In this benighted day and age, it’s not uncommon for ordinary people to be compelled to suppress their real opinions for fear of losing their jobs or any hope of advancement. In banks, educational and government institutions and even large businesses, sensitivity training rules. Take the course, sign on the dotted line, keep your place on the promotion list.Meanwhile teachers, nurses and doctors are among the caring professionals who are not allowed a conscience. Teach history this ideologically bent way, you must perform an abortion or recommend MAiD, or face disciplinary hearings where whatever defence you offer, you will be guilty. The case of nurse Amy Hamm should be familiar; it is certainly illustrative.So how high do you have to rise in life, before you can tell the mavens of woke to stuff it?Cabinet rank is not high enough, we find..As reported in the Western Standard earlier this week, Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden says the federal government will not follow Alberta's government in banning biological males from participating in women's sports. This, despite the International Olympic Committee instituting similar regulations in March. .Federal government not looking to follow Alberta's lead in banning biological males from women's sports.To do so, he explained, would “disclude people.”This is beyond ironic. For, if any member of the Carney cabinet understands that men — biological males, as we’re now not supposed to call them — have a natural advantage over women in the “faster, higher, stronger” department, it would be Canada's Minister of Sport..That's because Mr. van Koeverden was an Olympic athlete, Canada’s most successful sprint kayaker. He won four Olympic medals as a member of Team Canada and after winning a silver and a gold on consecutive days in the 2004 Olympics, was deservedly declared Canada’s athlete of the year. His athletic record is too long for this column but may be examined here.So he knows men have a natural advantage over women where physical prowess matters..But here’s something else that Mr. van Koeverden cannot not know. Within his own sport, men are substantially faster than women in Olympic/sprint kayak events, with typical gaps of about 12–15% in time (or equivalently higher average speeds), consistent with physiological differences in power, muscle mass, and anaerobic capacity.And what is true of sprint kayaking is true across the sporting board.You can easily admire Mr. van Koeverden's accomplishments. And in athletic and most personal circles, he has also reportedly earned a solid reputation as a decent, principled guy. Everything about him says star candidate and sure enough, the Liberal Party for whom appearance is everything, took him on in a heartbeat..Like many people who move from sport into partisan politics, Mr. van Koeverden's standing now depends heavily on the observer’s political lens.And this is what it leads to. A “decent, principled guy,” is obliged by the party to stand up there and defend a policy that he knows is not based upon the truth, but upon a politically convenient lie.Worse, it has in fact been repudiated by the very Olympic Association through which he established the reputation that made him so desirable to the Liberal Party of Canada..And so, the Secretary of State for Sport looked at the International Olympic Committee’s decision to restrict male-bodied athletes from female categories, looked at Alberta’s legislation doing the same, and chose the path of studied blindness.Mr. Van Koeverden’s argument is what you’d expect. Any attempt to keep male-bodied competitors out of female categories is really about “excluding” people and is therefore “disingenuous.” This is the verbal shell game that has been played for years.But let’s be real; the female category was created to include women, not to provide a softer competition for men who are slower, lower and weaker. Protecting the female category is not “disclusion;” it is the condition of fair inclusion for half the population.Danielle Smith’s formulation remains the clearest: if there were no difference between men and women, there would be no women’s category at all. Alberta has chosen to notice this fact. Ottawa has chosen not to. One position is grounded in observable reality. The other is grounded in the fear of saying it out loud.Which leaves just this. At what point does a man say, “I’m not doing that. Find somebody else.”This is the world the Liberals have created for the rest of us though, and apparently there’s no escape even for a star candidate who knows this truth. That is, men and women are not the same. The entire structure of women’s sport exists precisely because they are not the same. Pretending otherwise does not make one compassionate; it simply makes one ridiculous.Be not hard on him. He could do no other if he wanted to keep his job.But that's how it is for Canadians generally. In so many workplaces, you need to pass the loyalty test.Nothing personal Mr. van Koeverden, but what do you really think of the world the party you represent is creating for all Canadians?
