As I’m writing this, I’m angry—no, I’m furious.
Yesterday was International Women’s Day. You might not have noticed that, though, because Google quietly removed it from all of our calendars.
This erasure is just the latest in a pattern of rollbacks affecting marginalized groups, including the moves to dismantle entire programs dedicated to creating equitable workplaces.
When Trump took office 48 excruciatingly long days ago, he wasted no time eliminating federal programs like DEI, affirmative action, and equal opportunity programs. Are you a researcher working to improve the lives of disadvantaged groups? Well, best of luck to you, because terms like "female," "race," and "male-dominated" are on a list of dozens of flagged words affecting grant applications.
Trump also implemented Elon Musk’s DOGE, which promises to eliminate perceived inefficiencies and reduce “wasteful” spending, which apparently includes firing 300 staffers responsible for managing the country’s nuclear arsenal. He later unfired them after realizing their importance.
Basically, they want to run the government like X, or as Sarah aptly calls it around here, Shitty Twitter.
Since then, tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta have folded like lawn chairs under political pressure, either drastically scaling back or completely eliminating their internal DEI programs. This has resulted in the departure of countless employees responsible for these initiatives.
It's easy to assume a "that wouldn't happen here" mindset here in Canada—but it already is happening here. Shopify is one Canadian company that has been in the news a lot lately. I imagine their crisis PR team is logging unprecedented billable hours.
Back in 2024, they started to comply with the Trump administration in advance by eliminating internal diversity and inclusion initiatives. More recently, they laid off the entire team that supported Black, Indigenous, and women entrepreneurs.
Shopify COO Nejatian is also the Co-Founder and board member of right-wing media outlet True North, which recently featured an interview (since removed) with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, where he, between racist remarks, defended the group’s legal designation as a terrorist organization.
They also seem to have some truly baffling priorities. Just last month, Kanye West’s brand Yeezy released a swastika t-shirt on their Shopify-powered site during Super Bowl Sunday. Shopify didn’t remove it until that Tuesday, and leaked internal chats revealed that they didn’t remove it for antisemitism at all, but rather because of… potential fraud issues.
Us Canadians like to proudly wield our free public healthcare, gun control, politeness, and a set of values that celebrate diversity and inclusion. These are the things that make us who we are and separate us from our neighbours.
And they’re at stake.
We need a real show of backbone from business and tech leaders in this country, and that’s going to take a community effort. Luckily, the Growclass community and larger marketing community is already on it—because of course we are.
On February 23rd, a small group of tech leaders (including Growclass Founder Sarah Stockdale) published an open letter on What in The Tech calling on all Canadians to stand up for inclusion and against platforming hate.
Over 1100 tech leaders in Canada have signed it.
It’s been covered by Business Insider, The Globe and Mail, The National, CBC, CTV, The Logic, Betakit, and more.
It’s clear Canadians don’t want hateful values in our most influential companies.
Look, I know that it feels like each day we are left sitting in abject horror as another symbol of progress is dismantled right in front of us. I know it’s easy to feel powerless, heartbroken, seething with incandescent rage, or some combination of all of the above. But they want us to feel exhausted and to give up. Here’s the thing: Progress is—and always has been—the result of many small individual acts of courage compounding over time.
Some federal employees are using the spoon emoji 🥄 as their small act of courage, a subtle symbol of resistance against the Trump administration's policies.
Maybe today your small act of courage can be signing the open letter here.
We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.
Yours in solidarity,
Ines
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