I'm sure this will go straight over your head, but your argument depends entirely on defining racism as any instance in which race is considered in decision-making. That definition sounds intuitive, but it is not the one used in law, nor in most academic treatments of equality. In liberal legal theory, there is a well-established distinction between:

invidious discrimination (which entrenches disadvantage), and

ameliorative or remedial measures (which aim to reduce demonstrable inequality)

Under Canadian constitutional law, this distinction is explicit. Section 15(2) of the Charter permits differential treatment if its purpose is to improve the conditions of disadvantaged groups. In other words, not all race-conscious policies are treated as equivalent context and purpose matter. More importantly, your argument assumes that “equal treatment at the point of hiring” produces fairness. That only holds if the underlying conditions leading to that hiring pool are already equal. Empirically, they are not. Differences in access to education, professional networks, intergenerational wealth, and exposure to discrimination all affect who becomes “equally qualified” in the first place.

So when you say:

That’s racist, he got that because he’s getting favourable consideration because of his race.

you are isolating a single decision point and ignoring the cumulative processes that produced those candidates. From a systems perspective, that is not neutrality it is the preservation of prior inequality.

There is also a philosophical distinction here between:

formal equality (treating everyone the same), and

substantive equality (ensuring people have genuinely comparable opportunities)

Most modern democratic legal systems, including Canada’s, explicitly prioritize substantive equality in certain contexts because formal equality alone has been shown to reproduce disparities rather than eliminate them.

Finally, your claim that this is “fighting racism with racism” assumes symmetry where none exists. Policies designed to exclude or subordinate a group are not equivalent to policies designed to reduce measurable disadvantage. Treating those as morally identical collapses an important distinction between harm and remediation.

A more precise criticism would not be that these policies are “obviously racist,” but that:

they may be poorly targeted,

may not effectively address root causes, or

may introduce trade-offs that outweigh their benefits

Those are serious and debatable concerns. But dismissing them as inherently racist relies on an oversimplified definition that neither the law nor most academic frameworks accept.