While Addressing Liberal Convention, Trudeau Takes Shot at Poilievre for ‘Wokism’ Criticism

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes a keynote address at the 2023 Liberal National Convention in Ottawa on May 4, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took shots at Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre while addressing delegates on the first day of the Liberal Party’s 2023 national convention in Ottawa, saying Poilievre is wrong to criticize the government for being “too woke” and needs to “wake up” himself.

Trudeau began his keynote address on May 4 by speaking about general economic issues and his government’s policies on them before taking a partisan turn to say the Conservatives either criticize the government for “investing in Canadians” or because “our policies are too woke.”

“Too woke?” Trudeau said. “Hey Pierre Poilievre, it’s time for you to wake up.”

“Wake up to the fact that a gender-balanced cabinet is a good thing and that women fully participating in the workforce is a good thing, not something to snub.”

The prime minister also said the Conservatives should “wake up to the fact that under our government fewer persons with disabilities are facing poverty,” adding that “$10-a-day childcare is not woke policy, it’s economic policy.”

“Now we all know that some of our opponents will try to clip some of my words out of context tomorrow to make it sound as if we think that everything is just fine, but this is not what I’m saying,” he said. “Too many Canadians are struggling.”

Trudeau also criticized Poilievre’s calls to defund the CBC and said the questions asked by Conservative MPs during debate in the House of Commons for the most part do not represent the main concerns of Canadians.

Most debate in the House over the past week has centred on reports confirmed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that Conservative MP Michael Chong and members of his family living overseas were targeted by Beijing in retaliation to the MP sponsoring a motion calling China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities a genocide.

Trudeau did not address the issue during his talk. Just hours before he spoke at the convention, the prime minister’s national security adviser told Chong that her department had received the information from CSIS despite Trudeau having said the previous day that CSIS hadn’t done so.

Poilievre has criticized the Liberal government for making policy decisions based on “woke” principles—most recently in relation to the government’s now-passed Bill C-11.

During debate on the bill on March 30, Poilievre gave his own definition of the word “woke,” saying it is “designed to divide people by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, vaccine status and any other way one can divide people into groups.”

“Why? It is because then one can justify having a government to control all those groups. No more woke; we need freedom,” he said.

Near the end of his keynote address on May 4, Trudeau told his listeners that he intends to once again lead the Liberal party through the country’s next general election.

“When the election comes, when Canadians need to make a consequential choice in this consequential moment, it will be the honour of my life to lead us through it,” he said.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.