The common consensus is that the Liberal government has had a bad couple of months.  They've made all kinds of religious groups upset with them over the new Charter rights attestation in the forms for Canada Summer Job grants, so much so that one of their own MPs voted for a Conservative motion opposing it.  Catherine McKenna "doesn't have time" for political figures who deny that man-made climate change is real.  And between the "gender budget" and the widely misreported Service Canada directive on gender-neutral language, they are apparently touching off a culture war that is allegedly telling Canadians how to think.  And this isn't even getting into the "disastrous" trip to India (which didn't actually affect our diplomatic relationship with India one iota, but hey, there's a narrative to adhere to).

This is the old Liberal arrogance coming back, cry the pundits.  They're shoving this political correctness down our throats!  They'd better stop lecturing us if they want to get elected again!  But what if, despite the appearance of arrogance, the Liberals are actually right about the substance of these issues?

Let's remember that at the heart of these changes that the government are trying to put forward is a notion that lowering the barriers to participation in the economy by women, Indigenous communities and other minorities, we'll have stronger economic growth in this country.  We have a recent speech by the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Steven Poloz, which says that the country can get these marginalized groups into the labour force, which amounts to an additional half-million workers, we can grow the country's GDP by 1.5 percent, or about $30 billion a year.  And this is even before we make any productivity gains.

To this end, the government has been investing in ways to reduce those barriers, but these are things that require longer-term fixes.  Looking at what those barriers to inclusion are is not something that can happen overnight.  The common refrain from the NDP is that pay equity legislation should have happened two years ago, but it ignores the fact that it's a far more complex matter than just a three-clause bill because it's not just about ensuring that men and women are paid the same for the same jobs, but rather there needs to be an appropriate mechanism to ensure equal pay for work of equal value, such as the example where male-dominated archivists are paid more than female-dominated librarian positions, despite the fact that the jobs can be similar in many regards.  Needing to come up with a proper framework to address valuation of work is not something that happens at the snap of a finger (never mind that the federal government has limited jurisdiction over which workplaces they can affect, with the added complication of needing to negotiation with unions in federal workplaces).

Another example is the plan to examine systemic racism in Canada, which immediately got the backs of the largely white pundit-class up.  But rather than just going around and calling everyone racist, as is the assumption, it's about looking at the institutional barriers, systemic policies and practices, and economic and political structures that disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities in this country.  This is something that a government should look at in order to determine how to reform the systems and lower those barriers.

But the country's mostly straight white male pundit class has declared that these kinds of initiatives are simply "virtue signalling," and that it's putting the government offside with "regular Canadians."  But if the goal is to grow the economy, and accomplishing that means stepping outside of the established bounds of framing all issues to be palatable to straight, white men, how can the government actually do the work of addressing these systemic and institutional barriers that are keeping women and minorities from fully participating in the economy?

Furthermore, if it's not the government's job to tackle these barriers in order to grow the economy, then whose job do we imagine it to be?  Big business has shown little interest in addressing diversity and addressing systemic barriers, judging by how reluctant they've been to make progress on doing some very basic things like promoting more women to senior management or appointing them to corporate boards in sufficient numbers to make a difference to a business' bottom line (as opposed to a token appointment that can make them look like they're taking action).  Should the government not play a role in opening up those difficult conversations that we as Canadian society needs to have in order to become aware of those barriers so that we can work to address them?  Or does government simply need to pander to the straight, white male population in order to be declared "electable" by the punditry?

Let's also be frank in the fact that the government has been terrible about communicating any of this.  If it doesn't fit into a platitude about better being possible, or diversity being our strength, the government doesn't seem to be interested in having the frank discussion about why these kinds of things are necessary, and that lack of ability to communicate comes across as part of their arrogance.  That they also can't properly refute the caricaturizing of these initiatives when the opposition spins their actions in a frankly dishonest manner doesn't help matters either.  But even if they can't communicate about why these things matter, it gets compounded by the fact that our nation's pundit class is still overwhelmingly straight, white and male, and that they are too quick to simply dismiss this as a "culture war" because it's easier to fit it into a lazy American frame than it is to think critically about what the government is doing and actually engaging on the merits of it.  In fact, one could almost say that there is an inherent arrogance in their dismissal of these barriers that the government is trying to address, that because it doesn't affect them personally, it apparently doesn't matter to the country or the economy.  That's not the case, however, but the fact that they are largely homogenous and self-reinforcing, means that there is a myopia at play, and that there are problems invisible to them that need to be addressed.  If only the government could actually communicate that.