A familiar axiom that says, “People can be judged by the company they keep.” Crime family movies use the phrase, “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.” I was reminded of those words while watching Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in his long and friendly conversation with controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson.

The former University of Toronto teacher announced in December that he had moved to the USA. He claimed a bill proposed in Parliament would turn Canada into a “totalitarian hell hole.” It would have enacted the Online Harms Act, which was intended to mitigate the risk of harmful online content. Actions that victimize children were targeted, as well as content intended to incite hatred and violent extremism or terrorism. The imperfect bill died when Parliament was prorogued in March 2025.

Peterson’s views worry people who care about diversity and human rights, but appeal to disaffected individuals. Actress and activist Olivia Wilde said the man was a “Hero to the Incel Community.” An article in The Guardian mentioned him:

“It’s true that he’s not a white nationalist,” says David Neiwert, the Pacific Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. “But he’s buttressing his narrative with pseudo-facts, many of them created for the explicit purpose of promoting white nationalism, especially the whole notion of ‘cultural Marxism’. 

Cultural Marxism is a far-right conspiracy theory used by opponents of progressive movements, which some associate with wokeism. That label is an interesting one. It may have originated in a 1938 song by Blues musician Lead Belly. It recalled the true story of nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama.

“I made this little song about down there…I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go down through there. Best stay woke. Keep their eyes open.”

A timeline of “WOKE” in public dialogue:

2012 —— Begins to signify a progressive outlook on a host of issues as well as on race.

2014 —— Stay woke is used by BLM activists to urge awareness of police abuses.

2017 —— Oxford English Dictionary defines WOKE as “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”

2019 —— Increasingly used perjoratively by the political right to oppose the political left.

2021 —— Trump said the Biden administration was destroying the USA “with woke.”

2022 —— Florida state legislature adopted the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.”

2022 —— Trump beneficiary Elon Musk posted an anti-pride month meme and began saying the woke mind virus had infected the American people and was turning them into “left-wing loons and zombies.”

Talking with Poilievre, Peterson expressed admiration for the Trump Crime Family. Poilivre was not troubled by those comments, but that was before Conservative support faded because Canadians didn’t like politicians who admired the man who said his plan to annex Canada was “a real thing.”

Remarkable? Stellar accomplisments? Is Trump not proven to be an individualist autocrat?

In fact, the Trump coterie is known for shoddy security practices that revealed classified information and put the lives of Americans at risk.

Among the group is senior advisor Peter Navarro, also known as Ron Vara, the fictional expert Navarro invented to support what the libertarian Cato Institute called his “spectacularly economically ignorant” views. The Atlantic called Navarro the “Madman Behind Trump’s Trade Theory.” (For a technical analysis of the work of Trump’s economic counsellor, read the file posted below.)

While talking to a man who may be suffering from early dementia, Pierre Poilievre, the Stephen Harper protégé who yearns to be Prime Minister, indicated he will look to Albertan Danielle Smith to shape energy policy.

What Canada doesn’t need are intransigent idiots designing energy, climate, environmental, and other policies. If we elect the Conservatives, that is precisely what we’ll get.