The war against DEI will cost us all

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Julie MacDonell is the chief executive of Haloo. She is also an IP lawyer with a previous career in civil liberties and human rights law.

Elon Musk has declared DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) a “cancer” and “just another word for racism.”

Mark Zuckerberg is calling for more “masculine energy” in technology.

Donald Trump is promising to yank government contracts from companies that maintain DEI policies.

And then last week, for 24 hours – an eternity online – Shopify Inc. powered Kanye West’s swastika shop, turbocharged by a Super Bowl ad. The site sold nothing but T-shirts of the symbol, and despite knowing, Shopify said nothing publicly and told its staff to do the same. When it finally took the site down, it cited technicalities, avoiding any mention of a potential hate speech policy violation.

This isn’t just a series of disconnected headlines; it’s a tide turning. What was once a fringe backlash against diversity has seeped into corporate boardrooms, government policies and even everyday shopping experiences, gaining mainstream acceptance.

So many of us are asking: What is going on? And for Canadian companies, the real question is even more urgent: What do we stand for?

Companies should stand for fairness and decency. Not as a tag line, not as corporate theatre, but as the foundation of who we are and how we build products.

DEI is somehow becoming a dirty word, a radical ideology. After the Potomac River crash, Mr. Trump baselessly blamed DEI, claiming it put unqualified people in safety roles. This isn’t analysis; it’s propaganda that pushes the false idea that inclusivity and competence can’t co-exist.

We need to remind ourselves, over and over, because some people seem to forget that DEI is just fairness. It’s decency. That’s it.

DEI is making sure two people doing the same job get paid the same because, well, that’s fair. It’s giving employees with disabilities the tools they need – screen readers – because telling a visually impaired employee to squint harder at a slide deck is unfair. And yes, it’s policies that ensure hate speech that incites violence doesn’t get a platform, not in this political climate, because even a minute of harm is a minute too much.

In today’s rhetoric, DEI is often written off as a quota system, as if it’s about giving one group an unfair advantage and making it easy to call DEI “political” and justify dismantling it. But the most neutral stance a company can take is that workplaces should reflect real-world demographics. The issue isn’t ability (people don’t need fixing); it’s history (systems do). Fix the systems – hiring, access and opportunity – and representation takes care of itself.

Dismantling DEI? That’s as political as it gets. Removing it is built on the myth that the playing field is already level, that systemic barriers are just excuses. This essentially flirts with a very ugly idea: that some groups are inherently less capable than others, a belief past political leaders didn’t just imply but weaponized through law and policy. A belief, incidentally, embedded in the swastika symbol.

Work hard, play fair, climb to the top. A meritocracy. But look closer and you start to see a different reality.

Many groups don’t start on equal footing. Women were shut out of industries for generations and needed a man’s signature for a business loan until 1988. People with disabilities have rights on paper, but barriers persist despite the 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act. Black and Indigenous people still face systemic hurdles, from hiring discrimination to limited access to capital, despite Canada’s 1995 Employment Equity Act. LGBTQ+ workers had no legal protection until 1996, and for trans people, something as simple as outdated identification records can still block employment entirely.

For people at intersections – disabled and queer, Black and trans, Indigenous and female – the climb is even steeper. Progress exists, but the playing field isn’t level.

Companies claim DEI isn’t their business. But while governments can legislate equity, the rules they pass into law don’t create jobs.

That’s where the private sector comes in. It’s chief executive officers, venture capitalists and banks that dole out economic opportunity, deciding who gets in and who stays out.

And in the age of artificial intelligence, DEI is the firewall between progress and disaster. Get it wrong, and we won’t just encode bias; we’ll hardwire discrimination into the systems that run our lives. From health care to law, AI is reshaping every institution. And as tech giants win massive AI contracts while quietly unravelling DEI, the risk isn’t theoretical, it’s real. Ignore it and we’re in real trouble.

Now, more than ever, Canada’s core values of fairness and decency are on the line, and leadership means taking responsibility – not erasing history or ignoring harm. Will today’s leaders build a future that moves us forward, or one we’ll be apologizing for decades from now?