Juno News - Canadian Nurses Association's Social Justice Manifesto

00:00:00.000 Somewhere between patient charts and IV bags, a new ideological mission has taken root in nursing.

00:00:07.500 Your next visit with a nurse might mean that she's obligated to apply a planetary health lens during your visit.

00:00:14.640 I wish that were it, but alas, in today's episode, we'll take a look at the 2025 Canadian Nurses Association's Code of Ethics.

00:00:23.880 And for all of you proudly proclaiming that woke is dead, I encourage you to stay tuned.

00:00:30.000 I'm Melanie Bennett. This is Disrupted.

00:00:41.400 Whether you've read the article or not, today's episode will go deeper than I could do in 700 words or so.

00:00:47.780 For those of you who are new to the story, just last week, the Canadian Nurses Association released a new Code of Ethics.

00:00:54.320 And on the surface, it reads like any other guidance document. Respect, equity, compassion.

00:01:00.980 But just beneath the surface is something quite different. Politics. What else?

00:01:05.720 Not just any politics, of course. Intersectional social justice and all the other usual suspects.

00:01:12.420 And what better way to start the show than by sharing the Canadian Nurses Association land acknowledgement. 0.52

00:01:18.540 I know, I know. Just bear with me on this.

00:01:21.800 Here in the land acknowledgement, the Canadian Nurses Association acknowledges that the land colonially known as Canada is and continues to be the home of diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis people,

00:01:33.380 and acknowledges them as the traditional owners and custodians of these lands.

00:01:37.580 I mention this because I think it's going to come in handy later.

00:01:40.320 So right from the introduction, you get a sense that the Code is a set of metaphysical claims rooted in radical leftist scholarship like critical race theory and maybe postcolonial theory.

00:01:52.680 If we look here, it says the Code of Ethics reflects the CNA's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and anti-racism.

00:02:00.540 And it also acknowledges the historical and continuous impacts of white capitalized European centric models of nursing and health have perpetuated on anti and have have on the perpetuation of anti-indigenous racism, anti-black racism and other types of racism.

00:02:18.000 So it's the same language that we see again and again and again, only this time in nursing.

00:02:25.140 And this is a real departure from bedside care or patient dignity.

00:02:29.380 Reading through the Code feels like a call for re-educating nurses to see themselves as climate activists, decolonial warriors and spiritual interpreters of planetary health.

00:02:40.940 While the Code does include values that you might recognize for nurses, like respecting patient choices and providing compassionate care and showing integrity on the job.

00:02:51.260 It also includes a whole value section dedicated to promoting social justice.

00:02:56.920 So right off the start, we're saying that a political ideology, namely social justice, rooted in a distinct set of philosophical ideas from Marx to Fanon to Butler is considered a professionally required ethical behavior.

00:03:14.580 Ethics codes are supposed to establish professional boundaries.

00:03:17.580 That's a good thing.

00:03:18.580 That's a good thing.

00:03:19.580 They tell practitioners what counts as misconduct, what principles should guide their practice and where to draw the line between care and harm.

00:03:28.500 But the new CNA code of ethics muddies that line.

00:03:33.500 It does ask nurses to view patients, institutions and even themselves through an activist lens.

00:03:39.500 We're not really dealing with ethics so much anymore.

00:03:43.500 We're dealing with ethics as a political doctrine loyal to Herbert Marcuse's no tolerance from movements to the right.

00:03:51.420 It's not explicitly stated in this document, but the social justice scholars that underpin the ideas in this document absolutely are explicit about that.

00:04:02.060 Now, let's take the section 1.4.6 when it talks about, you know, modeling a respectful and inclusive environment that is free from any form of workplace harassment, bullying, violence in all its forms.

00:04:14.640 Sounds great.

00:04:15.580 We don't want that.

00:04:17.420 1.4.9, refraining from acting in a way that may cause harm to another person.

00:04:22.780 Again, on the surface, that is what we want.

00:04:25.920 But let's take these words a little bit further.

00:04:28.780 Let's let's dig deeper into the meaning of some of these words and what's happened in the past.

00:04:33.960 As I'm sure you're aware, dear viewer, that these terms have experienced so much concept creep over the last decade that not wanting your daughter to share a changing room with a trans identified male is probably considered an offense under all of these categories.

00:04:49.440 Other regulators haven't hesitated going after professionals who don't align with this new morality.

00:04:54.200 In 2022, Dr. Jordan Peterson faced disciplinary action from the College of Psychologists of Ontario.

00:05:02.200 For his public statements criticizing gender ideology and social justice principle, something for which he's quite well known at this point,

00:05:10.200 the CPO felt that Dr. Peterson's dissent was discriminatory and unprofessional.

00:05:15.260 The complaints were centered on his tweets and interviews and perceived transphobic microaggressions, despite no direct link with his clinical practice.

00:05:24.860 Now, the CPO was clearly able to exceed its mandate, ordering re-education or else license suspension.

00:05:31.940 If a regulatory body can go after Dr. Peterson, probably one of the most famous Canadians, for expanding views on cultural ideas in his own time,

00:05:43.480 imagine what they can do to you within your own profession under the concept of harm, right?

00:05:49.840 Causing harm, which is kind of what Dr. Peterson was accused of doing.

00:05:53.540 So, in Dr. Peterson's case, the overreach was upheld by the Ontario Divisional Court,

00:05:59.480 and it highlights how regulatory bodies can stretch their authority to police legitimate speech

00:06:05.360 that doesn't really align with the value of promoting social justice, as the Code puts it.

00:06:11.620 So, for a trusted profession, do they think this approach will help or hinder the public's view of them?

00:06:17.940 Now, incidentally, I'm not sure if that re-education will be televised, but I very much hope that it will.

00:06:26.780 And that brings us to the Canadian Nurses Association's use of identity politics and decolonial language,

00:06:36.760 because what they're really doing is rewriting what counts as moral and who's allowed to speak.

00:06:45.780 Let's take a listen to a CNA representative discussing climate activism.

00:06:51.140 The thing I wanted to say is that because planetary health is an interdisciplinary field,

00:06:55.700 it's also a social movement, that means that we really need to capitalize on ensuring that interdisciplinarity is at the core of engagement.

00:07:05.420 And that means that everyone needs to be represented rather than having someone speak on behalf of another profession.

00:07:11.700 And so, that also kind of aligns with when we talk about equity, what does equity mean when we talk about representation from socially disadvantaged groups in decision making.

00:07:22.900 So, I think with respect to making sure that planetary health is addressed within different settings,

00:07:28.260 one thing I wanted to kind of end on is that they also need to be taking into account the different contexts of practice from a demographic, geographical region.

00:07:36.940 And we know that Canadians across the country live in very diverse settings from urban, rural and remote.

00:07:42.680 And we also know that different populations have very distinct needs.

00:07:47.100 And so, remembering to do with and not to or not for, but rather with and in partnership,

00:07:52.900 especially when it comes to working alongside Indigenous communities,

00:07:56.560 is really key in making sure that we really are aligning with planetary health principles.

00:08:02.000 The Canadian Nurses Association says nurses must acknowledge the inherent connections between nature, humans, plants and animals and non-living entities,

00:08:13.160 which I'll point to later in just a second now.

00:08:15.880 They call it the planetary health lens, which is what we heard in this video, obtained from Indigenous epistemologies,

00:08:22.840 that it must guide not just cultural awareness, but scientific research, clinical intervention and policy advocacy.

00:08:30.280 That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

00:08:33.020 And this is basically metaphysics.

00:08:35.460 I'm not sure how this will be applied in practice because the code doesn't really go into that,

00:08:39.360 but I'm sure there's many papers possibly outlining their ideas of what that looks like.

00:08:44.320 I've been trying to find out by accessing publicly available training seminars.

00:08:48.680 Often they get posted online.

00:08:49.960 But what I managed to find wasn't especially insightful.

00:08:52.900 What's concerning is the way that the language is used.

00:08:56.060 So nurses must support planetary health. 0.99

00:08:59.600 They have an ethical responsibility to climate change activism.

00:09:04.060 So where is this coming from?

00:09:06.180 As it turns out, there's a whole position statement giving us this information.

00:09:11.060 I think it's pretty clear from the language that they mean business.

00:09:14.660 It's not just some virtue signal in the code of ethics.

00:09:17.760 Canadian nurses have fully embraced that their role now includes climate change and decolonial activism in all areas of the field,

00:09:26.080 including clinical care.

00:09:27.500 So what is post-colonial theory?

00:09:29.300 Well, let's quote from Frantz Fanon, shall we?

00:09:31.920 One of the founding scholars and most respected scholars and see what he has to say about that.

00:09:38.380 In Wretched of the Earth, Fanon's core argument is that decolonization is intrinsically violent phenomenon,

00:09:44.180 that it involves complete and uncompromising replacement of the colonial or the settler peoples with those that have been colonized.

00:09:53.100 So in other words, we'll talk about land back in a minute.

00:09:56.420 But for now, let's quote Fanon.

00:09:58.020 Quote,

00:09:58.460 So what is he saying here?

00:10:13.600 He asserts that colonialism itself is a system of violence and that the only effective response to that violence is counterviolence that surpasses it, right?

00:10:23.100 So framing violence as a necessary tool for dismantling this colonial oppression.

00:10:27.560 Fanon doesn't mean hurty words either.

00:10:30.160 How about another quote?

00:10:31.960 So violence is a cleansing force.

00:10:34.880 It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction.

00:10:40.080 It makes him feel fearless and restores his self-respect.

00:10:44.100 Again, what is he saying?

00:10:45.040 He's saying that violence serves as a psychological tool.

00:10:48.480 It's liberating the colonized mind from the dehumanizing effects of colonial rule by restoring agency and dignity.

00:10:54.980 But all of that is done through violent action, violent force, violent overthrow.

00:11:00.300 And we've seen this in other third world countries or developing countries in the past.

00:11:04.280 And now we're pushing that.

00:11:05.860 Whether these nurses know the underlying principles of their own ideology or not, it's kind of irrelevant.

00:11:11.660 We're sort of seeing that creep in in the nurses' association.

00:11:16.820 So here's another clip from a recent Canadian Nurses Association seminar promoting the new indigenous focus.

00:11:22.960 I think we'll just follow with your sort of introduction, Jennifer, and what other folks have shared.

00:11:27.100 It's that it's important to remember that there were fully functioning societies before colonization.

00:11:32.860 Everything was happening.

00:11:34.320 Everything had been happening since time immemorial.

00:11:36.700 We've taken care of each other.

00:11:38.200 We've had our governance systems.

00:11:39.760 We've had a way of life.

00:11:41.660 That was imposed upon.

00:11:44.060 And so, you know, this also included, of course, healthcare, medicines, wellness practices.

00:11:48.980 And that knowledge was not respected with colonialism.

00:11:53.420 It was not even not respected.

00:11:54.740 It was dismissed, disregarded.

00:11:56.900 And so, from my perspective as a whole Nishoni person, things like our matriarchal systems were so important.

00:12:02.400 And those traditional councils, they were done away with.

00:12:04.900 They were moved away, moved aside.

00:12:06.860 And that includes things like our plants and our growing systems.

00:12:09.260 So the medicines we would have used, those traditional practices, they were sort of dismissed in favor of that European way, the way it needed to happen, that Western approach to medicine, which was just inherently at odds with the traditional ways that we would have lived.

00:12:24.060 When we were in our own faces, longhouses, we couldn't live in community the same way. 0.81

00:12:30.500 So there's a number of things that were just impacted that then, of course, impacted overall health and wellness.

00:12:35.740 It's grievance politics, clearly.

00:12:39.500 But it's not just for citizens of European descent.

00:12:42.560 If you're a recent immigrant, you're included in this.

00:12:45.760 A few months back, British Columbia NDP MLA Rohini Arora urged all Canadians to call themselves settlers, uninvited guests and colonizers as a kind of a moral duty.

00:12:57.520 She called it a gesture of reflection.

00:12:59.340 A few weeks ago, in estimates, I heard the member for Columbia River, Revelstoke, express discomfort with the terms settler, uninvited guest and colonizer.

00:13:12.840 That prompted me to deeply reflect on where these terms come from and why they matter.

00:13:20.200 Even if we didn't personally cause colonization, we live in a country shaped by it.

00:13:26.100 That's why many non-Indigenous people, including myself, use the term settler, uninvited guest, or for white folks who self-describe as colonizer.

00:13:39.400 It reminds us that we are here because of a colonial system that still impacts Indigenous communities today.

00:13:46.520 Through historically underfunded services, title rights, over-policing, boil water advisories, the legacy of residential schools, and missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people.

00:14:02.680 Some may feel uncomfortable with these terms, but they are not meant to divide us.

00:14:07.180 When we understand the history, we see why they matter.

00:14:12.360 These words remind us that we live, work, and benefit from being on Indigenous land.

00:14:19.040 Land that was often taken without consent, especially here in British Columbia.

00:14:25.140 Unseeded means unsurrendered.

00:14:27.980 I am a settler.

00:14:28.920 I was born here, but my family came from India, through Canada's colonial immigration system, a country and system built on the displacement of Indigenous peoples.

00:14:40.360 That truth doesn't exclude anyone.

00:14:43.880 It includes all of us in a shared responsibility.

00:14:47.960 True reconciliation means recognizing that Canada was built on the lands and suffering of Indigenous peoples. 0.93

00:14:55.100 It's not about blame.

00:14:56.780 It's about a shared responsibility.

00:14:59.620 It's not about division.

00:15:01.700 It's about building honest, respectful relationships so that we can chart a new path forward together.

00:15:08.460 And one that centers First Nations, Métis, and Indigenous people.

00:15:13.520 When we self-refer as settlers, it's a signal to Indigenous people that we understand the history of colonization.

00:15:20.760 And I urge all members here to do the same.

00:15:24.580 Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

00:15:25.480 Now, Rohini claims that this isn't about blame, but I think it kind of is.

00:15:31.540 The scholarship makes no bones about it.

00:15:33.780 Those born with the settler title, born in the settler group, are by definition part of the problem.

00:15:40.920 And that's why the code provides this handy guide to land acknowledgement etiquette.

00:15:45.900 It's asking you to say where your ancestors originated from, as though the fact that your great, great, great grandparents moved to Ontario, say, in 1850, marks you as some kind of inauthentic citizen or inauthentically belonging to the land.

00:16:01.980 They must accept a lower moral status as a result.

00:16:06.160 Refusing to do so might have you dismissed as, I don't know, racist, harmful or worse, colonial.

00:16:14.100 Now, remember the land acknowledgement from the start?

00:16:17.180 That Indigenous peoples are the rightful owners of the land? 1.00

00:16:21.040 That's land back.

00:16:23.100 It's just a hint at land back.

00:16:24.760 Let me just read to you a quote from an essay that I recently published.

00:16:28.000 It's called Settlers, Colonizers, and the Politics of White Guilt, published on the Correspondence Theory Substack this spring.

00:16:34.380 In it, I said,

00:16:35.260 The land back movement is a political engine that lurks behind these acknowledgements, these land acknowledgements.

00:16:41.220 The premise is simple.

00:16:42.700 Land taken or unceded must be returned.

00:16:46.340 The implication, however, is far from simple.

00:16:48.300 Now, Canadian Nurses Association doesn't use the phrase critical race theory. 1.00

00:17:18.300 But the logic is unmistakable.

00:17:20.300 You see it in the emphasis on things like equity, deserving groups, and in the way that the document assigns a moral status based on which group you belong to.

00:17:29.460 The CNA has fully absorbed this logic.

00:17:32.900 Nurses are told to view care through an anti-racist lens and that they must reflect on their power and privilege in a nod to CRT so that they can dismantle systemic racism and that the only way of doing that is becoming an anti-racist.

00:17:46.840 But we know that in practice, it means that neutrality itself is a form of complicity, that rejecting the epistemologies underpinning social justice ideology is in and of itself evidence of isms and phobias, that silence is violence.

00:18:02.340 Now, let me read you a quote.

00:18:04.500 The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination.

00:18:09.420 The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.

00:18:13.540 The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

00:18:17.640 Now, that is your anti-racist hero, Ibram X. Kendi.

00:18:20.900 So it tells you everything that you need to know.

00:18:23.320 My friends, this is what the Canadian Nurses Code is implying without overtly saying it.

00:18:28.080 While the USA has realized their folly and making attempts to move away from racism disguised as anti-racism, Canada plows ahead, unencumbered.

00:18:38.620 Let's talk about misinformation and disinformation.

00:18:41.360 These words should make the hairs on the backs of all nurses stand on end because what do they mean by misinformation and disinformation?

00:18:49.680 Who decides?

00:18:50.920 What's the standard?

00:18:52.200 Nobody knows.

00:18:52.880 Now, nothing of the sort is clarified in this document other than some vague descriptions of things that aren't true.

00:19:01.940 But what truth?

00:19:03.540 Whose truth?

00:19:04.520 Is indigenous herbal cures misinformation?

00:19:07.100 Of course it's not.

00:19:08.600 Is saying that men can't be women disinformation? 0.83

00:19:11.960 Well, we've seen with the Amy Ham case.

00:19:14.220 Well, apparently that is.

00:19:16.240 But let's look at another example.

00:19:18.740 During the pandemic, Dr. Charles Hoff, a physician in British Columbia, raised early concerns about vaccine side effects.

00:19:27.080 His license was threatened and his career nearly ended.

00:19:30.420 The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia issued a citation against him in February 2022,

00:19:36.480 alleging that he'd made misleading, incorrect and inflammatory statements about vaccinations and treatments relating to public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:19:47.200 This winter, however, the College of Physicians dropped the professional misconduct case with Dr. Hoff,

00:19:52.660 citing that circumstances surrounding the disciplinary action of his case had materially changed and they no longer needed to proceed.

00:20:01.600 Isn't that curious?

00:20:03.300 I guess the Ministry of Truth changed their mind about what constitutes misinformation.

00:20:07.340 So ask yourself, what if a nurse publicly questioned the scientific validity of using traditional herbal medicines to treat serious illnesses?

00:20:16.940 What if she cited a study or pointed to a lack of empirical support for using said herbal medicines?

00:20:24.420 Would she be punished for a racism incident? 0.92

00:20:27.460 It's just not clear in the code what can and can't happen because the social justice ideology isn't really based on objective standards.

00:20:34.300 It's based on a fluid, ever-changing form of ideology that clearly doesn't express any of its limitations.

00:20:44.020 So what are its limitations?

00:20:45.140 Through its code of ethics, through its planetary health activism, and through its redefinition of compassionate care,

00:20:52.460 the Canadian Nurses Association is transforming nursing into something unrecognizable, a vessel for activism, ritual and white guilt.

00:21:02.280 For nurses, it means that your job includes a duty to become an activist.

00:21:06.400 You must believe that the very bedrock under our feet is alive and interconnected with, I don't know, blood test appointments.

00:21:13.460 And if you're not indigenous, you must see yourself as a settler, uninvited guest, and colonizer, and so on and so forth.

00:21:20.680 And respecting that means that you must apply a post-colonial lens.

00:21:25.020 But for the public, this means something a little bit more serious.

00:21:29.140 It means that the people you rely on in your most vulnerable moments are being pressured politically, spiritually, and professionally,

00:21:35.820 not to treat you based on evidence, but to filter your care through a belief system that you might not even be aware of.

00:21:42.580 A Western University nurse posted this in response to my article.

00:21:59.360 Just as Lysenko discarded genetics in favor of politically approved pseudoscience,

00:22:03.480 Today's health regulators are discarding objectivity to appease ideological orthodoxy.

00:22:10.400 Lysenko ruined Soviet agriculture. 0.73

00:22:13.460 He killed over 30 million people by subordinating science to dogma.

00:22:18.920 The Canadian Nurses Association is doing the same thing to nursing, replacing biology with cosmology,

00:22:25.280 clinical reasoning with cultural obedience, and treating dissent as misconduct.

00:22:29.120 Make no mistake, the philosophical underpinnings of this code is all about obtaining power.

00:22:35.560 Who has it? Where to get it?

00:22:37.260 What it'll mean for all of us in the future, I don't know.

00:22:40.260 Only time will tell.

00:22:41.980 But regardless of all that, I want to thank you very much for making it to the end.

00:22:45.780 Thank you for watching.

00:22:47.060 If you enjoyed my musings, feel free to like and subscribe and maybe even click on the notification bell.

00:22:53.500 And I'll be with you next week with some more great content.

00:22:57.280 I'm Melanie Bennett.

00:22:58.340 This is Disrupted.

Juno News - July 24, 2025

Canadian Nurses Association's Social Justice Manifesto

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