Juno News - Trudeau’s budget embraces intersectional feminism

00:00:00.000 You know, if the federal government put as much effort and attention into actually running the

00:00:10.280 country as it does into politically correct nonsense, we might actually be in a bit better

00:00:15.380 a place as a country. The federal government this week released its economic and fiscal update

00:00:21.480 featuring a rather bizarre section about the gender-based analysis, the GBA plus analysis

00:00:28.320 that the government undertook as it reviewed its own spending. And I want to see if anything jumps

00:00:33.700 out from this paragraph here. Gender-based analysis plus is an analytical process used to assess how

00:00:40.180 diverse groups of women, men, and non-binary people may experience policies, programs, and initiatives.

00:00:47.300 GBA plus goes beyond gender to consider additional identity factors such as ethnicity, sexual

00:00:55.000 orientation, age, income level, and mental or physical ability. Here is the legend for the

00:01:01.160 pictograms contained in this summary. Please see introduction to budget 2019's gender report

00:01:06.700 for a more detailed description of these terms and fields. And yes, the budget does go through this

00:01:14.100 GBA plus analysis as well. But remember, when the gender analysis was first introduced through

00:01:19.780 government policies, and we see it across departments, by the way, considerable effort put

00:01:24.680 towards this, considerable money hiring consultants to come in to review whether gender is being

00:01:30.560 appropriately considered whenever a government program is going on. This was always supposed to

00:01:35.700 be about making sure that women weren't being disadvantaged. And broadening it to look at the impacts

00:01:40.700 is interesting enough for most people. But now saying that gender analysis is going beyond gender,

00:01:46.680 this is the epitome of intersectionality. You can't look at the one without looking at race and

00:01:51.720 orientation and ability level and all of these things. Now, the problem with this is that it's

00:01:56.940 actually quite patronizing. The government is effectively saying that people are impacted

00:02:02.900 differently by deficits if they are black versus if they're white, if they're trans versus if they're

00:02:08.940 cis. And, you know, while there certainly are going to be policies that impact certain groups in

00:02:13.360 different ways, why would we not as a government focus on how all Canadians are being impacted

00:02:18.560 by government spending? Take, for example, this headline in the Wall Street Journal talking about

00:02:23.660 the widening deficit in Canada. Well, deficit spending is not good for anyone. Doesn't matter

00:02:29.080 what the GBA analysis reveals, all Canadians suffer when the country's finances are not being looked

00:02:34.880 after. Why is the government so focused on this identity politics? Because that's the only thing they

00:02:40.860 know how to do well. We're talking about finance. We're talking about math. We're talking about

00:02:45.680 numbers. When you were in high school math class, did you ever imagine that one plus one equals two

00:02:50.540 might be different depending on the gender or identity group? Give me a break. But this is the

00:02:55.460 only thing the government right now cares about. They'll spend as much of your money as they conceivably

00:03:00.260 can. But oh, don't worry, it's okay, because they did the identity analysis. Intersectionality

00:03:06.300 trumping economics. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.

00:03:10.860 Peace.

00:03:14.080 Speaker 1

Juno News - December 17, 2019