Toronto's Pride festival sees three major sponsors withdraw amid DEI blowback
Three companies that were six-figure sponsors of Toronto's Pride festival have backed out as corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives falter in the U.S. and Canada following President Trump's election victory.
Over the past two months, three major sponsors of Toronto's annual Pride festival have pulled out, according to reporting from the Globe and Mail.
While auto maker Nissan Canada confirmed last week that it was one of three companies to withdraw, Executive Director at Pride Toronto Kojo Modeste told the Globe he wouldn't yet identify the other two companies because there are still hopes they could return as sponsors.
“We are in an era where every dollar counts,” said Mr. Modeste. “The cost of doing the festival has increased drastically, and we have not seen an increase in sponsorship. So, losing sponsors has made it a lot harder for us to be able to deliver on all of our commitments for the festival,” he added.
The Pride Toronto executive director told the Globe that two of the former sponsors were slated to provide $150,000 for the festival while another was expected to provide $100,000.
While none of the companies who have withdrawn their sponsorships have cited DEI backlash as the reason, Mr. Modeste believes it's playing a factor.
“A lot of the companies have made public statements, either on their website or otherwise, around moving away from DEI initiatives,” he said.
The corporate backlash comes after President Donald Trump in an executive order last month pledged to remove wasteful government DEI programs.
Trump's victory sparked a wave of DEI initiatives being rolled back, including from large international companies like Meta and Amazon.
Despite the uptick in DEI programs being eliminated or scaled back, a spokesperson for Nissan Canada said their decision to remove the sponsorship was a purely marketing and budget-based choice.
“Unfortunately, we will not be able to sponsor this year’s event in Toronto, a local decision solely due to a re-evaluation of all our marketing and media activations in a variety of activities to ensure we will efficiently support our new product launches and marketing campaigns coming in 2025,” said the spokesperson.
As further noted by the Globe, a number of large companies in Canada have recently walked back their DEI initiatives, including Shopify and law firm McCarthy Tétrault LLP.
COMMENTS
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Bruce Atchison commented 2025-03-03 19:50:51 -0500Let’s hope this setback is PERMANENT. Pushers of perversions keep pushing it in our faces and won’t leave us alone. Let’s hope this “pride” movement dies out.
