During the 20th Century, Western non-communist countries have become increasingly infected with left-wing ideologies which substitute state “action” for individual responsibility. Canada is no exception. For example, over the years, Canada has introduced several national welfare schemes: family allowances (1944); Old Age Security (1927, becoming universal in1951); Canada Pension Plan (CPP) (1965); and National Medicare, established through the Medical Care Act of 1966. In addition to these personal welfare schemes, corporate welfare also abounds in such schemes as the various supply management systems in regard to the marketing of dairy products, poultry and the eggs’ sectors of the economy.
Government interference has not been limited to economics, as the state has increased its footprint in Canadian society through such vehicles as: the CBC and regulation of the media with “Canadian Content” requirements and the multiculturalism policy.
One of the biggest social changes occurred in 1964, when Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson, after several months of raucous Parliamentary debate, changed Canada’s national flag from the red ensign, which included the British Union Jack in the upper left corner, to the present well known Canadian maple leaf flag—a fine symbol of Laurentian Eastern Canada, but not so much Western Canada with its prairies, fir trees and mountains. Pearson’s successor, Prime Minister Trudeau (1968-1979; 1980-1984) adopted a less parliamentary approach to governing—he preferred to govern unilaterally from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO.) Trudeau was a socialist if not a communist. In 1948 he travelled to Asia and the Middle East, and communist countries. He made no secret of his admiration of communist leaders such as China’s Mao-Tse Tung and Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro. Castro and Trudeau were close associates and fellow believers as indicated by Castro sitting in the front row at Trudeau’s funeral at Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal on October 3rd, 2000. Trudeau even had kind words for Stalin’s totalitarianism when he attended a communist propaganda party conference in Moscow in 1951.
After his travels Trudeau settled in Quebec in 1949 where he co-founded the journal Cité Libre with his friend, journalist Gérard Pelletier, in which they expressed their socialist opinions. Trudeau also joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) the precursor to Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP).
On the 10th of September 1965, Trudeau, Pelletier and another friend, Labour leader Jean Marchand, announced that they would be Liberal candidates in the upcoming federal election. When they experienced backlash from their socialist associates who objected to their change to the Liberal Party, Pelletier and Trudeau explained their decision to run as Liberals in an article in Cité Libre (October 12, 1965), and the Montreal newspaper, Le Devoir (October 12, 1965), in which they wrote that political parties were only an instrument or a tool to enter politics. They stated that they would still follow the same goals and would continue to adhere to the same political ideologies that they had always held. They also said that in pursuance of their goals as Liberals, there had not been any rupture or repudiation of any of their convictions and that, “We have only resolved to pursue elsewhere and in other ways the intellectual and social struggle which we have always claimed.”
Trudeau Reigns
Trudeau won his seat in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal in 1965. In April 1967, Trudeau was appointed by Prime Minister Lester Pearson to be the federal Minister of Justice. It didn’t take Trudeau long as Justice Minister to make some revolutionary changes to the Criminal Code, legalizing homosexuality and also decriminalizing abortion under specific circumstances. He also amended the Divorce Act to make divorce more accessible.
Canada, at that time in the 1960s, was in turmoil, with many of its Judeo-Christian principles being challenged. Trudeau experienced little opposition to changes in the Divorce Act and homosexual amendments. However, there was resistance to his abortion amendments. Trudeau overcame this resistance on abortion by way of his Liberal majority, and the abortion amendments were passed on May 9, 1969. Lester Pearson resigned as prime minister in 1968 and supported Trudeau as the next Liberal leader.
Trudeau won the Liberal leadership and quickly began to consolidate his power in the PMO. This facilitated Trudeau in reigning over Canada as an absolute Chief Magistrate, surrounded by his courtiers, consisting in highly placed public servants and long-time friends and associates brought from Quebec, all of whom supported his socialist agenda. Henceforth, all political decisions and policies emanated from the PMO. Trudeau and his courtiers did not consult at any time with the Liberal caucus or the public. For example, Trudeau disliked Canada’s ties to Britain and subtly untied them. Suddenly, without notice, seemingly overnight, the former “Royal Mail” became “Canada Post”. “Dominion Day” just as quickly was renamed “Canada Day”. In 1867, the Fathers of Confederation established “One Dominion under the Name of Canada.”
“He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” (Psalm 72:8)
Canada’s motto, “A Mari Usque ad Mare” (From Sea to Sea) — also derives from Psalm 72:8.
The Canadian military, modelled after the British military, with its centuries of experience, tradition, and command structures, was changed and “unified” in numerous ways to make it more “Canadian.” This was not always to the benefit of the military, however.
Further, with a literal snap of his fingers, Trudeau brought a fundamental change to Canada’s measurement system by switching to the European Metric System, replacing the British Imperial System of weights and measures. Trudeau argued it was to Canada’s advantage to adopt the European Metric System (grams, kilograms, etc.) for trade purposes. Canada had then, and still now, has only a mere trickle of trade with Europe, but had/has a 70% trade with the U.S. Canadians did not adapt well to these changes. Mistakes were made. Airplanes ran out of fuel and on several occasions had to glide to a safe landing at the nearest airport. Confusion at gas stations caused cars to be stranded on the highway when the gas tank emptied. Parents were confused when informed of their children’s height and weight in centimetres and kilograms, which was meaningless to them. Businesses had to adapt products to the new measurement system. Restaurant cooks and families had to convert their recipes to use kitchen utensils labelled with metric measurements. The confusion led Trudeau’s government to return to a hybrid system of measurement “temporarily”, giving the public time to adjust to metric units. That transitional arrangement remains in place today and is likely to continue until the older generations, accustomed to the Imperial system, have passed on.
Regardless of whether you approve of any of these changes, the point is that they should have all been announced from the floor of the House of Commons, rather than as a royal edict coming from the PMO.
While Trudeau was making these unilateral, mostly symbolic changes to the Canadian culture, he was simultaneously preparing a permanent fundamental restructuring of the country in order to change it to a more decidedly socialist country.
Feminism
Trudeau moved in 1972, to commence federal funding for feminist-only groups based on Marxist/socialist principles of class conflict between the male and female sexes, similar to the Marxist conflict between the classes of capital and labour. Trudeau soothingly claimed that this funding was merely “participatory democracy”, which was absurd since he funded only one ideology, the one that supported his own Marxist principles. This funding has provided billions of dollars over the past 50 years to left-wing organizations only. The program was expanded over the years to fund left-wing homosexual / transgender and racialized groups. Its purpose was to ensure that the recipients of this funding would return the Liberals to power and work within their communities to promote a left-wing ideology of division.
The Judiciary
In October 1980, Trudeau took a major step toward reshaping Canada’s constitutional and judicial framework by introducing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the Constitution. This was a monumental change from Canada’s justice system which had been based on the British Westminster Parliamentary system whereby Parliament had the final word on all legislation which was responsible to the public, i.e., responsible government. Under the Charter, the public, represented by Parliament, would no longer be able to fully participate in the formation of laws. The Charter of Rights provided that the final decision on all legislation became that of at least five appointed unaccountable judges (the majority of the nine judges) of the Supreme Court of Canada. Canada is no longer a parliamentary democracy, but an oligarchy ruled over by five judges of the Supreme Court who say what the law is and what it requires. Under the Charter, these judges have changed Canada’s values by claiming that traditional values were unconstitutional or were contrary to s. 7 of the Charter of Rights which guarantees the right to “life, liberty and security of the person”, which meant whatever the judges wanted this expression to mean.
In essence, if the judges did not like legislation which did not align with their own personal ideology, they simply declared the legislation contrary to “life, liberty and security of the person.” By this process Canada’s laws on abortion, euthanasia, pornography, prostitution (legalized brothels), sex clubs, drug injection sites, among other major issues, became legal in accordance with the judges’ own personal ideology. These decisions dramatically changed the fabric of Canada formerly based on Judeo-Christian principles.
Further, Trudeau carefully appointed judges to the courts who were sympathetic to his views. Legal competence and impartiality were superseded by the judges’ political views. Trudeau believed that the destiny of a nation was better served in the hands of educated, knowledgeable judges rather than in the hands of Parliamentarians elected by an ignorant public. Trudeau did not respect Parliamentarians, famously remarking about them “…when they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer honourable members – they are just nobodies…”
The Court Challenges Program
To ensure that the courts would be able to change social values, Trudeau had already established, in 1978, the Court Challenges Program, to cover the expenses of the court challenges on minority language rights. The program was expanded in 1985 by the “Conservative” government of Brian Mulroney to fund equality rights legal challenges as well as a consequence of s.15 of the Charter (the non-discrimination section of the Charter) coming into force. By 1992, the Mulroney government withdrew funding from the program, only to have it re-established by Jean Chrétien in 1994.
Traditional Conservative groups were refused access to these funds. This funding provided the opportunity for the activist judges on the courts to use government-funded left-wing arguments to investigate the social changes desired by Liberal governments who lacked the courage, and votes, to bring these changes via Parliament.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Trudeau was not finished yet. He introduced another program whereby he could change Canada’s institutions. This brainchild was called “The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).” The purpose of this program was to fund research to make Canada “a world leader in innovative policies.” It would have been more accurate to admit that its purpose was to make Canada “a world leader in woke, progressive socialist policies.” Although a few legitimate research projects were funded under this program, most of the projects funded were left-wing extremist ones. In effect, the real purpose of the SSHRC was to establish and assist unelected leftists in pushing their progressive policies at taxpayers’ expense. This program has been highly successful in doing so.
Briefly stated, SSHRC enables cultural, social and economic changes in the direction of the left. Providing thousands of grants to graduate students and professors to develop and justify policies, over the years the program fundamentally led to the decline of Canadian values. The SSHRC program was successful in its intention to make fundamental and permanent cultural changes in Canada.
Queer individuals (their designation) and feminist activists have moved society from policies based on traditional values regarded as “oppressive” structures of a Western “colonial” patriarchal civilization, such as the family, to achieve a supposedly liberated equitable future. Because of these transformational research grants, the government has encroached on institutions – the family, the educational system including provincial departments of education and universities, industry, medicine, commerce, public services, religious institutions etc., by funding beneficiaries of these grants who subsequently obtain employment in these institutions. The objective is, and the result has been, to impose new, woke, “queer” (their word) standards in Canada.
Since the year 2000 SSHRC’s list of grants include a steady stream specifically for feminist, LGBTQ, transgender research and promotion. These research grants explored the advancing Queer Theory (the Q in LGBTQ). Annual grants for Queer projects have increased 22-fold since the year 2000.
How the SSHRC Operates
SSHRC’s budget has ballooned from $713 million in 2015 to $1.3 billion in 2025, an increase of 82%, while Canada’s cumulative price increase for the same period was about 28%. This is wildly disproportionate.
This money has fallen into the hands of the influential branch of gender sociology based on queer theory, which holds that the traditional family, i.e. a married father and mother, living with their children, is a “concept”, an “idea”, a “notion”, a “social construct” that varies among cultures and changes over time. Gender sociology claims that the family is not based on nature, biology or reality, as has been the norm in Western civilization. Childhood, motherhood, fatherhood and parenting are also social constructs, malleable and flexible, ripe for social change according to these activist sociologists. The government-funded professionals who advance the queer perspective believe they are engaged in a “profound social and political realignment”.
Further, many countries in Europe such as Finland, Sweden, France, the U.K., as well as the United States, have rejected transgenderism because of lack of evidence to support it. However, the “experts”, using taxpayer dollars, have infiltrated Canada’s universities and have easily entrenched their “diversity research” into the university’s eco-system, pushing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and queer theory within the university system like worms spreading toxic poisons throughout the institution. For example, in May 2025, McGill University was granted $2.5 million by the SSHRC to advance 2SLGBTQ+ identities in a project called “TRANSFORM”. This multi-year project has also raised a further $3 million from other universities and partners across Canada. Director of the project is Dr. Claudia Mitchell, Director and Professor at McGill’s Human Development and Well Being in the Education Department.
The Liberal government as well as other progressives believe that Canadians must, and can afford, a new society built from scratch, replacing established Western culture. They believe that DEI, successful or not, harmful or not, must avail itself of tax dollars to proliferate their ideology on a global scale.
Program Controlled by Feminist Chairs
In the year 2000, the federal government established the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Program. This program has cost the Canadian taxpayer approximately $7.5 to $8 billion since its foundation. It is a permanent program whereby professors are appointed with generous salaries ranging from $100,000 to $250,000 per year to change and administer over 2000 grants per year in 78 universities and affiliated institutions across Canada.
To ensure that these Chairs remain under the control of feminist professors, eight individual professors from across Canada commenced a legal challenge against the federal government claiming that the CRC Program discriminated against women. Too many white males were Chairs. On November 3, 2025, a settlement was reached by the Human Rights Commission, that the federal government comply with feminist demands that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) targets be met for women (feminists) in administering the Research Chairs program.
Until such time as these bizarre programs are eliminated, Canadian universities and other institutions in the country remain the useful tool of extremists who are relentlessly expanding their absurd ideology. This is the explanation of how Canadian universities have become centres of indoctrination, rather than institutions of knowledge and higher learning.
Conclusion
Canada has become a social, political and economic wreck. It is no longer a nation of which we can be proud or which warrants our respect. Our previous history, our culture and our political system have been destroyed by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who has wilfully turned this once beautiful, successful country into a broken caricature of a nation. This is not to say that socialism did not exist before Trudeau. In its most dangerous form, it has been in existence in the modern sense since Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 against the background for the Revolutions of 1848. This Manifesto has created many offshoots and schools of thought since that time. However, it is doubtful that any other country has experienced the wilful determination of Pierre Trudeau to change Canada according to his socialist ideology that places the State at the centre of society and people’s lives.