for them to even disclose their disabilities to others. And as we approach the 10-year anniversary of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the gaps between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples in income, employment, education, housing, foster care and incarceration endure.
To put it bluntly: if DEI was really the behemoth critics say it is, we would not see the entrenched inequalities that characterize the Canadian labour market.
Despite the claim that DEI encompasses preferential (and reading between the lines, undeserved) hiring practices, it does no such thing. When we speak of DEI initiatives in Canada, we are talking about employee resource groups, perhaps a special event for Black History Month or Truth and Reconciliation Day, mentorship programs, unconscious bias training or flexible workplace policies.
There are no “diversity hiring quotas” here; there is no affirmative action in Canada. Instead, our employment equity legislation, first passed in 1986 and revamped in 1995, is weak, ineffective and hampered by a lack of data. Employment equity seeks to remove barriers to the full participation of women, racialized people, and persons with disabilities in Canadian economic life. It applies only to a limited number of federally regulated industries and workplaces; though the federal government is the largest employer in the country, the Act nevertheless covers a mere 8 per cent of the Canadian work force. A 2023, a 496-page review of the Employment Equity Act, led by McGill University law professor Adelle Blackett, revealed that the last time a federally regulated private sector employer was penalized for failing to file reports on the composition of its work force – one of the few enforcement mechanisms of the legislation – was 1991, for a fine of $3,000.
Voluntary initiatives fare no better. Some of the largest players in corporate Canada made high-profile commitments to the BlackNorth Initiative in the summer of 2020, promising to make progress toward increased representation of Black employees and executives. A Globe and Mail report in 2022 demonstrated that only 10 per cent of the 481 companies that signed the pledge had made any progress two years later. But 70 per cent either did not respond to The Globe’s survey or said they did not track those data.
While it isn’t wrong to valourize grit, intelligence, excellence and perseverance, the reality is that there is very little that is meritocratic about the way labour markets operate. Hiring often happens through informal networks, which privilege those who have those connections in the first place. Numerous studies show that when resumes are “whitened” by using anglicized names or by making it harder to tell if applicants are Black or Asian, candidates receive twice as many callbacks with the exact same set of qualifications. Those who climb the corporate ladder must always contend with the whispers that they are “diversity hires,” while no one questions the merit of homogeneity hires who climb corporate ladders using the nebulous criteria that they are simply a “better fit.”
No one wants a meritocracy more than those who are systemically disadvantaged.
The case for DEI
Protesters outside Queen's Park on May 12, 1989 demand that Ontario improve education for the deaf by hiring more deaf teachers and changing the language of instruction to American Sign Language (ASL). The protesters say ASL, a visual language that uses facial expressions, hand movements and body language, is what the deaf use outside the classroom and at home. But at school, about 15 different versions of Signed English, a literal translation of English, are used.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
In order for Canada to become the meritocracy it strives to be, we need DEI. The name can change, but the work must not. It cannot be a fleeting, haphazard commitment that moves with the winds blowing through the political landscapes. And to be frank, a lot of what we call DEI isn’t voluntary – it’s the law. The Supreme Court of Canada has consistently affirmed that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees substantive equality, underscoring that colour-blind approaches that treat all people exactly the same can produce inequality. Private-sector organizations must adhere to applicable provincial and federal human rights codes, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status and more. This includes all employment practices, including recruitment, hiring, working conditions, promotion, discipline and termination.
There is also a clear business case for creating more inclusive work environments. According to Dr. Wendy Cukier, the founder and academic director of the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, a deliberate, strategic approach to DEI will enable organizations to broaden the talent pool and overcome skills gaps; respond to increasingly diverse markets and gain support from diverse stakeholders; foster innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship; increase employee satisfaction and reduce turnover; and mitigate legal and reputational costs.
There is a high economic cost to exclusion. Employers that don’t actively seek out and integrate diversity are missing out on talent and market share. Racialized people are nearly one-third of Canada’s work force, women are responsible for nearly 80 per cent of household purchasing decisions, over a quarter of the Canadian population reports having a disability, and the percentage of young people who identify as LGBTQ is skyrocketing, as is the young Indigenous population. Ignoring DEI can have a negative impact on employee performance and retention, and also takes a toll on the mental and physical health of employees. And job seekers are increasingly looking for both employment opportunities and products from organizations that align with their values.
While American companies now have legitimate concerns about the risk of litigation for DEI policies that run afoul of the Trump administration’s orders, there are others, like Costco, that have pledged to stay the course because it is good for business. In Canada, our very different regulatory and legislative frameworks mean that the legal, financial and reputational risks are greatest for those companies that abandon or rollback DEI. Uncorrected workplace discrimination opens organizations to human rights complaints, civil lawsuits and millions in damages.
At least some of the challenges to DEI at the organizational level can be attributed to leaders (and a fair number of consultants) not doing this work well in the first place. In their 2022 book, Getting to Diversity, sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev analyze decades of American data to demonstrate which kinds of DEI programs work, and which don’t, under which specific circumstances. For example, mandatory trainings about diversity and sexual harassment that focus on legal compliance can backfire, generating defensiveness on the part of those who need to do better. Cultural inclusion training that seeks to improve collaboration and communication across groups and harassment training that focuses on bystander intervention, however, can be very effective. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to pro-active diversity management, though in nearly all situations, we in Canada require better and more disaggregated and systematically collected data.
The current backlash against DEI is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Corporate commitments that were made because of changing public opinion were always going to be window dressing. For others, the work continues. “Organizations that have sincerely committed to advancing DEI are still committed,” said Nicole Piggott, the president and co-founder of Synclusiv, which guides its clients to create more inclusive workplaces. “The data are clear; the data have not changed. Diverse workplaces perform better in every metric.” However, effective DEI practices must be deliberate, strategic and embedded in the core values of an organization from top to bottom – not relegated to a neglected portfolio in an overworked human resources department.
The tip of the iceberg
Left: Demonstrators rally at Queen's Park on April 28, 1970 in support of an Ontario Human Rights Code that would eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex. Right: Protesters outside the Metropolitan Toronto Police Headquarters on Feb. 12, 1981 call for a public inquiry into the Toronto Police Bathhouse raids.John McNeill (left) Barrie Davis (right)/The Globe and Mail
The stakes are higher than they seem to be. The backlash against DEI is organized, purposeful and harmful, and DEI’s undoing is a Trojan Horse for regressive policies of all kinds. It is happening now, in these first few weeks of the Trump presidency. It was never just an attack on DEI; it’s also immigration, women’s reproductive rights, civil rights, the social safety net, climate change and the very meaning of democratic belonging.
Canada is not immune. The consensus around our “Canadian exceptionalism” – that we have maintained an openness and optimism about multiculturalism and immigration while the rest of the world has turned away from both – is fracturing. Canadian attitudes toward immigration are changing rapidly: a clear majority of Canadians, for the first time in a quarter-century, believe that there is too much immigration. International students have become the convenient scapegoats for a housing crisis that has been decades in the making, driven by chronic public and private underinvestment in housing since the 1990s.
There are few good-faith critiques of DEI emerging from the Canadian right. Pierre Poilievre wields anti-wokeism like a sword in a culture war of his own creation. A recent survey from Abacus Data confirms that more Canadians think that Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Trump are similar, especially in terms of their stance on social issues and their views on environmental policies and climate change. Though conservatives are the most likely to claim that Mr. Poilievre is not at all like Mr. Trump, the Conservative Leader certainly sounds like him.
Doing DEI well can be complicated and fraught, there’s no denying it. The kinds of targeted programs that work the best – like, for example, the work of the Black Opportunity Fund, which facilitates access to capital for Black-led businesses – can raise hackles despite their demonstrated effectiveness. It is also hard to stay the course, given the enormous pressure to bend to social and political forces of a President who criticizes DEI as an affront to merit on one hand, while appointing a cabinet using the singular qualification of loyalty to Mount Trump on the other.
But doing the right thing is never easy. And it’s worth it – both economically and morally.
Community members listen at the Black Lives Matter Minnesota news conference outside Target Corporation's headquarters in Minneapolis on Jan. 30.Ellen Schmidt/The Associated Press