Conservative MPs used their parliamentary privilege to seek details on the scope of the federal government’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in areas that line up with what party leader Pierre Poilievre is now pledging to cut.

The efforts to gather information began in March, 2024, with two MPs using order paper questions to probe spending on government and military contracts for DEI services.

Then, in November, two other MPs filed questions probing spending related to implementing DEI initiatives within the government and whether government-funded research programs were “guided by a diversity, equity and inclusion mandate.”

When Mr. Poilievre released his Quebec platform late last month, he promised to “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal public service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

He’s also spoken at his election rallies – and before the start of the campaign – of replacing the military’s “woke culture” with a “warrior culture.”

The phrases “woke ideology” and “woke culture” has been adopted by opponents of diversity, equity and inclusion mandates and programming, who argue that those mandates wrongly prioritize race or gender over merit.

The line from the Quebec platform was originally missing from the full version of the platform released earlier this week.

Party spokesperson Simon Jefferies referred to the omission as a “publishing oversight” without providing further detail, and the platform was subsequently updated.

Mr. Poilievre has not specified how he would implement that promise.

In early April, when he was asked what his promise meant concretely, he accused the Liberals of dividing Canadians and weakening the Canadian Armed Forces.

He said his commitment was about uniting Canadians around a promise that working hard gets them an affordable home and life on a safe street.

The Liberals’ “woke criminal justice agenda” repeatedly releases criminals, he said. He added that the Liberals’ “woke agenda on spending” and debt has given Canada the worst inflation in four decades, which is affecting peoples’ lives.

“We need to reverse that, get back to Canadian values,” he said on April 15. “Canadian values of living within our means, leaving more in the pockets of the hard-working people, and letting people get ahead.”

The Globe and Mail asked the local campaigns of the four MPs who posed the order paper questions around diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the national Conservative campaign, why the party was looking for the information.

None responded.

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Order paper questions are a way members of Parliament can hold the government to account. Unlike Question Period, where MPs rise to challenge government, order paper questions are submitted in writing and must be answered within 45 days.

They can be used for any topic within the government’s purview, and it is not unusual for MPs to use the process to gather information they will later use for political purposes.

The MPs requests – two in the spring of 2024 and two in the fall of 2024 – were asked as the Conservatives were putting together their election platform for the next campaign.

The question on the military, submitted in March by MP Cheryl Gallant, sought a list of vendors who had contracts with the Department of National Defence or CAF relating to diversity, equity and inclusion services.

That same month, MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay asked the government how it defined “woman,” and then a second question seeking a list of vendors who supplied the government with DEI services since January, 2019.

Both MPs received pages of information in response to their questions.

In November, MP Shuvaloy Majumder submitted a question looking to see what government-funded research was under a DEI mandate, while MP Arpan Khanna asked another one that month looking for details on the scope of EDI implementation inside government.

Those questions never received a reply because Parliament was prorogued in January and then the election was called in March.

When the questions were asked, the next federal election was scheduled for October, 2025 and the Conservatives were in the process of pulling together their platform.

Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are meant to focus on and address systemic inequities, such as racism.

However, the terms and what they encompass have faced backlash in the United States, Canada and other countries. Critics see the policies as divisive and overly focused on aspects such as gender and race as opposed to individual merit.

Among Mr. Poilievre’s candidates is Jamil Jivani, who has long advocated for the reform of DEI programs – and who counts among his close friends U.S. Vice-President JD Vance.

Both Mr. Vance and U.S. President Donald Trump have vowed to make their country “woke no longer.” Most recently, the U.S. administration moved to withhold federal funding to K-12 schools with DEI initiatives, though U.S. justices have blocked that plan.

In early March, Mr. Jivani was asked by a Conservative supporter at an event in Cornwall, Ont., how a Poilievre government would dismantle “the DEI complex.”

He said he hoped there would no longer be a ministry for diversity, equity and inclusion – a post Liberal Leader Mark Carney did remove when he became prime minister later that month.

Mr. Jivani also said he wanted to see the end of “forcing” DEI onto federally-regulated institutions such as banks, which he argued allows them to pretend to be nice while passing the cost of DEI implementation on to consumers.

“If you ask most Canadians of any ethnic or cultural background, they would tell you they’d rather pay less in banking fees than have a website telling you ‘look how many people I hired that look like you,’” he said, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Globe and Mail.

Mr. Jivani said ministerial directives could accomplish a lot of changes, and he also cited the need to better track federal funds on DEI programming, including money that goes to universities. He said more transparency is needed about where the money ends up.

“The more transparent we are, the more there will be support for the kind of reforms I’m hoping for.”