Conference plunged into turmoil over priority 'equity cards' eg trans woman furious a biological woman allowed to go first

[IwantToRetire]

Okay - this is a DM article - so now doubt they have picked on the most extreme instances, but thought it quite funny:

A political conference for Canada's New Democratic Party descended into chaos after progressive activists got into heated arguments over 'equity cards.'

NDP members from across the nation gathered in Winnipeg, the capital of the Manitoba province, over the weekend to elect the party's new leader.
The event was billed as an opportunity for progressive Canadians to 'come together to debate ideas, celebrate our shared values, and help shape the future of our movement,' the NDP convention website said.

But footage from the event revealed frustration among delegates over the alleged misuse of so-called equity cards, colored coded cards that identified a party member as being part of a marginalized group that granted them special privileges.

'Equity' is a woke buzzword that means equality of outcomes. Progressives say that equality, generally taken to mean equal opportunities, can be discriminatory because some minority groups must first overcome disadvantages that others do not have.

One delegate was outraged that she was allegedly skipped in the speaker queue despite having been standing at the podium with her gender equity card.

A transgender woman who argued her 'rights are under attack' claimed it was 'frustrating' that a 'cis gender woman had spoken over me.'
Similarly, a black woman argued that equity cards for women like her 'have no value outside of this space.'

Conference chair Adrienne Smith, who identifies as non-binary, also seemed a bit testy and snapped at a delegate in a keffiyeh after being addressed as 'madame chair.'

Continues at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15691203/canada-ndp-conference-equity-cards-chaos.html and https://archive.is/NIS2p

(NB I did try to find a news report about the Conference but this is the only one that came up. If anyone has any news about the Conference that says a bit more than this would be interested to know what happened in terms of achieving conference aims!)

What a group of nutters, each one claiming to be more a victim than the next. Let them eat themselves!

Video - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-3627871/Political-conference-plunged-turmoil-equity-cards.html

I wonder what the actual content of the conference was.

Anyone know?

Have now found a more sober report about the conference, although not as much fun to read as the DM contributions!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20q98nrq3wo

It’s bloody irritating, is what is. The NDP used to be a serious political party. The one responsible for bringing nationalised medical care to Canada. They cannot act in any serious capacity if they’re arguing about who is the biggest victim. What a waste of energy.

They like to claim that, but it was really the CCF, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which has little to nothing in common with the modern NDP.

The NDP, which was the official opposition a number of years ago, lost official party status in the last election. They have elected at this conference an enbie leader who looks to be carrying on all the approaches that put them in this position.

The Greens have already made themselves ridiculous and unelectable, after a period of real gains, and the NDP seem to be doing the same.

The person with the short blonde hair is Adrienne Smith. Has quite the history when it comes to trans rights in Canada.

x.com/nick_decap/status/2038681792337846706?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

How to make a mockery of equity and equality.

All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.

For those not on X and so cant read, this is the thread of the posts:
https://twitter-thread.com/t/2038681792337846706

(Who is Nick Osmond-Jones - is he a trustworthy commentator?)

I think what is most disturbing is that this sort of pantomime actually does a dis-service to anyone trying to act with equality and recognising barriers that the establishment cant and does create.

But turning it into a sort of bingo games is disrespectful to those who are made to play this game, and indeed as one participant said, having one of these cards at the conference in no way helped her when facing discrimination in the real world.

Well this explains a lot about her:

"She was instrumental in cutting municipal funding to Vancouver Rape Relief, a women's shelter that refuses to admit men."

So one of those equity cards is like playing your joker on It’s A Knockout?

(One for the gimmers there.)

I mean - that is one of the major premises of that kind of "antiracist" identity politics - present discrimination is necessary to remedy past discrimination. Future discrimination is necessary to remedy current discrimination.

It's really quite explicit. It's Orwellian langugae, it's actually explicitly racist.

I

This is why trans activists focus on gaining control of the levers of power behind the scenes: establishing ideological control in institutions through workshops/struggle sessions. Embedding their ideology into law and policy, not by convincing the public they are right, but by lobbying behind closed doors. Once laws and policies are changed, enforcing public compliance through courts and tribunals. Smith may cut a ridiculous figure, but don't underestimate her.

Whoever Nick is, he’s right to point out the danger of eloquent, driven, self serving and ruthless TRAs. Most humans are too busy just living so when a few ultra determined people, who have no other focus in life, push to remake the world in their own specific image, they can do so much damage.

This has reminded me to donate to the VRR.

You couldn’t make it up. Progressive indeed.

It just makes me think of the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea

It reminds me of the Your Party conference. It’s sad if this was once an actual functioning party though.

It is impressive that the VRR still manages to centre females.

Being girls and women in this world often impacts both how we look and how we act in private and in public; what we are allowed to do, encouraged to do, and rewarded for; and also, what we are discouraged from doing, prohibited to do, or punished for. And from that place, in a woman-only space, with other women—who have the shared experience of being born without a choice to the oppressed class of women—we come together to organize and strategize our resistance and our fight for all women’s liberation.

We know that people whose behaviour is not consistent with the patriarchal socially imposed definition of manhood or womanhood, including trans people, suffer discrimination and violence. Trans people deserve and must live in safety, and have the equal rights and opportunities that are promised to us all. While some of our core services are not open to people who do not share our life experience of being born females and raised as girls into our current womanhood, we have a collective commitment to see to the safety anyone who calls our crisis line, including trans people.

What a pathetic farce!

A transgender woman who argued her 'rights are under attack' claimed it was 'frustrating' that a 'cis gender woman had spoken over me.'

Of course the irony is that it's the transwoman, and indeed transwomen in general, who are actually trying to 'skip the queue' - by choosing to identify into a group they categorically do not belong to, which is more disadvantaged than their own.

Are these nutters really eloquent. Or just verbose , loquacious, whatever the word is ? I know what you mean though. I had a friend we used to call Many Words a Minute. You could never process her output fast enough to argue back. But at least she wasn't a little proto fascist like Citizen Smith here.

Interesting that the woman who addressed her as Madame Chair is wearing a keffiyeh. Will there be a split I wonder.

It's exactly like that.

And as always with this stuff, it's part comical, part terrifying. You can laugh at these loons but then you discover, as a PP said, that this woman was instrumental in taking money away from a women's rape crisis centre, and it's not so funny after all.

@Abhannmor I guess it depends on how we’re defining eloquent but I’m using it for when people seemingly sound plausible and in doing so are persuasive. Such people can also be verbose and fool people in this manner. It’s dangerous. One of my very early experiences of TRAs advocacy was watching the YouTube posted by the trans man Jamie and partner. Both criticising JKRs essay. Both talking a million miles an hour so verbose, yes. Both attributing claims to JKR that she had not made, but also sounded eloquent in doing so. Both have PhDs so practiced in the art of using rhetoric to say nothing. Both sounding plausible to my then teenager DCs being swayed by their eloquence.

@TempestTost learn something new every day as I didn’t appreciate it was the CCF, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation under Tommy Douglas that started nationalised (provincial) healthcare and not the once proud NDP.

Again we see evidence of how gender ideology tag teams with progressive or liberal organisations and ruins them from the inside out. It’s criminal.

Thanks for the link, the Victim Olympics sponsored by the Omnicause. 😂

Not saying I agree with the politics of the new leader of this party, but how stupid to let these silly student antics divert attention from the actual point of the Party.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/30/canada-avi-lewis-elected-new-democratic-party

Fun fact. He is married to Naomi Klein who wrote an article about how he should be elected the new leader. But I wasn't prepared to pay to be able to read it.

The all time classic, as posted elsewhere, is from the DSA, the US equivalent of the Socialist Workers Party (but maybe not with the cover ups of sexual assault)