Amy Hamm: Lorne Doerkson, don’t go soft on wokeness - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out B.C. Premier Lorne Doerkson at a Government of Canada announce about the expansion of a shipping terminal in Metro Vancouver. (Arlen Redekop / PNG) By Amy Hamm November 1, 2026 at 10:20 a.m. NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — Depending on whom you ask about last weekend’s election results in British Columbia, this province is either on the precipice of some long-awaited glory days — or a descent into utter MAGA-esque tyranny, replete with dead orcas (as one leftist influencer ominously warned immediately after a blue wave swept B.C.).

I’m hopeful for the former (and enjoying a hearty laugh over the hysteria of those who believe the latter) but recognize that much work needs to be done by incoming Conservative Party of B.C. Premier Lorne Doerkson. A lot of things in B.C. are broken.

Doerkson can renew B.C.’s economy and fix some of the uncertainty over our private property rights — both issues featured heavily in his election campaign — but B.C. will remain an unattractive place for the average person to call home if the new government doesn’t radically overhaul the culture of wokeness that infects all of our public institutions.

So what if you can afford to live here, when you might be fired from your job, or hauled before a quasi-judicial kangaroo court (like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal) and ordered to pay tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for the “crime” of offending someone who holds radical, far-left views? And so what if you establish the title to your land, if you’re compelled to perform land acknowledgements, with religious fervour, at work or in public? And if your children are forced to perform the same ritual in our public schools. What use is it to live nestled between our enviable mountains and ocean if one is afraid to speak their mind, for fear of consequences?

A Conservative government focus on B.C.’s economy is not enough, nor is fiscal conservativism.

Because Doerkson represents big-tent conservatism (which is both necessary and reasonable), I feel a lingering anxiety that our incoming government could be soft on eradicating wokeness.

That said, it’s a positive sign that Doerkson has already promised to do away with SOGI-123, the “sexual orientation and gender identity” education given to public school kids beginning in kindergarten. This curriculum preaches gender ideology, including the unscientific notion that humans can be “born in the wrong body,” to vulnerable youth. SOGI has been used by far-left ideologues to enforce their worldview via the public education system. They’ve pretended SOGI is about “anti-bullying,” when it’s clearly not. It can’t be gone soon enough.

While I’m pleased with Doerkson’s SOGI promise, it represents his bravest foray into the so-called “culture war” issues—and, notably, the topic was sprung on him during his election campaign. Doerkson’s detractors seemingly wished to catch him off guard and frame him as a bigoted kook by forcing him to denounce SOGI. Doerkson appeared uncomfortable when repeatedly asked about SOGI — likely and hopefully because it was merely off message for his campaign.

Going forward, Doerkson must boldly engage with “culture war” issues to make B.C. a province worth calling home.

For starters, women and girls in B.C. do not currently have a right to sex-segregated spaces or sports. We should look to Alberta and borrow from Premier Danielle Smith’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, which demands female-only sport divisions for all provincial sporting bodies. Female athletes in B.C. deserve no less.

This province also needs the equivalent of Alberta’s “Peterson’s Law,” or, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, which “prevents regulators from disciplining professionals for conduct that is expressive and occurs when the professional is off-duty, subject to narrow exceptions” (I, of course, have faced discipline from the province’s nursing regulator for off-duty political comments).

If B.C. wants to attract and retain professionals — including sorely needed doctors and nurses — we must show that we are a province that embraces free expression and lively public debate for everyone.

In conjunction with some type of “Peterson’s Law,” B.C.’s new government should also repeal the Health Professions and Occupation Act (HPOA), which replaced the Health Professions Act this spring. The HPOA increased regulators’ authority to discipline professionals for their off-duty speech — as if they didn’t have enough power already — and also introduced government-appointed (rather than elected) board members. It was a transparent power-grab, described by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms as “facilitating prosecutions against doctors, nurses and other health care providers over what they say.” Get rid of it.

Crucially, we must also abolish the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT). An overhaul won’t suffice — the BCHRT has proven to be an institution that can be easily weaponized by radical activists with a hyper-partisan agenda. Its existence is not worth the risk it poses to everyday British Columbians.

There is a reason that B.C.’s NDP-supporting left is reacting to the Conservative election win with derangement and hyperbole. They know very well that the sky is not falling, and that the orcas are not dying — it’s just that they can see their cultural vice grip and institutional dominance slipping away. They started the culture war via forced compliance with their outrageous ideas about gender, race and identity, then falsely accused those of us in opposition to their nonsense as having lit the pyre ourselves.

May Doerkson and his Conservative colleagues prove, in the next four years, that they’re willing to do the work to take B.C.’s culture back from the radical left.

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