Trump’s claim that DEI endangers public safety has sparked outrage. But the real scandal? Canada’s silence about the risk
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Reporters at the press conference were apoplectic after U.S. President Donald Trump blamed DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies as a possible cause of the Washington airplane and helicopter collision that claimed 67 lives.
Trump acknowledged he had no proof that affirmative action policies pushed during the Obama and Biden administrations caused the accident. Yet, he insisted it was “common sense” that hiring practices based on identity—such as skin colour or sexual preference—rather than merit would inevitably lead to accidents and poor performance. Trump pledged a full investigation, vowing to test his suspicion about DEI’s role.
The controversy sparked outrage in the U.S., but Canadians should pay attention—we are on the same path. DEI policies and quotas are entrenched in our institutions without scrutiny. While Americans debate whether DEI endangers public safety, Canadians remain silent, even as mediocrity and a brain drain weaken our institutions.
Trump’s remarks were met with incredulity and scorn from many reporters. Incredulity that a president would dare question one of the Democratic Party’s sacred cows—namely, the belief that racial, gender and sexual identity groups deserve hiring preference over white, heterosexual males due to “white privilege” and “systemic racism.” And scorn because anyone who challenges this orthodoxy is swiftly branded a racist, misogynist or transphobe.
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But Trump and his supporters are no strangers to this outrage. The Washington crash echoes the Los Angeles fires controversy, where Trump and Donald Jr. pointed the finger at DEI after it was revealed that all three top fire officials were black lesbians. The media insisted their identities were coincidence.
The progressive media’s shock over Trump’s accusations is misplaced. Trump made ending DEI a centrepiece of his campaign, and he wasted no time delivering on that promise after taking office. His vice-president, J.D. Vance, announced that “safety” would become the sole criterion for hiring airline personnel and vowed to dismantle Biden-era DEI rules and restore merit-based hiring.
In recent interviews, Trump has expanded on his remarks that criticized DEI. He explained that under his previous administration, he had ordered only the best-qualified people be considered for such vitally important positions as air traffic controller. However, Biden immediately revoked that order upon taking office in 2020. Under Biden’s administration, a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation gender would replace merit as the only hiring prerequisite. Under Biden, even people “with severe psychological problems” were to get hiring preferences. Trump is removing all of those Biden DEI policies.
“In Trump’s America, it won’t matter what a person looks like. It will only matter that they are the most qualified applicant,” he vowed.
Black Lives Matter (BLM), Antifa and radical activists replaced Martin Luther King’s message with a Marxist narrative, blaming “white supremacy” for society’s ills—an ideology that was soon seized by the Biden White House. The DEI ideology, which had been fringe academic theory, suddenly became government policy.
Critics warn that DEI is a political agenda with dangerous consequences. Ryan P. Williams, president of the Claremont Institute, argues: “The words that the acronym ‘DEI’ represent sound nice, but it is nothing more than affirmative action and racial preferences by a different name, a system that features racial headcounts and arbitrarily assigned roles of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ groups in America,” In an emailed statement, he added: “If we continue to do democracy this way, it will only end in acrimony, strife, resentment, and American collapse.”
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an outspoken DEI critic, has been even more blunt: “These are not neutral programs to increase demographic diversity; they are political programs that use taxpayer resources to advance a specific partisan orthodoxy,” he wrote in a 2023 New York Times op-ed.
By the end of the Biden term, what began as a reasonable policy to correct historic injustices had degenerated into a radical ideology that sacrificed safety on the altar of identity politics. Trump argues that these policies, which prioritize race, gender and sexual identity over competence, inevitably lead to catastrophic outcomes—deadly crashes, massive fires and system failures.
And he has a point. Incompetence clearly played a role in both the Washington and Los Angeles disasters. The question is: Did Biden’s DEI hiring policies contribute? We don’t know—but they are the right questions to ask.
At least, the U.S. is having the debate. But Canada? We are sleepwalking into disaster. Mediocrity is encouraged as universities push “decolonization” over excellence, and identity quotas replace qualifications.
The result? Canada’s best and brightest are leaving. They are heading south to a new America—one that Trump is rebuilding on the pillars of merit, excellence and opportunity.
The Washington crash should serve as a wake-up call. DEI isn’t just a political program—it’s a threat to public safety, national competence and our collective future. It’s time to reject the policies that are making us weak. It’s time to restore meritocracy in hiring, in schools, and in government.
In short, it’s time to put competence back where it belongs: front and centre.
Because if we don’t, we won’t need a crash to destroy our country. We’ll do it ourselves.
Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba judge. He is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He was recently named the ‘Western Standard Columnist of the Year.’
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