AB Minister demands end to "woke" hiring practices

No one needs to lunge at this crafted line; it won't change a thing.

Municipalities are a provincial responsibility. The province legislates what responsibilities a municipality should, and can, be able to make decisions about. Since the UCP formed government in 2019, elected officials have taken much more interest in municipal affairs. In fairness, some municipalities started taking much more of an interest in filling the gap left by the province’s dereliction of duty and greatly angered the UCP’s very loud anti-government base, too.

We are living in a Hatfield and McCoy plot.

While there may have always been some tension — Naheed Nenshi was Mayor of Calgary from 2011 to 2021 so, it’s entirely possible — then-Premier Jason Kenney put his foot down on mask mandates brought in by the cities of Calgary and Edmonton. That, the Premier claimed, was related to health and therefore not a municipal responsibility. Of course, it was city hospitals that were being overrun with COVID cases, which directly impacted residents, but, Kenney’s name wasn’t on the ballot. Mr. Kenney passed amendments to ensure municipal leaders could not attempt to mitigate provincial malfeasance.

Danielle Smith, who was in between gigs at the time, argued that municipalities should have more independence from the province (more than once). After she became premier, she introduced Bill 18 (enforcing municipal adherence to provincial government priorities) Bill 20 (municipal political parties amended after backlash), Bill 21 (Emergency management), and Bill 50 (provincial authority over council management).

In a bid to help awful candidates have a better shot at getting elected to municipal council, the UCP under Danielle Smith also greenlit political parties at the municipal level in the province’s two largest cities. Voter turnout in municipal elections has long been dismal at less than 40 per cent voter turnout. Even Jason Kenney’s equalization referendum didn’t manage to stop people from electing more progressive candidates like Jyoti Gondek in Calgary and Amarjeet Sohi in Edmonton.

If people won’t vote for conservatives who bare their conservatism for all to see, maybe they’ll be fooled into voting for conservatives who have sunshine logos.

Sunshine is nice. Everyone likes sunshine. Vote for sunshine and don’t worry about whether your garbage pick-up services will be funded because: sunshine.

With any luck, it will pit residents against one another just like they’ve done provincially and federally and we can be miserable if “our team” doesn’t win at every level. I digress.

It also makes it curious that the same elected officials who desperately want ideological conformity on municipal council seem to understand that whether roads get plowed in the winter is not an ideological issue.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion

I’ve said it before; the only reason EDI policies exist is because racism, sexism, ageism, etc., were widely and openly practiced. At its most basic, EDI policies are a reminder to hiring teams that they shouldn’t discriminate against people. Shockingly, that also includes white dudes. And while some white dudes can’t imagine that anyone could possibly be more qualified than they are for a job, there is evidence to support that it both can and does happen.

Yes, I know, not all white dudes think this way but those who are complaining tend to skew pretty unremarkably towards being those dudes.

One of the many jobs I have held in my life was that of career coach. I wrote resumes for people, helped them with interview preparation, and job search techniques. I’ve also had 30 or so jobs in my working life and I had learned a few things on my own.

Please let me be the one to point out that intangible things like “character” and “sense of humour”, and what some companies refer to as “fitting in with the office culture”, can legitimately sway a hiring team more than a resume.

So can tangible, but otherwise irrelevant things, like physical attractiveness.

Why do jewellery stores hire attractive women? Because even men who are in love with someone else can be cajoled into spending more money to impress a beautiful woman — or a woman in a short skirt. When I was 19, I worked as a waitress in a bar. My tips (and sales) were noticeably higher when I wore a mini-skirt. Ugh. Men.

Appealing to the clientele is an important part of product sales and service delivery.

When the RCMP was focused on diversifying their workforce decades ago, their reasoning was they needed people who better understood the people they were dealing with, or needed their help. A lot of dudes were put out by it,, though. Almost like they didn’t really give a damn about the level of service the organization was trying to provide to the community.

Even if the Minister complains about “wokeness” or the U.S. version of EDI, recognize it for what it is — a line to appease the desperate keyboard warriors clawing at the Minister’s pant legs for attention.

It will not have an effect on anyone’s hiring practices. Those who wanted to discriminate against certain people never stopped, those who prefer to be surrounded by women will find a way to fill the positions around them with women, and unless someone is dumb enough to make themselves liable for a discrimination suit, they aren’t going to say it out loud.

It’s about perspective

“What women want” was a movie title in 2000, a foundation to the plot of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”, and the reason a secretary was moved into advertizing in “Mad Men”: perspective.

Linda Yaccarino, CEO of Elon Musk’s social media site, announced she was stepping down on July 9, just hours before a genuinely cringeworthy “live” with Mr. Musk and four other dudes introduced the fourth version of their AI with a new female voice, Eve, where one person asked it to help calm his nerves.

The AI whispered calming words, not unlike a mother assuaging the fears of their scared toddler who needed consoling after waking from a nightmare.

It was creepy AF.

Point being, however, that a female executive might have also cringed — even balked — at such a demonstration. I doubt that’s the singular reason she resigned but it couldn’t have possibly made her decision to do so any more difficult.

An ad campaign called “Experience Regina” hit a snag when they found themselves in the midst of controversy over their “the city that rhymes with fun” slogan.

Not going to lie, there’s some great jokes out there that make some of us laugh, but that’s because we don’t live there. I don’t want my city to be a punchline, and I certainly don’t want to think of myself, or my daughter, or my granddaughter, walking down the street to people yelling “show us your Regina!”

Maybe it’s woke to give a damn about how others might feel — I spent too many years in customer service to make that argument myself. With that being said, it’s precisely why none of this “wokeness” is going away: sales.

Businesses want to sell their product to as many people as possible. Service providers want to provide the best service. They will all do whatever they can to maximize their impact and people can call it “woke” for likes and clicks on social media but it isn’t changing anything.

Capitalists are going to capitalize on the biggest share of the market they can and that means society will be forced to move along with it — no matter how much a desperate few kick and scream along the way.

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