Get Involved at All Levels to Displace ‘Woke’ Influence, Poilievre Tells Conservatives

Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie and Michael Wilson, an adviser to Pierre Poilievre's leadership campaign, participate in the Canada Strong and Free Regional Networking Conference in Red Deer, Alberta, on Sept. 24, 2022. Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times

RED DEER, Alberta—Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre says Canadians on the right of the political spectrum should start getting involved locally and in different spheres of society to displace what he calls the “woke left.”

“We need conservatives on school boards, local governments, business leadership, the law, academia and other places where the woke left has been dominating for far too long,” Poilievre said in a short speech delivered by video during the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference in Red Deer, Alberta, on Sept. 24.

“Our country’s at a crossroads,” the new Tory leader said, and encouraged the conference attendees to build the conservative movement not only within the party but “at all levels.”

“Are we going to continue to concentrate power in the hands of fewer and fewer politicians, bureaucrats, and elites, or are we going to disperse that power and put it back in the hands of the people by making Canada the freest country on Earth,” he said.

“So make your plans, carry them out, work together, build on ideas, and most of all, don’t back down.”

Tory MP Stephanie Kusie, who represents a Calgary riding and supported Poilievre’s leadership bid, delivered the keynote address at the conference. She was joined by Michael Wilson, a Toronto lawyer who served as adviser to Poilievre’s campaign.

The two discussed what they thought made Poilievre’s leadership run such a runaway success.

Wilson said Poilievre didn’t run focus groups to know what to think about certain topics, and instead ran on issues he knows about and has been consistent on in the past.

“His message that he’s been saying for 20 years just met the moment of a whole broad coalition of people,” he said.

Wilson also discussed Poilievre’s initial social media post made in early February to announce his leadership bid, which contained a link to a web sheet where supporters could leave their contact information.

He said that within two hours, 115,000 people had signed on.

The campaign then cross-referenced the sheet with the lists of current and former party members and found that 92 percent of people who filled out the web sheet had not been involved in Conservative activism in the last five years.

The list was then used to send invitations to campaign rallies, which typically drew large crowds.

Wilson discussed how pundits initially doubted those crowds would translate into new party memberships, but Poilievre’s campaign signed up over 300,000 new members.

He said restrictive COVID-19 policies of the past years had an impact on growing the party.

“There’s a whole swath of Canadians that were so negatively impacted by COVID policy that I think there’s a whole movement and a whole sort of remaking of the conservative base.”

‘Wokeism’

Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus, who’s been appointed as Quebec lieutenant on Poilievre’s leadership team, brought up the topic of “wokeism” in the House of Commons on the first day of the fall session on Sept. 20.

He said at first the term “woke” meant “someone who was aware of and offended by the injustices and discrimination experienced by minority groups.”

“Today, however, this once-positive idea has been appropriated by a movement that is using it for political gain. Nowadays, wokeism is a culture that shuns, boycotts, or cancels anyone who dares to disagree with its virtuous proponents.”

Paul-Hus said he’s been called a racist for some of his opinions, but noted that “Quebeckers defend their heritage, culture, and language and make no apologies for it. The Quebec nation is bucking wokeism, and we will too.”

American author and political commentator James Lindsay defines wokeism as an evolution of Marxism that focuses on social and racial justice instead of the traditional dichotomy between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

“Now we have the attempt to apply Leninism to the American context, using corporations as part of the toolset, for example. And so we call this movement the ‘woke’ movement. We talked about woke capital with all the corporations … the woke movement is Leninism 4.0,” Lindsay previously told The Epoch Times.