While Trump’s tariffs are top of mind in the federal election, urgent issues like Indigenous sovereignty, workers’ rights, racial equity and climate action should define this moment.
Trump’s erratic policies are creating real economic anxieties that can’t be ignored, but Canadian political discourse has narrowed in this election at the expense of all else.
We’re seeing what some are calling the end of the reconciliation era, denialism and silence on the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, continued precarity for migrant workers and despite the fact that 98% of Canadians earn their living through work, not business ownership, labour concerns are being sidelined.
As I recently wrote, equity makes not only moral but economic sense. And history shows it is a failing political strategy to abandon marginalized communities in pursuit of a misconceived middle ground.
Yet the dominant political narratives are regressive.
Nationalist rhetoric and a status quo approach to economics alienate the growing number of people who see through the failures of this status quo and demand real change.
“Canadian political discourse has narrowed in this election at the expense of all else.”
None of the major parties seems to offer a vision that meets this moment.
Poilievre is running on punishment-as-safety and destructive public service cuts. Meanwhile, Carney wants to double down on failed neoliberal market solutions, quietly walking back even symbolic commitments to justice. The NDP—once rooted in grassroots organizing— now seems caught in strategic triangulation, drifting from its base.
Marginalized people are not just excluded from the system’s benefits —they’re excluded from the political imagination of those vying to lead it. Left without parties that speak to their realities, many are forced to vote defensively, not aspirationally.
So what do we do in a political moment like this?
Lessons from the field
Last month I joined the Canadian Network for Equity and Racial Justice conference where researchers and activists from across the country shared updates on the state of research and politics across different intersecting racial justice concerns: work, health, Indigenous sovereignty, business, education, housing, the penal system, sports, media and the arts.
It was refreshing to engage in conversations about a just future for this country that decentred whiteness—while also recognizing that the institutions we seek to influence still reflect and uphold white power structures.
Four lessons emerged in our strategic discussions:
- The existential threat is not new. For many BIPOC communities, the “existential threat” of this political moment is not new. Journalist Desmond Cole reminded us that racialized and Indigenous communities have been living under existential threat from white supremacy since the founding of this country. Treating this moment as exceptional betrays a disturbing indifference to the long-standing realities faced by BIPOC communities.
- We must work from a place of strength, not victimhood. The work we do is not about asking for handouts, it’s about justice. Fortunately, that justice benefits everyone. As founder and Executive Director of Thunder Woman Healing Lodge Society Patti Pettigrew put it, racism is fragile and unsustainable, so adopting Indigenous socio-economic systems is a path to survival for everyone, not just for First Peoples. She recommends that we focus inward, building solidarity to force change.
- Make bold demands without apology. Drawing on his experience lobbying government as president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Alika Lafontaine stressed: be predictable, not palatable. He said to speak your audience’s language—even if it’s “conservative”—but never dilute your message. That’s how change happens.
- Disinformation thrives on ‘inversions’. Legal scholar Joshua Sealy-Harrington warned about the use of inversions in politics, media and the law. This is when power flips reality to protect itself. For example, Zionism frames anti-Zionism as racism, but Zionism itself is the racist ideology. Or equity-seeking is painted as unfair when it is the pursuit of fairness. These inversions put activists on the defensive while shielding oppressive systems from scrutiny and must be challenged directly.
For much of the world, Trump isn’t a rupture, he just exposes cracks within empire that are usually only visible on the outside.
That’s why the panic surrounding Trump rings hollow for many BIPOC communities that have long lived under the existential threat of that same imperialism. Many have fled economies and democracies destroyed by colonialism and its modern forms—including US- (and Canadian-) backed wars, dictatorships and resource theft—only to arrive in North America and face exploitation, exclusion and police violence.
If Trump feels like a breaking point for white Canadians, the genocide of Palestinians has been a breaking point for many BIPOC communities for over 18 months. They’ve seen more undeniably than ever how the death of brown-skinned people can be ignored when settler-colonial power is at stake.
“The panic surrounding Trump rings hollow for many BIPOC communities.”
The major parties in this election are ignoring the deeper crisis of our time: as racial justice scholars have long argued, we do not live in a post-colonial world, colonialism has simply evolved. The global architecture of extraction, exploitation and white supremacy has been sustained through neoliberal globalization—and Trump and his tariffs are only symptoms of this system.
This neocolonial paradigm has drawn out the staggering inequality and economic precarity that affect most of the world today. For many racial justice scholars, the rise of the alt-right can be understood as a backlash from a disillusioned white working class who are now being crushed by the very system they believed was built for them.
Next steps
The organized left must come to terms with this: they can’t build real momentum without both naming and confronting the roots of our crisis.
Workers and grassroots organizers are already leading the way, making the connections between Palestine and Turtle Island, between endless war and climate collapse, between structural adjustment and the toxic drug crisis. And like in the recent American presidential race, this groundswell is not finding its home in Canada’s 2025 federal election discourse.
Many BIPOC organizers have already turned away from party politics and are focused on building power at a community level. But these efforts are not peripheral. They are the building blocks of a just future that will benefit everyone.
For BIPOC organizers, the task is not to explain or defend their realities on terms set by systems designed to deny them. It is to trust in their collective strength, to resist the inversions that frame justice as extremism and to build solidarities that refuse to sacrifice anyone for the comfort of the so-called centre.
We can meet this moment together.
