The Liberal government paid a drag performer $5,000 an hour, at taxpayers' expense, while many Canadians grind through 40+ hour work weeks to barely scrape by.

With sky-high groceries, housing costs eating half your paycheck, and mortgages out of reach, most are tightening their proverbial belts, except for Ottawa.

Imagine earning $5,000 for a single, hour-long virtual appearance. No travel, no setup, just you on Microsoft Teams talking about inclusion. That's exactly what happened in August 2025, courtesy of Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE).

Taxpayers shelled out $5,000 — $4,424.78 fee plus HST — to hire drag performer Jaylene Tyme, a Two-Spirit, Indigenous trans woman and Canada's Drag Race Season 5 Miss Congeniality, for a Public Service Pride Week event titled "Together We Create Change."

The gig was an entirely virtual session for up to 1,000 federal bureaucrats during paid work hours, covering 2SLGBTQIA+ perspectives, intersectionality, and "inclusive working environments."

Payment was due 15 days in advance for "timely scheduling and preparation.” Preparation for what, exactly? Perfecting a lip-sync on inclusivity?

While everyday Canadians face a brutal cost-of-living crisis with families choosing between heat and food and small businesses closing, the government has prioritized a fluffy virtual chat that delivers questionable value to its core mandate: advancing women's rights, equal pay, ending violence against women, and supporting mothers and families.

How does a drag performer's talk on intersectionality help a single mom in rural Ontario afford childcare? Or address the ongoing tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women?

Plain and simple: it doesn't.

It's performative optics glitzed up as progress, complete with pages of legalese on intellectual property rights and video recording, as though it were some blockbuster production, not a virtual call.

This isn’t about denying anyone the right to express themselves, but rather highlighting that expression can and should happen on your own time, at your own expense.

When budgets are squeezed, why funnel tax dollars into niche, hour-long virtual sessions instead of women's shelters, family supports, or frontline services that deliver real, measurable help?

Average Canadians aren’t paying Ottawa to funnel out their hard-earned cash for a $5,000 an hour diversity lecture from home.

This cost doesn’t even account for the paid hourly wage of the roughly 1,000 bureaucrats who attended the session, once again leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.

Real equality would put struggling families first, not funding another round of taxpayer-sponsored feel-good theatre.

Read the documents yourself:

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