The Western Surrender: Canada is the wokest country in the world
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o. 1: Every other Anglosphere country has stronger cultural and political opposition
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Published Jun 27, 2026
All that is great about western civilization is being undermined by a progressive political and cultural project that aims to reject and rewrite our history, prioritize group identity above the individual and embed this agenda into our laws and institutions. Welcome to The Western Surrender, an NP Comment series ranking the five Anglosphere countries by their adoption of these ideas. Today we feature No. 1, Canada.
Each of the major Anglo states is struggling with shame for their past, and, to cope, has turned to a new philosophy of anti-West, anti-white, decolonial, self-obliterating multiculturalism that elevates foreign above familiar. But it’s Canada, of all places, that seared this way of thinking into its Constitution and social matrix without democratic debate.
Reconciliation. Diversity, equity and inclusion. Soft-on-crime rules. Immigration levels so high they shift national identity. If they weren’t written into the Constitution directly, they were interpreted into its text by judges, or were practiced into existence by civil servants. It’s a mission that most accept wholeheartedly: it’s so often taught that Canada’s history is one of fighting injustice and expanding the franchise, which means abandoning old points of pride and finding new ones on the progressive path towards inclusion.
Of these pillars holding up new Canada, it’s that of reconciliation that bears the most weight. This is the agreed-upon state policy of making amends to the Indigenous people of Canada for colonizing the territory and raising a British state upon it.
It’s not something our forebears would have apologized for at the time. When they arrived, North America was home to societies with varying degrees of technological development, all centuries behind Europe. Land was obtained through agreement and through settlement, and armed resistance couldn’t thwart it. It was a conquest. Attempts were made to transition the previous occupants over to a European-style life, many of which wouldn’t be acceptable under today’s circumstances, but were considered gracious at the time. These included reserved lands, farming equipment, engagement with religion and, often through the church, free school for the children.
This came at the expense of Indigenous culture, particularly for the kids who ended up in residential schools. Some lost family connections; others were physically or sexually abused. Some never returned home — the leading cause of death in residential schools, as with European orphanages, was tuberculosis.
These tragedies, and the general plight of Indigenous people, were overlooked for a time. But progressive voices and organizations were drawn to the cause as early as the 1960s, parallel to the civil rights movement of the United States. By the 1970s, the courts had invented the concept of Aboriginal title, which, in its nascent, limited form, wasn’t threatening to void people of private property rights. By the 1980s, Parliament had agreed to include a section in its addendum to the Constitution — Section 35 — to constitutionalize treaty and Aboriginal rights without really understanding what that meant.
The 1990s saw the receipt of a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which pushed for a new vision of self-government and inclusion for First Nations, as well as the Supreme Court’s introduction of the Gladue principle, a functional sentence discount for Indigenous criminals that Canadians never agreed to on the democratic front. The Gladue principle isn’t constitutionalized, but then again, no government has made efforts to remove it, which means courts haven’t had the opportunity.
These were followed up by more extreme versions in the 21st century: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 produced a final report demanding that dozens of changes be made to government and civil society institutions to achieve increasingly onerous standards of racial equity. They covered professional governance, curriculums for schoolchildren and post-secondary students, parallel systems for daycare, pro-Indigenous museum policies, and much more. Government, professional regulators, universities and civil society took these requests — some unreasonable, some outrageous — as a grocery list that needed to be completed in full, not contemplated and debated.
Just as the British Empire went from being a source of national pride to hosting a dilapidated global garage sale of imperial holdings after the world wars, Canada went from a strong frontier spirit and sense of self as the empire’s most reliable outpost to a meandering state without a mission. Interest in assimilating the Indigenous and enthusiasm for Canada was replaced with shame for the path that got us here today. It took up the cause of decolonization — but unlike Britain, it couldn’t withdraw. Instead, it began to tear itself apart.
It all culminated with the events of the 215 Kamloops child “graves” that have never been confirmed. When Chief Roseanne Casimir announced their “discovery” in 2021, nearly every adult in the room decided not to wait for verification. Instead, they denounced, in unison, the tragedy of the 215 “children” who never returned home, mounted apologies on their websites, began prefacing meetings and speeches with land acknowledgements as solemn as a prayer, allowed protesters to illegally tear down statues representing the Great Colonizer, and called off celebrations of Canada Day.
At very least, these concessions aren’t written into the Constitution, but they represent the beliefs of the relevant authorities, and to question them, as a regular person with a regular job, is to open oneself up to professional consequences. It’s more akin to a moat that guards the growing fortress of constitutional obligations to Indigenous people: a growing suite of fishing rights that appear more commercial in nature by the year; property rights awarded based on historic violence that threaten the land titles of regular homeowners today; obligations to consult into oblivion as a prerequisite to building critical infrastructure. A popular consensus that accepts an endless amount of one-sided, punitive reconciliation gives courts the cover to explore new frontiers of absurdity, and gives governments the political capital to sit idly by instead of putting an end to it.
Instead of satisfying the Canadian guilt complex, decolonization fuelled it. As Americans grappled with racial conflict tracing back to slavery, Canada stewed on its minor contribution, namely a handful of African slaves largely in Quebec who were emancipated by the early 1800s. No longer was it a point of pride that Canada was a destination on the Underground Railroad. In 2021, at the urging of racially activist lawyers and in the wake of the George Floyd protests in the United States, Canadian courts began expanding the Indigenous sentencing scheme we’ve had since the 1990s to Black individuals and beyond. The federal public service went into overdrive, promoting Black-priority hiring, Black-only research scholarships, Black-only business funding, and even Black-only theatre nights. It’s justified by past slavery and ongoing “systemic racism.”
That same formula can be applied to all the major enclaves of Canada. Those of Indian heritage can trace grievances back to the British East India Company’s dominion over the subcontinent; in Canada, they can point to the Komagata Maru incident of 1914, during which Canadian officials turned away a ship full of would-be migrants affiliated with a seditious anti-Empire movement. It was entirely justified — but in the 21st century, Canadian officials adopted a revisionist narrative: the migrants were the victims of racism, and Canada was wrong to turn them away.
Descendants of the Islamic world can also complain of western, colonial, Christian biases held in Canadian society, Islamophobia in particular. This, too, can be grounded in history: the British Empire can be blamed for giving away the land that is now Israel to the Jews, even though the Arabs responded repeatedly to partition plans with violence and war. In recent years they’ve been met with tolerance for Islamist protests, a federal government representative dedicated to lobbying their cause, promotion in schools, the availability of all sorts of grants, various heritage recognition programs, and more.
Even gender is a frontier: against a historic backdrop of traditional men’s and women’s roles rose a new bloc of female voters in the early 1900s. With modernity came equality. But in the 21st century, this wasn’t enough. Activists claiming to be working towards equality took up the cause of males identifying as females, treating them as the most oppressed gender group. For once, their chosen cause was not a product of colonialism, but they marketed it as such anyway: gender roles, some activists would say, are a product of western culture (though tribal societies are often more rigid in their gender roles). They sought male entitlements to female jail, female sport, female address, and much more. And they won: today, speaking out against our new rules on transgender inclusion can result in expensive consequences — thanks to judges and adjudicators who are primed to take the side of what the consensus deems to be progressive. The Constitution holds “sex” and “gender” to be equally protectable, and so do the courts.
There is no recourse in the courts when these groups are prioritized in hiring, grant funding, or other favourable treatment that amounts to discrimination against the general population because it’s all enabled by the Constitution of 1982. The right to equality — unlike in the United States — does not extend to groups that are considered the historical oppressors. White Canadians, but also male Canadians, straight Canadians, Canadians who aren’t transgender, and so on. And because there’s no legal consequence for discriminating against these groups, there is little social pressure to change. Injustice can’t be punished with lawfare — heck, even politicians shy from it. Thus, these issues spawn fewer non-profits, fewer advocacy organizations, fewer professional experts to testify to these issues. Meanwhile, an entire industry of activists has emerged to help the beneficiaries of the scheme extract more and calcify further unequal treatment into law.
Canada didn’t start this wave of anti-nationalism — that was the U.S. — but it lacked the powerful two-sided political system and constitution to bring it under control and reverse course. Americans elect conservatives; American conservatives can make a national show out of pulling the rug out from beneath the progressive academics and lawfare engineers whose hubris takes them too far. All of this sits on a firm foundation: the American Constitution contains robust equality protections that prohibit affirmative action.
The Australian Constitution doesn’t authorize discrimination if directed at the oppressor, either. It settled its Indigenous-property issue with a land claim tribunal in the 1990s, and when the progressive government there attempted in 2023 to constitutionally mandate that Aboriginals advise Parliament, the electorate rejected it. Australia has a colonial past and is under a series of pressures at present that bring it down — but, having kept the most exploitable indigenous and multicultural provisions out of the Constitution, these problems can’t spiral out of control.
Meanwhile, the U.K., despite its many flaws that can likely be attributed to shame for the empire, actually has a strong cultural conservative movement to push back against these narratives. There is something to learn here — even as our conservatives here actually shun Nigel Farage, who appears to be electable. Over in New Zealand, where the country is fraught with an urge to rename every street and institution to something Māori, the leading conservative figured out how to win in 2023 and has held on since. While it’s true he’s stood idly by, he at least could stand: Canada can’t elect a federal conservative government despite the environment being favourable.
Canada, unlike its Commonwealth peers, cannot back out of its arrangement with progressive politics. It’s long embraced a story of self as one of increasing inclusion: our greatest milestones are the ones that involve bringing more outsiders here and making them ours, and expanding the franchise to those who were historically excluded. That’s the narrative that works in politics, even as we run out of new groups to include.
To an enterprising Liberal, this is no hurdle. New frontiers of “equity” and group-based privileges can still be awarded, new identity recognition months can be named, and this is plain from everything from new budget announcements to new legislation on citizenship and participation in Canada. In recent years, progressives have championed causes like benefits for unvetted asylum seekers, voting rights for 16-year-olds and the handing out of Canadian citizenship to anyone with a single Canadian ancestor. They’ve even treated homelessness as if it’s a parallel form of ordered living, pushing free drug programs and protections for encampments. And that makes sense — it fits with the Canadian story. Every subset of the population deserves to win its struggle for substantive equality.
These are the ideas that undergird our Constitution, which reflects them back into society. If the story of Canada is about righting past perceived wrongs, voters — and the courts — will expect politicians to continue doing that. Because this self-reinforcing cycle is so hard to break, it’s worked its grasp deeply into our institutions. It’s going to take outside influence to make that happen; a clear departure of peer countries from the mindless progressivism they’ve taken up for the past decade — something they’re much more able to do because they haven’t backed themselves into a corner with nearly unchangeable laws. Whether or not Canada is the most woke country, it will certainly be the last woke country.
National Post
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