Earlier in 2025, Bill Flanagan, president of the University of Alberta (U of A), announced in an op-ed that the university would move away from the language of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) toward access, community and belonging. In the piece, Flanagan described this shift as an evolution, one that represents their commitment to fostering a community “where everyone can thrive.” Now, just over a year later, the university is proposing to do away with the equitable hiring policy altogether.
This February, CBC reported that the U of A drafted a new hiring policy that excludes EDI from its considerations. Though the policy is still pending approval by the board of governors this month, the proposal itself seems to reflect a growing concern of an anti-EDI backlash across the nation.
“What U of A and other organizations have started to look at is, ‘Well, what is the effectiveness of these policies, programs and offices that we’re putting into place?’” said TRU’s EDI manager Keisha Morong. “And we are now starting to see a kind of political rollback of the language that’s being used.”
Per Flanagan, the language of EDI has been seen by some as polarizing, divisive and at odds with merit. With the university’s latest proposal, though, it is easy to wonder whether these critiques were targeted at the language of EDI or perhaps at the underlying concept of EDI itself.
The fact that many institutions and businesses at the helm of this growing anti-EDI wave are from Alberta is not a coincidence. Premier Danielle Smith has echoed similar talking points about the framework, describing them as “woke hiring practices” and claiming that her department has been working to rein them in, particularly at universities.
Alberta’s reaction is also downstream of the greater backlash happening in the United States, where President Donald Trump issued an executive order in his first few days in office to end federal EDI programs. Though the order is still being contested in courts, its impact has already led to widespread capitulation by universities such as Columbia, companies like JPMorgan Chase, Disney, Coca-Cola and tech giants like Google and Amazon.
Critics of EDI often point to issues of merit, reverse discrimination, performativity and practicality as reasons to justify why these rollbacks are occurring. CBC reporting found that at the U of A, some staff complained about burnout from taking on extra EDI work.
Morong, acknowledging that there will always be room for improvement, believes that the current reactions are not good-faith responses to these critiques. Universities should find ways to move EDI out of the realm of the performative and impractical, she says, to make it more effective and meaningful. Instead, their choice to roll back progress will only exacerbate the issues that EDI was created to resolve in the first place.
“For those rebranding,” she said, “what they’re saying is that they’re still going to do the work, so it doesn’t matter what they call themselves. But obviously it does matter, or else you wouldn’t change the name.”
Mount Royal University rebranded its EDI office to the Office of Community and Belonging, and so did the University of Lethbridge, which established its Office of Accessibility, Belonging and Community in December 2024.
“When you soften language, you’re softening the importance of this work and these initiatives,” Morong continued. “We’re trying to kind of make it prettier and make it lighter when, really, it needs that heaviness in its name, so that we understand the heaviness of the work that still needs to be done.”
In Morong’s opinion, these moves reflect a lack of proper groundwork for effecting social justice change. Universities developed EDI programs in response to funding incentives and federal requirements, but there was no way to be sure they had fully and sincerely embraced the accountability component. Thus, as the rollback continues, we start to see several institutions seemingly relieved that they no longer have to be held accountable for equity hiring.
On an individual basis, Morong understands that EDI might be difficult for those who are not historically equity-denied, and who may feel slighted that socially marginalised people are being prioritized.
“That is a big ask of people,” she said. “How can it not feel a little bit unfair? But I think there’s an overall social responsibility to understand the history that brought us to where we’re at. There’s also a hope that people buy into the belief that, if we keep doing this type of work, we will reach a time where you will get hired just as much as anyone else, because the door was open the same for everyone.”
Though general concerns about the state of EDI in Canada still give her reason to worry about her position and work, Morong insists that TRU itself has been nothing but supportive, emphasizing its commitment to the university’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism office regularly. At the end of February, the institution signed onto the Scarborough Charter, the framework for higher education that combats anti-Black racism in universities. But this itself is not assurance, as the U of A signed this charter as well, all the way back in 2021.
It will be interesting to see what the future of EDI will look like across the country and at TRU in the coming years.