EDITORIAL: End the bafflegab and stop muddying the water

The key to communication is to use words and expressions that your audience understands.

Published Apr 19, 2026  •  Last updated 25 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

NDP MP Leah Gazan speaks to members of the media at the foyer of the House of Commons at the West Block on the Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 13, 2026. Photo by Hyungcheol Park /Postmedia Network

In a world threatened by economic instability and fraught with wars, Canada is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

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Our leaders may attempt to position themselves as power brokers in a divided world. In fact, their virtue signalling is turning us into the butt of jokes.

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Now, a government of Canada website says that “deadnaming” (refusing to call a person who has transitioned to a new gender by their new name) is akin to “gender-based violence.”

Naturally, the post comes with a “trigger warning,” as if the mere discussion of the issue would cause readers to faint with horror.

“What would you do if you saw that somebody who recently transitioned was being called their former name despite advising others of their true name?” the post asked.

Obviously, if you now call yourself Charlotte, but granny insists you’re Charles, it can be annoying. Names are especially difficult for older people, who may have difficulty remembering the first moniker a person used, let alone recalling the new one.

If we’re going to call out every senior for gender-based violence because they can’t remember what their grandchild’s new name is, our courts would overflow.

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This also diminishes the very real issue of physical violence against women. To suggest that someone called by the wrong name faced the same trauma as someone who was raped or murdered is shockingly insensitive.

Then there’s the alphabet soup of acronyms some of our politicians have adopted. At a recent news conference, Winnipeg MP Leah Gazan went viral for using the acronym MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. (It stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual Plus.)

Full marks to her for getting the letters in the right order. Some say they mistook it for a Wi-Fi password.

But what does it really mean? The key to communication is to use words and expressions that your audience understands. You shouldn’t need footnotes. Philosopher and writer Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out that jargon obscures the meaning of what’s said.

“They muddy the water to make it seem deep,” he said.

If we want the rest of the world to take us seriously, we must get back to using real language and dealing with real problems, not creating new ones for politicians to solve.

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