The Conservative Party has republished the English-language version of its platform after what it says was a “publishing oversight” resulted in the omission of a previous commitment to crack down on “woke ideology” in the public service and federal funding for university research.
Earlier in the campaign, the Conservatives had promised as part of their Quebec platform to “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”
When the party released its full national platform on Tuesday, that commitment was repeated in the French-language version, but it was missing from the English version.
CBC News asked the party about the discrepancy on Tuesday evening. The party did not respond.
Mid-morning on Wednesday, in response to a separate inquiry from CBC News, a party spokesperson said the omission was the result of a “publishing oversight.”
“The commitment was originally contained in the original Quebec platform in both French and English. The platform has been updated to reflect our policy,” Simon Jefferies said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has often stated his opposition to things he considers “woke” and has regularly used the word to criticize Liberal policies.
Last month, the Canadian Association of University Teachers expressed concern about how the Conservative Party’s commitment could impact federal funding for research.
In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, the association’s president Peter McInnis said: “When you get politicians saying they’re going to come in and interfere with this on some basis of, I don’t know, ideological issues or political expediency, that’s the concern.”
McInnis said the word “woke” is now “so vague … that it could mean anything. It just means things that they don’t agree with.”
