Yesterday, prime minister Mark Carney released what we might call the Magnifica Technologia—a statement of faith in the AI industry in the face of a skeptical public.

The new federal artificial intelligence strategy, AI for All, has all the trappings of a policy document. But it is, at its core, a declaration of belief. “For Canada to thrive in the era of AI,” it argues, “Canadians need to trust in its promise.” We must have faith.

Evidence receives short shrift in this doctrine. The adoption of AI will necessarily deliver “better work, stronger services, new ideas, broader prosperity and greater wellbeing,” it asserts. And while some of the AI-related concerns raised by Canadians are acknowledged—from privacy and safety to sovereignty and job loss—they are superseded by the adoption imperative. Canada must implement its AI vision “with urgency.” We cannot afford to slow down.

In this article, we identify seven key takeaways from the federal government’s new strategy. They cover a lot of ground, but what ties them all together is the government’s ideological commitment to AI adoption as a matter of principle even (or especially) when that principle is unsupported by evidence. Let’s get into it.

Takeaway #1: We’re not all talking about the same AI

Artificial intelligence is never defined in the strategy—an omission so fundamental that it is hard to imagine it was an accident. That ambiguity is the source of serious conceptual drift.

For example, the plan identifies five priority sectors for AI adoption—health sciences, energy, transportation, agriculture and manufacturing. In each case, the focus is on “practical, sector-specific applications,” which generally means purpose-built machine learning tools.

That stands in contrast to the generative AI tools that the public is most exposed to and that are driving large-scale investment in the AI industry (including in data centres). In fact, generative AI is mentioned by name only twice and chatbots are mentioned only once in the entire document, even though they are the AI applications that are by far the most publicly salient and in the most dire need of regulation.

What this amounts to is a cynical bait-and-switch. For example, the federal government is foregrounding the adoption of inoffensive, sector-specific applications to justify new data centres, even though those data centres are mainly necessary to power contentious generative AI models. Similarly, the government warns against overregulating AI so as not to “smother” innovation, even though sector-specific and consumer-facing tools are often entirely different technologies that can be regulated separately.

Takeaway #2: The federal government doesn’t understand why people don’t use AI

The strategy claims that its “north star” is building trust in AI. However, as the document makes abundantly clear, the true guiding principle of the strategy is AI adoption. Everything else, including trust, is a means to that end. The strategy specifically blames “low literacy and low trust” among Canadians as the biggest barriers to bridging the AI “adoption gap.”

The strategy offers various solutions. For example, a new National AI Literacy Initiative will target one million post-secondary students for training, equip 3,000 educators with AI learning kits, and offer free AI programs at public libraries. To build trust, the strategy offers milquetoast promises of safety and oversight (see below).

Digital literacy is a vital priority, but there is a big difference between critical literacy and technical training. In this case, the goal is to “build an AI-skilled nation” that uses AI confidently “at school, at work, at home, or in the community,” not to equip Canadians to push back against AI industry hype.

Moreover, whether or not these approaches succeed in building literacy and trust, they fail to address the many other reasons why individuals and institutions may be reluctant to adopt AI. Two in particular stand out for their omission.

First, the document does not grapple with the technical limits of AI systems. For example, generative AI is inherently prone to randomness and hallucination, which is a serious barrier to adoption in any context where accuracy matters. Literacy and trust can only go so far when the underlying technology is not suited to particular tasks.

Second, the government does not acknowledge the many moral and cultural objections to AI adoption. It is not only Catholics like Pope Leo who view humanity as sacred. For many, the arrogance and appetites of the AI industry—stolen training data, environmental impacts, automation of human judgment, etc.—are affronts that no amount of “literacy” will overcome.

Takeaway #3: AI regulation is coming—sort of, maybe, someday

The strategy’s safety pillar opens with an admission that the risks of AI are real and that the government must protect Canadians from AI-related harms. On privacy and consumer rights, the strategy proposes new privacy legislation to establish a “fundamental right to privacy,” strengthen individuals’ control over their personal data and restrict harmful practices such as surveillance pricing. The government promises to develop legal tools to combat deepfakes and protect elections and democratic institutions from AI-enabled misinformation. It also promises to test AI models and certify “trusted” AI products.

Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes. The safety pillar is full of commitments but devoid of specifics. How the government will require AI companies to watermark their outputs, for example, or how the government will identify and prevent electoral disinformation, is unclear. It also fails to draw any hard lines. Unlike the EU, Canada has no prohibited AI uses list, no high-risk application categories and no binding restrictions on the AI deployments that carry the greatest potential for harm, including facial recognition, social scoring, algorithmic management of workers, biometric data collection, or automated decision-making in hiring, housing and benefits delivery.

Canada has been here before. The failure of Bill C-27 means privacy reform has stalled for years. The new strategy offers no indication of how this time will be different or how these commitments will withstand the same industry pressure that killed its predecessor. It’s also not clear how a renewed commitment to privacy can co-exist with the controversial Bill C-22 that would actively weaken privacy rights in Canada.

Takeaway #4: AI adoption is an industrial strategy for Canada

The strategy makes passing reference to the “betterment of society,” but the real impetus behind AI adoption is “economic growth, productivity, industrial capability, and geopolitical influence.” Five of the plan’s six pillars are explicitly focused on building the AI industry. AI for All is, unequivocally, an industrial strategy.

On this measure, it is one of the best examples of industrial planning that the federal government has produced in the past decade. The document checks all of the boxes of good industrial strategy, including a clear vision, measurable objectives, public coordination and domestic capacity.

To that end, the plan commits billions in public funds for the domestic AI industry, including $500 million in direct subsidies for Canadian AI startups, $1.75 billion in venture capital stimulation, $700 million in subsidized compute access and $130 million for commercialization programs. The strategy also introduces a $200 million AI Missions Program, which will support projects that “demonstrate meaningful improvements in Canadians’ lives” (in contrast to all of the other publicly-subsidized AI projects, it would seem). It’s a promising idea, but without strong guardrails these AI “missions” will likely lead to public-private partnerships rather than true public goods.

Most of the money outlined in the strategy was announced in previous federal budgets, but it still represents a material commitment to domestic industry. The more important question is whether it’s the right amount of money. Compared to the trillion-dollar valuations of leading American AI firms, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, Canada’s biggest domestic AI champion, Cohere, is worth only US$7 billion. It remains to be seen whether a few billion dollars in federal support can move the needle meaningfully away from U.S. control of the global AI industry.

There’s also the question of whether the benefits outweigh the costs. For all the talk of AI-powered growth, by the government’s own admission widespread AI adoption will only lead to a “0.3 percent to 1.1 percent annual labour productivity increase.” That’s hardly transformative.

Takeaway #5: The strategy is pro-worker in the same way it is pro-trust—as a means to an end

The strategy claims to have a pro-worker orientation, but it says little about how workers will have a meaningful role in deciding whether and how AI is introduced in their workplaces.

This tension is particularly visible in the strategy’s treatment of women and young workers. It acknowledges that female-dominated sectors face early disruption from AI and that entry-level roles are shrinking. Yet its response is largely to accelerate AI adoption through existing programs while creating a $50 million AI-powered job bank for the unemployed. The workers most vulnerable to automation are effectively being offered more automation rather than stronger labour protections or minimum hiring commitments. Similarly, short-term placement programs for young workers do little to address the broader erosion of entry-level opportunities.

A genuinely pro-worker AI agenda would ensure workers and unions lead the design and deployment of workplace AI systems, particularly where those systems affect performance evaluation and job security. It would also address how productivity gains are distributed. If AI increases efficiency while wages stagnate, skills erode and jobs disappear, the benefits of adoption will accrue primarily to employers and technology firms rather than the workers whose labour generates them. 

Takeaway #6: Industrial capacity takes precedence over democratic control at every turn

The strategy pays considerable attention to building AI capacity, but sidelines democratic oversight. Canadians should have “a meaningful voice in the public debates that will define AI’s role in Canadian society,” according to the plan, but no process for that is described. This gap is particularly evident in its approach to international partnerships, health data and Indigenous data sovereignty. 

The Sovereign Technology Alliance that Canada is pursuing with other countries is designed to scale up AI supply chains, not AI governance. It is presented as a vehicle to help allied countries expand AI capabilities and procurement opportunities. A governance first approach would look quite different. For example, the alliance could instead develop binding accountability and enforcement mechanisms and condition trade partnerships on the protection of workers’ rights, data security and environmental standards.

The strategy’s approach to health data raises similar concerns. It commits $200 million to building a consolidated database of Canadians’ health information, describing patient-generated data as a strategic national asset to be unlocked for innovators. There is no mention of whether patients will be consulted, whether consent frameworks exist or how data will be governed once it enters commercial pipelines. 

The strategy’s Indigenous AI commitment focuses on language revitalization and cultural initiatives. These are welcome, but they are not a substitute for Indigenous data sovereignty. The strategy makes no mention of free, prior and informed consent for data collection about Indigenous peoples or their lands, Indigenous governance rights over that data, or any mechanism allowing communities to shape or refuse AI deployments that may impact them.

Takeaway #7: Some of the biggest AI risks and harms are ignored completely

“To foster trust,” the strategy declares, “we will protect Canadians from the risks and harms of AI.” As we discussed above, the protections outlined in the document are largely aspirational, but they are at least a step in the right direction on several issues. More damning are the risks and harms that go entirely unacknowledged. Three stand out.

First, the strategy fails to acknowledge the theft of copyrighted works to train AI models, nor does it acknowledge the demands of artists and writers for consent, compensation and credit when their work is used. Instead, the strategy slaps creators in the face by establishing a $50 million Creative Technology Program to encourage creators to use AI in their work.

Second, the strategy fails to acknowledge the environmental impacts of AI. Instead, it celebrates the addition of 850 megawatts of compute capacity by 2030 with a potential expansion to 2.3 gigawatts. While the plan touts Canada’s clean grid as a competitive selling point, most new data centres are being built using highly-polluting natural gas generators. The strategy entirely sidesteps noise, water use, e-waste, land rights, energy affordability and other implications for local communities.

Third, the strategy fails to acknowledge the risks to cognition and mental health associated with AI use. Cognitive offloading, AI psychosis and related phenomena are still being studied, but the potential threats that they pose to individuals and society are substantial. Young people face the most acute risks, but no demographic is immune to the potentially negative impacts of AI on cognition and mental health.

These are not the only issues that the new federal AI strategy ignores (there is also warfare, corporate power, human rights, ethics and more) but they are emblematic of the underlying ethos of the Magnifica Technologia. The federal government seems to truly believe that “prosperity and sovereignty in this era belong to nations that can leverage trust to adopt, build, and govern AI.” In the context of that vision, there is no space for fundamental concerns about AI itself.

Nevertheless, Canada has its long-overdue artificial intelligence strategy. Now comes the hard part. The federal government must deliver on its commitments to safety regulation and it must be prepared to pick a side when those commitments come into conflict with the demands of the AI industry.

It must also be prepared to respond to the evidence, even (and especially) when it conflicts with the government’s vision of AI adoption. Faith can only take us so far.

The post Magnifica Technologia: Seven key takeaways from Canada’s new AI strategy appeared first on CCPA.

We acknowledge that this report was written on Treaty One Territory, and in the Homeland of the Red River Métis.

The National Family and Survivors Circle Inc. includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples from across Turtle Island, and we honour all our relations—the Ancestors who walked before us, the families who carry truths today, and the generations yet to come.

These lands, waters, and skies are sacred gifts from Creator. As family members and survivors, we carry the voices, memories, and spirits of our stolen and missing loved ones with us.

May this report call all governments, institutions, and people across Canada to act with courage, humility, and urgency so that future generations may inherit a country where Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual (2SLGBTQQIA+) people are safe, valued, and free to live on our lands in dignity and joy for the next seven generations.

Summary

On June 3, 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its final report, Reclaiming Power and Place. It included 231 clear calls for justice for Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Seven years later, this report tracks progress—and regress—on federal government actions to respond to those calls.

When it comes to funding the 231 calls for justice, the federal government has spent or committed to spend $146.3 billion from 2019-20 to 2030-31—with $24.7 billion more coming from new programs spanning key areas such as child welfare, housing and infrastructure, health and wellness, culture, and safety. These investments reflect a recognition that the violence faced by Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people is systemic, and that ending it requires sustained coordinated action.

However, the findings of this report make clear that this progress is fragile. Nearly half of all federal programs linked to the calls have ended or are at risk of being sunsetted in the coming years. Annual spending on new programs is expected to fall from a peak of $3.7 billion in 2024-25 to approximately $1.8 billion from 2028-29 onwards—a 51 per cent funding cut that risks erasing recently developed social infrastructure and reversing progress.

Importantly, this pattern reflects what many Indigenous governance scholars describe as “austerity through expiration”—where commitments are not explicitly withdrawn but are, instead, allowed to lapse, producing structural instability while preserving the appearance of ongoing reconciliation investment.

This report makes the following recommendations to ensure the federal government meets its constitutional commitments to Indigenous Peoples and gets back on track with its responsibility to take action on those 231 calls for justice:

1. Renew and stabilize funding for core MMIWG2S+ programs
2. Establish a permanent MMIWG2S+ funding framework
3. Prioritize Indigenous-led and community-delivered services
4. Address the severe funding gaps facing urban Indigenous communities

5. Protect and expand funding for Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations
6. Improve accountability and public transparency

7. Accelerate investments in Indigenous housing, shelters, and safe infrastructure
8. Strengthen Indigenous-led health, mental wellness, and trauma supports

9. Advance justice and policing reform in partnership with Indigenous Peoples
10. Recognize implementation of the calls for justice as a core human rights obligation

Introduction

For families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual (2SLGBTQQIA+) people and survivors of violence, this issue is deeply personal. It is about our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our aunties, our grandchildren. It is about the empty chairs at our tables and the lives forever changed. It is also about responsibility, leadership, and the choices governments make today.

In June 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report, confirming what families and survivors had long known: the violence faced by Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+ relatives is not random, and it is not inevitable. It is the result of systems, laws, policies, and funding decisions shaped by colonialism, racism and discrimination. The national inquiry named this violence for what it is—an ongoing form of genocide—and issued 231 calls for justice.

These calls for justice are not symbolic commitments. They are legal imperatives grounded in Indigenous law, Canadian law, and international human rights obligations. They also offer something else that is often overlooked: a clear, practical roadmap for change.

The House of Commons, with representatives from every part of Canada, passed a unanimous motion in 2023 declaring the ongoing violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people a national emergency. Because that is what it is. This declaration reflected the growing recognition that the crisis requires urgent, sustained, and coordinated national action.

Today, almost seven years after the release of the calls for justice, the question before Canada is no longer whether the problem has been identified. It is whether we are prepared to fully act.

First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls continue to experience disproportionately high levels of violence. We are more likely to go missing, more likely to be murdered, and more likely to encounter barriers to justice. Indigenous women remain overrepresented among homicide victims. Indigenous girls continue to be overrepresented in child welfare systems, where many first experience separation and instability. Indigenous women are disproportionately affected by poverty, homelessness, incarceration, and exploitation—conditions that increase vulnerability to violence. 2SLGBTQQIA+ Indigenous Peoples face additional risks driven by discrimination and exclusion.

These realities are serious, but they are not unchangeable. They are the result of policy choices—and policy choices can be changed.

The national inquiry made clear that ending this violence requires sustained, coordinated, and adequately funded action across all orders of government. It requires moving beyond short-term initiatives toward long-term, stable solutions. It requires partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Métis women, families, survivors, communities and governments. And it requires accountability, particularly from the federal government, which has a sacred responsibility to uphold Indigenous rights and set national priorities.

This report is grounded in the understanding that federal leadership matters—and that sustained federal action can make a measurable difference.

Canada has already committed itself to a strong legal and human rights framework. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) affirms the rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people to safety, dignity, self-determination, and freedom from violence. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDRA) commits Canada to align its laws and actions with those rights. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) obligates Canada to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action outlines concrete steps to address the ongoing impacts of colonialism.

The calls for justice from the national inquiry, which were born from the testimony and truths of thousands of families and survivors, sit within this framework. Together, they do not simply describe what is wrong—they describe what must be done, and how governments can contribute to lasting change.

Funding is a critical part of that response because budgets translate commitments into action. They determine whether services are available, whether prevention efforts are sustained, and whether communities have the tools they need to keep people safe. When funding is stable and long-term, programs can plan, hire, build trust, and deliver results. That is return on investment. When funding is short-term or fragmented, even well-designed initiatives struggle to succeed.

This report examines how the Government of Canada has funded its response to the calls for justice over time, and how those investments align with the scale and urgency of the issue. It does so to provide evidence for informed, responsible decision-making.

Drawing from the federal government’s own reporting, including the 2024-25 Pathways: Reporting on the Calls for Justice, this report links the 231 calls for justice to the federal programs the government has identified as responding to them. It tracks those programs year by year, from 2020-21 through projected spending to 2030-31, drawing on federal departmental reports and budgets.

By compiling and aggregating this data, this report provides a clear picture of federal spending related to the calls for justice. It highlights programs that are ongoing and those that may sunset, even as the need continues and, in some cases, escalates. Where possible, funding is disaggregated—First Nations, Métis, Inuit and Urban Indigenous Peoples—to reflect distinctions-based realities and needs.

This kind of analysis matters because it moves the conversation from intentions to outcomes. It helps parliamentarians, policy-makers, and the public see what is working, where progress is being made, and where additional investment could have the greatest impact.

Families and survivors have consistently emphasized that real change requires sustained support, not short-term announcements. They have also seen what is possible when programs are properly resourced and led by First Nations, Inuit and Métis women, organizations and communities. Across the country, there are examples of prevention, healing, and safety initiatives that save lives—when they are given the chance to endure.

The National Family and Survivors Circle Inc. (NFSC) exists to ensure that the voices of families and survivors remain central to this work. NFSC’s advocacy is grounded in lived experience and in the belief that solutions are strongest when families, survivors, communities, and governments work together. This report builds on that foundation by offering evidence that can support informed, constructive action.

Ending the violence against Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+ people is not only necessary—it is achievable. The calls for justice provide the roadmap. The expertise exists in communities. What is required is sustained commitment and investment.

As parliament looks toward future fiscal decisions, this report is offered in a spirit of responsibility and possibility. We recognize that Canada is navigating a complex global environment with many pressing priorities. At the same time, protecting the lives and rights of Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, the original people of these lands, is not a competing interest—it is a core obligation and a measure of our shared values.

This is an opportunity to build on what has begun, to strengthen what works, and to ensure that progress does not stall. With strong federal investment, clear accountability, and partnership with families, survivors and communities, Canada can make a meaningful difference.

Survivors and families who have carried this loss for years are still waiting to see their truths reflected in sustained federal investment. Together, we can ensure they are.

Preamble

June 3, 2026, marks seven years since the release of Reclaiming Power and Place, the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This document, and the 231 calls for justice it makes, reflects decades of advocacy on the ongoing genocide against Indigenous women, girls, and members of the Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual (2SLGBTQQIA+) community and provides a clear set of proposals to confront oppression, decolonize institutions and end violence. In June 2021 the federal government released its national action plan to address the calls for justice and federal pathway, alongside funding commitments, particularly in the 2021 federal budget.

This report assesses federal funding to address the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people (MMIWG2S+) made between fiscal years 2019-20 and 2030-31. This analysis provides a critical examination of the scale of funding commitments made since the national inquiry concluded, as well as current funding reductions taking effect, putting at risk programs that may be sunset over the coming five years.

While some progress has been made since 2021, a lack of stable, long-term, and flexible federal funding to address the 231 calls has left an underfunded and inconsistent patchwork of programs to eliminate the systemic violence faced by Indigenous women, girls and members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community (Assembly of First Nations 2025, NWAC 2025). In line with previous reports, we find that a large proportion of the federal programs earmarked to address the 231 calls were short-term in nature and are at risk of sunsetting between 2026-27 and 2030-31.By 2027-28 about two-thirds of initiatives will remain funded, however, this share drops to about half from 2028-29 onwards. Furthermore, while approximately 60 per cent of the calls have some relevant federal funding, most remain far from complete—a risk that grows if the pace of progress slows or reverses.

The risk of sunsetting of federal funding is particularly stark in the areas of health and wellness, child welfare, and funding for 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities. In particular, the instability of mental health, housing, and community safety funding streams risks erasing progress on addressing the MMIWG2S+ crisis over the coming years. While the funding situation remains precarious, the 2026 federal spring economic update extended funding for some key programs for between one and five years, in addition to providing funding for the National Family and Survivors Circle until 2028-29.

The analysis of federal spending commitments that follows is based on data coming from the methodology described in Appendix A. This report describes the federal spending associated with each call, organized according to the categories used in the national inquiry’s final report. It is important to note that the data presented are estimates and projections constructed using both actual expenditure and budget commitments.

Throughout this report, we note programs and initiatives that have either been sunset or are at risk of being sunset. Programs noted as ‘at risk of sunset’ means that no publicly available data was found indicating program or initiative renewal. In some cases, program cycles have not been concluded or initiatives have been renamed or moved.

Because many federal programs address multiple policy objectives simultaneously, the funding estimates presented in this report should be understood as informed approximations based on available federal reporting and departmental data.

Previous investigations have noted instances where federal funding for MMIWG2S+ calls went unspent—a striking example of this is the Indigenous Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative. Launched in 2021, this program allocated $720 million toward the “construction of additional shelters and transitional homes for Indigenous women, children and 2SLGBTQQIA+ individuals fleeing gender-based violence, including in urban areas and in the North.” (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation 2024). However, as revealed by a 2025 Winnipeg Free Press investigation, much of the funds remain unspent and various issues have plagued this program (McLeod 2025). Applications are closed and the status of this program is unclear.

Total spending on calls for justice

Building on the 2024-25 Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report, this report identifies 94 federal government programs or initiatives that are relevant to the calls for justice. Annual spending across these programs or initiatives peaked at $17.6 billion in 2024-25 and is expected to be between $7 and $8 billion from 2029-30 onwards. This reduction comes from programs at risk of being sunset, as well as from decreased spending on ongoing programs. This will be discussed in further detail in subsequent sections.

Given that the calls were published in 2019, it is also informative to track new programs or initiatives that were initiated from 2020-21 onwards, which can be viewed as a direct response to the calls. This amount is much lower, representing a small share of overall investment between 2019-20 to 2030-31. It peaked at $3.7 billion in 2024-25 and is expected to fall below $2.1 billion from 2027-28 onwards. What this reveals is that much of the funding commitments associated with the 231 calls identified in the federal government’s pathways reports represent programs that were in place prior to the national inquiry’s results being released rather than a direct response to the 231 calls. That said, the analysis in this report includes both established and new programs, as many pre-existing programs received additional funding in direct response to the calls. The subsequent sections break down the share of each.

Since most spending relevant to the 231 calls for justice was initiated prior to the inflationary spike of 2021-23, it is also relevant to adjust these spending figures for inflation in order to assess relative buying power going forward. After adjusting to 2018 dollars, overall spending on programs relevant to the calls will be, in most cases, close to 2020-21 levels by the latter part of this decade. Projecting out to 2030-31, spending on all programs (in 2018 dollars) will be around $5.6 billion—below the $6.4 billion spent in 2020-21. Adjusted for inflation, spending on established programs relevant to the calls for justice is projected to fall to $9.2 billion in 2028-29, approximately in line with 2022-23 spending levels, and will drop to $4.2 billion thereafter. Spending on new programs initiated since 2020-21 is projected to remain above initial spending levels, however, by 2027-28, inflation adjusted spending flattens to 2021-22 spending levels, falling thereafter. Investment in the 231 calls for justice is slowing down—not just due to the short-term nature of many programs, but also due to an erosion of spending power as program budgets have not been sufficiently increased to adjust for inflation.

Between 2019-20 and 2030-31, total federal spending will be between $5 and $6 billion. To put this into context, the peak annual commitment to new programming to address the 231 calls ($3.7 billion in 2024-25) is almost identical to spending committed to develop Canada’s critical minerals strategy ($3.8 billion in 2024-25).

Spending by category

The 231 calls for justice fall into 18 categories in the national inquiry’s final report. These categories are grouped into calls for all governments, calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships, calls for all Canadians, and distinctions-based calls.

This report follows the national inquiry’s categorization, except for the following:

• The health and wellness as well as the health and wellness service providers calls are combined into one category.
• The hospitality industry and educators’ calls are not discussed since they have no calls relevant to the federal government.
• The attorneys and law societies calls are not discussed since they contain a single call that has not been addressed by the federal government.
• The distinctions-based calls are discussed later in this report, where we present estimates of the funding going to each group.

Human and Indigenous rights and governmental obligations

The calls for justice in this category address the foundational legal duties of all governments to prevent violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, covering topics like a national action plan, implementation of international rights instruments (UNDRIP, CEDAW), an Indigenous and human rights ombudsperson, and accountability mechanisms. Annual spending on human and Indigenous rights and governmental obligations will peak at $6.2 billion in 2026-27. However, most of this spending comes from established programs, including First Nations Child and Family Services, which comprises over 80 per cent of spending in this category. Spending on initiatives launched since the calls for justice were released peaked at $308 million in 2023-24 and is set to fall to $193 million by 2027-28.

Alongside investments in First Nations Child and Family Services ($37.8 billion total),¹ other large programs within this category include implementing An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families ($4.3 billion total), the Comprehensive Violence Prevention Strategy—Family Violence Prevention Program ($867 million total), and the Indigenous Justice Program ($521 million total).

This category also includes funding for the establishment of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People Secretariat ($57 million total) and the Independent Oversight Body to Monitor Implementation of the National Action Plan on MMWIG2S+ People ($2 million total). Furthermore, the 2026 federal spring economic update included $40 million in funding through 2030-31 for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Initiative, which is led by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Since it appears that this funding will be used to continue the work of the secretariat and the oversight body, it is assumed that these are not being sunset.

The overall reduction in spending is expected because of both decreased spending on ongoing programs, as well as the many programs that are at risk of being sunset or have already been sunsetted. These are:

• Addressing anti-Indigenous racism in Canada’s health systems ($300 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2028-29.
• Supporting Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations ($27 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27, though the amount available after 2025-26 is unclear.
• Indigenous-Federal-Provincial-Territorial Meeting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ People ($3 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.

Furthermore, the following programs have sunset:

• Indigenous Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative ($260 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.
• National Indigenous and human rights ombudsperson ($2 million total)—not funded beyond 2024-25.

Culture

The calls for justice in this category focus on protecting and revitalizing Indigenous languages and cultures as inherent rights, including topics like official language recognition for Indigenous languages, anti-racism education, funding for cultural programs, and improved Indigenous representation in media.

Strict punishment for speaking Indigenous languages within residential schools was one of the many ways in which Canadian settler-colonial institutions have sought to eliminate Indigenous languages. Restrictions on Indigenous language speakers have left a lasting legacy that persists today. The 2021 Canadian census found that 237,420 people speak Indigenous languages well enough to hold a conversation, representing 13.1 per cent of Indigenous Peoples. The number of Indigenous language speakers declined by 10,750 between 2016 and 2021, and the share of Indigenous Peoples who speak Indigenous languages has been continually declining since 2006 due to the loss of elders who report Indigenous languages as their mother tongue. Language revitalization is an essential component of healing and reconciliation, allowing for the continuation of oral traditions and connections to elders and land. Continued funding increases for Indigenous languages programs are clearly needed to support language revitalization (Statistics Canada 2023).

Annual spending on culture peaked at $6.6 billion in 2026-27 and is expected to be around $1. 2 billion from 2029-30 onwards. Total spending on new programs peaked in 2025-26 at $173 million, falling to around $140 million from 2026-27 onwards.

While most of the spending in this category is not explicitly related to culture, a portion of these programs’ funding is relevant to the broad scope of the calls. Investments in First Nations Child and Family Services are also included within the culture category, making up 75 per cent of total funding across this category. Further programs of note include, An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families addresses calls 2.2.ii (supporting revitalization and restoration of Indigenous cultures and languages) and 2.3 (ensuring access to these cultures and languages). Indeed, many federally funded educational programs contribute to call 2.3, including before- and after-school programming for First Nations students on reserve, the Elementary and Secondary Education Program, the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Transformation Initiative, the Indigenous Languages Program, and Library and Archives Canada’s We Are Here: Sharing Stories initiative. Another program falling in this category, the Indigenous Screen Office, is discussed in detail in the media and social influencers section.

Alongside First Nations Child and Family Services ($37.8 billion total), the largest pre-existing programs are the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Transformation Initiative ($3.7 billion total), funding for professional arts training organizations ($29 million total), and Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy 2024-28 and Canada’s Action Plan on Combatting Hate ($26 million). The largest new programs are implementing An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families ($4.4 billion total) and the Indigenous Languages Program ($1.8 billion total).

The overall reduction in spending is expected to mostly come from decreased funding for ongoing programs. For example, annual spending on implementing An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families is expected to peak at $840 million in 2025-26 and reach $320 million by 2030-31. Furthermore, the following program is at risk of being sunset:

• Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning ($27 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

The following program has been sunsetted:

• Digitization of Indigenous Documentary Heritage Initiative ($5 million total) and its related program, We Are Here: Sharing Stories ($3 million total)—have not been funded beyond 2024-25.

Health and wellness

The Calls for Justice in this category call on governments to ensure equitable, accessible, Indigenous-led health services, covering trauma-informed care, addictions recovery, mental health, culturally grounded healing programs, and long-term funding for community wellness.

Inequitable health care access and health outcomes for Indigenous Peoples have been documented for decades, continually underlining the need for additional funding for Indigenous-led health services. A 2019 report from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy found that the life expectancy of First Nations Manitobans was 11 years shorter than other Manitobans (Katz et al. 2019). Despite awareness of health inequities, gaps in life expectancy have continued to grow in recent years. Data from Alberta Health for 2023 found a 19-year gap in life expectancy between First Nations Albertans and others (CTV News 2025), while data from British Columbia’s First Nations Health Authority found that life expectancy for First Nations people in that province fell by six years between 2017 and 2021 (First Nations Health Authority and B.C. Office of the Provincial Health Minister 2024). Indigenous communities face a public health emergency that can only be addressed through additional resources.

Annual spending in health and wellness peaked at $940 million in 2024-25 and is expected to be $360 million from 2029-30 onwards. Initiatives launched since 2020-21 make up a significant proportion of spending in this category, peaking at $866 million in 2024-25 and falling to $384 million in 2028-29. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $5.9 billion, with $5.5 billion coming from new programs or initiatives.

The largest programs in this category are the Mental Wellness Program ($2.1 billion total), the Indigenous Health Equity Fund ($1.4 billion total), the Comprehensive Violence Prevention Strategy—Family Violence Prevention Program ($870 million total), and 9-8-8: Suicide Crisis Helpline ($310 million total).

The overall reduction in spending is expected because of both decreased spending on ongoing programs, as well as from programs that are at risk of being sunset. These are:

• Mental Wellness Program ($2.1 billion total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28, however, $630 million over two years to support Indigenous mental wellness was announced in March 2026.
• Addressing anti-Indigenous racism in Canada’s health systems ($300 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2028-29.
• Health transformation ($100 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2028-29.
• Clinical and Client Care Program ($90 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.

Furthermore, the following programs have been sunsetted:

• Indigenous Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative ($260 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.
• Co-development of distinctions-based Indigenous health legislation ($16 million total)—funding ended in 2022-23.

Human security

The calls for justice in this category target the social and economic conditions that drive vulnerability, including safe housing, clean water, food security, guaranteed liveable income, employment supports, shelters, and safe transit for rural and remote communities. Annual spending on human security peaked at $8.1 billion in 2023-24 and is expected to be around $5.2 billion from 2029-30 onwards. Spending on initiatives in this category launched since 2020-21 peaked at $2.4 billion in 2023-24, falling to between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion from 2027-28 onwards. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $74 billion, with only $15 billion coming from new programs or initiatives.

The largest pre-existing programs in this category are elementary and secondary education on reserve ($32 billion total) and the On-Reserve Income Assistance Program ($16.6 billion total). The largest new programs are the Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy ($4.9 billion total), the Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund ($4.3 billion total), and before- and after-school programming for First Nations students on reserve ($1.1 billion total).

The overall reduction in spending is expected because of both decreased spending on ongoing programs, as well as the many programs that are at risk of being sunset. These are:

• Inuit housing investment ($831 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy ($1.2 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.
• Self-governing and modern treaty First Nations housing investment ($560 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• National housing strategy ($510 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Health Facilities Program ($390 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.
• Expanding access to adult education for First Nations on reserve and in the North ($350 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27, though the amount available after 2025-26 is unclear.
• First Nations elementary and secondary education—supporting the conclusion of a regional education agreement for 22 Communities in Quebec ($310 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• National School Food Program for First Nations on Reserve ($230 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Remote Passenger Rail Program ($200 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Métis housing investment ($190 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Local Food Infrastructure Fund ($38 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship Program ($22 million total)—the amount available after 2023-24 is unclear since parts of this program may have been subsumed by a larger program.

Furthermore, the following programs have been sunsetted:

• Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund ($4.3 billion total)—not funded beyond 2024-25.
• Affordable housing in the North ($150 million total)—not funded beyond 2023-24.
• Action Research on Chronic Homeless (ARCH) Initiative ($18 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.
• Income Assistance First Nations Youth Employment Strategy (IAFNYES) pilot ($102 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.

Justice

The calls for justice in this category call for a wide-ranging set of legal system reforms addressing policing, courts, corrections, and sentencing, covering topics like Indigenous policing self-governance, civilian oversight, Gladue principles, missing persons legislation, legal aid, and reducing over-incarceration. Annual spending on justice has grown steadily, from $150 million in 2019-20 to an expected $830 million in 2026-27. Funding for initiatives launched since the calls for justice were released peaked at $122 million in 2024-25, falling to around $40 million from 2027-28 onwards. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $7.2 billion, with only $660 million coming from new programs or initiatives.

The largest program, by far, in this category is the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program ($4.5 billion total). Increased spending on this program is the main driver of increased spending in this category. Other significant pre-existing programs include the First Nations and Inuit Policing Facilities Program ($630 million total) and the Indigenous Justice Program ($520 million total). The largest new programs in this category are the Pathways to Safe Indigenous Communities Initiative ($260 million total), services and supports for Indigenous victims of crime ($60 million total), and family information liaison units ($60 million total).

Two programs are at risk of being sunset:

• Pathways to Safe Indigenous Communities Initiative ($260 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Indigenous-led data research projects program ($7 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

Furthermore, the following program has been sunsetted:

• Co-development of First Nations police services legislation ($45 million total)—funding ended in 2025-26.

Media and social influencers

There is a single call that relates to this category. While it is primarily directed at other organizations, the federal government funded the Indigenous Screen Office, which “supports Indigenous screen storytellers, funds Indigenous stories on screens, and works to increase the representation of Indigenous peoples throughout the screen industries” (Government of Canada 2024). Funding for this initiative began in 2021-22 and has been $13 million per year. Canadian Heritage’s latest departmental plan indicates the Indigenous Screen Office will be funded at this level for the foreseeable future.

Police services

The calls for justice in this category call for detailed reforms for policing, including increasing Indigenous recruitment and representation, establishing specialized Indigenous policing units, standardizing protocols for missing and murdered cases, creating a national task force to review unresolved cases, and improving civilian oversight. Annual spending on police services peaked at $64 million in 2024-25 and is expected to be $27 million from 2029-30 onwards. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $535 million, with only $13 million in spending coming from initiatives launched since 2020-21. Most of the investment in this category comes from the Indigenous Justice Program ($520 million total).

The four other programs in this category are new but are at risk of being sunset or have been sunsetted. The ones that are at risk are:

• National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains ($5 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Missing Persons Data Standards—Strategy for Consistency in Practices for Reporting Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ ($1.4 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Red Dress Alert Pilot Program ($1.6 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

Furthermore, the following program has been sunsetted:

• Intercultural Learning Strategy ($6 million total)—not funded beyond 2025-26.

The RCMP has some other initiatives relevant to the calls, but has funded them by reallocating existing funding, so they are not included here.

Social workers and those implicated in child welfare

The calls for justice in this category comprehensively address the child welfare system, calling for Indigenous self-determination over child welfare, ending apprehensions based on poverty, stopping birth alerts, prioritizing family reunification, and reforming “aging out” policies. Annual spending on social workers and those implicated in child welfare has grown considerably, from $2.5 billion in 2019-20 to a peak at $8.4 billion in 2024-25. Spending in this area is expected to fall to between $800 and $900 million from 2029-30 onwards. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $60.5 billion, with only $245 million coming from new programs or initiatives.

Programs relevant to this category can be broadly classified into four themes: child welfare, education, housing, and food. All are dominated by well-established programs. Child welfare is by far the largest, which includes major programs such as Supporting First Nations Children through Jordan’s Principle ($10.5 billion total), implementing An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families ($4.4 billion total), and the First Nations Child and Family Services Program ($37.8 billion total). Spending on education is mostly through the First Nations Post-Secondary Education Strategy ($4 billion total), while spending on housing is mostly through Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy ($1.2 billion total) and the national housing strategy ($510 million total). Finally, relatively small programs, such as the Harvesters Support Grant and the Community Food Programs Fund ($290 million total), as well as the National School Food Program for First Nations on Reserve ($230 million total), provide funding for food security.

The largest pre-existing programs are Supporting First Nations Children through Jordan’s Principle, the First Nations Post-Secondary Education Strategy, and the National Housing Strategy. The largest new programs are Implementing An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families, the First Nations Child and Family Services Program, and Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy.

The reduction in spending in this category comes primarily from reduced spending on major programs such as implementing An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families. In addition, many important programs are at risk of being sunset. These are:

• Supporting First Nations Children through Jordan’s Principle ($10.5 billion total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.
• Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy ($1.2 billion total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.
• Inuit Child First Initiative ($800 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.
• National Housing Strategy ($510 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• National School Food Program for First Nations on Reserve ($230 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2027-28.
• Local Food Infrastructure Fund ($38 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

Furthermore, the following program has been sunsetted:

• Action Research on Chronic Homeless (ARCH) Initiative ($18 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.

While 80 per cent of the calls in this category have some relevant funding, many key calls remain unaddressed. For instance, no action has been taken on the proposal to establish a national child and youth commissioner (Call 12.9), despite significant advocacy efforts and senate initiatives (Gahagan et al. 2026).

Extractive and development industries

The calls for justice in this category focus on resource extraction industries (e.g., pipelines, hydroelectric projects), calling for gender-based impact assessments, inclusion of safety provisions in impact-benefit agreements, and expanded social infrastructure in affected communities. Annual spending on extractive and development industries peaked at $1.5 billion in 2023-24 and is expected to be around $100 million from 2025-26 onwards. Total spending in this category from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $5.3 billion. Most of this comes from spending on infrastructure that is not directly related to the extractive and development industries. This arises since programs such as the Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund ($4.3 billion total) and the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund ($500 million total) are relevant to Call 13.5, which calls upon “all governments and service providers to anticipate and recognize increased demand on social infrastructure because of development projects and resource extraction, and for mitigation measures to be identified as part of the planning and approval process.”

Where more targeted programs do exist—such as Natural Resources Canada’s MMIWG2S+ and Resource Development Initiative—they are not always backed by dedicated funding, relying, instead, on reallocated departmental resources. The only other program receiving dedicated funding is the Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committees for Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which is expected to receive $90 million from 2019-20 to 2026-27. The federal government has recently committed to renew funding for this program, as well as for the Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committees for the Enbridge Line 3 Replacement Project, though specific amounts have yet to be announced or allocated (Natural Resources Canada 2025). Likewise, the 2025 federal budget allocated funding for the Major Projects Office’s Indigenous Advisory Council, but the amount remains unclear.

Correctional Service Canada

The calls for justice in this category target federal corrections, calling for decarceration options, rescinding overly broad maximum-security classifications, culturally safe programming, mental health services, elimination of strip searches, and mother-child programming. Correctional Service Canada has received little new funding to address these calls, relying largely on reallocating existing funds within the agency. The only external additions come from two programs—expand Indigenous community partnerships to meet the needs of federally incarcerated Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous Community Corrections Initiative—only the latter of which was established after 2019. Together, these programs are expected to receive $14 million annually for the foreseeable future. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $110 million.

In this category, most calls remain unaddressed, despite many of them being inexpensive or uncontroversial. These include, for example, the call “upon Correctional Service Canada to prohibit transfer of federally incarcerated women in need of mental health care to all-male treatment centres” (Call 14.7) or the call upon “Correctional Service Canada to increase and enhance the role and participation of Elders in decision making for all aspects of planning for Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people” (Call 14.10). The organization, in fact, already has a budget for elder services.

All Canadians

There is a single call that relates to this category that is relevant to the federal government: “Help hold all governments accountable to act on the Calls for Justice, and to implement them according to the important principles we set out” (Call 15.8). To achieve that purpose, the federal government has established a horizontal initiative within Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to coordinate action. As discussed in the human and Indigenous rights and governmental obligations section, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Initiative received $40 million in funding through 2030-31 in the 2026 federal spring economic update. Given that there remains significant progress to be made on the calls, having a dedicated team focused on MMIWG2S+ is of utmost importance.

Spending across distinctions

Budget allocations are not distributed uniformly across Indigenous Peoples. Some programs, such as the Canada-Métis National Permanent Bilateral Mechanism or the Inuit Child First Initiative, target a single people, while others, such as the Indigenous Health Equity Fund or the Indigenous Languages Program, span First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. There are also broader federal programs, such as the National Housing Strategy or the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, where Indigenous Peoples represent a fraction of the intended recipients. The shares of these programs that are relevant to each group are calculated using the methodology outlined in Appendix A.

First Nations

Seventy per cent of spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 went to First Nations people. This is unsurprising, given that 58 per cent of Indigenous Peoples in Canada are First Nations, as well as the constitutional obligations of the federal government established through treaties. Annual spending in this category peaked at $15.5 billion in 2024-25 and is expected to be just over $6 billion from 2029-30 onwards. On a per capita basis, this is a peak of $12,160 in 2024-25 and about $10,200 in 2027-28.

There are 14 First Nations-specific programs, with the largest being First Nations Child and Family Services ($37.8 billion total). The largest new program is the Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—First Nations ($2.5 billion total). However, many of these programs are at risk of being sunset. These are:

• Supporting First Nations Children through Jordan’s Principle ($10.5 billion)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Self-Governing and Modern Treaty First Nations Housing Investment ($560 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Expanding access to adult education for First Nations on reserve and in the North ($350 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27, though the amount available after 2025-26 is unclear.
• First Nations elementary and secondary education—supporting the conclusion of a regional education agreement for 22 Communities in Quebec ($310 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• National School Food Program for First Nations on Reserve ($230 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

Furthermore, the following programs have been sunsetted:

• Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—First Nations ($2.5 billion total)—funding ended in 2024-25.
• Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—Self-governing and modern treaty First Nations ($790 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.
• Co-development of First Nations police services legislation ($45 million total)—funding ended in 2025-26.

Inuit

Four per cent of Indigenous Peoples in Canada are Inuit and three per cent of spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 went to Inuit people. Annual spending peaked at $760 million in 2023-24 and is expected to be $340 million in 2027-28. On a per capita basis, this is a peak of $10,135 in 2023-24 and falling below $4,900 from 2027-28 onwards.

There are eight Inuit-specific programs, with the largest—and the largest new program—being the Inuit Housing Investment ($830 million total). Many of these programs are at risk of being sunset. These are:

• Inuit Housing Investment ($830 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.
• Inuit Child First Initiative ($803 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

Furthermore, the following programs have sunset:

• Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—Inuit ($520 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.
• Qikiqtani Truth Commission ($44 million total)—funding ended in 2023-24.
• Nanilavut “Let’s Find Them” Initiative ($19 million total)—funding ended in 2025-26.

There remain significant unaddressed calls for justice that are specific to Inuit people. This includes fully implementing Article 23 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (Call 16.34) and the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement (Call 16.35), as well as ensuring “ongoing and comprehensive Inuit-specific cultural competency training for public servants” (Call 16.27). The recent announcement of a proposed university in Arviat, Nunavut—the Inuit Nunangat University—is a promising development for Call 16.26, which calls for the establishment of a university.

Métis

Thirty-five per cent of Indigenous Peoples in Canada are Métis and five per cent of spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 went to Métis people. Annual spending peaked at $1.5 billion in 2024-25 and is expected to fall below $500 million from 2027-28 onwards. On a per capita basis, this is a peak of $1,900, falling below $800 from 2027-28 onwards.

There are four Métis-specific programs, with the largest being the Métis Nation Post-Secondary Education Strategy ($460 million total). The largest new program is the Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—Métis ($240 million total). The following program is at risk of being sunset:

• Métis Housing Investment ($190 million total)—no commitment to fund beyond 2026-27.

Furthermore, the following program has been sunsetted:

• Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—Métis ($240 million total)—funding ended in 2024-25.

Urban Indigenous Peoples

According to the 2021 census, 60 per cent of Indigenous Peoples in Canada live in urban areas. However, a recent report provides evidence suggesting that this is a significant undercounting of the true share (Snyder et al. 2025). Regardless, only 22 per cent of spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 went to urban Indigenous Peoples. Annual spending peaked at $5.2 billion in 2024-25 and is expected to be reduced to below $5 billion from 2027-28 onwards. On a per capita basis, this is a peak of $6,000 in 2024-25, falling below $4,800 from 2028-29 onwards.

These data strongly suggest that urban Indigenous Peoples are underfunded, particularly since the crisis of MMWIG2S+ is often linked to urban environments. Collier (2020) provides a good overview of services provision for Indigenous Peoples living in urban areas. Even though most Indigenous Peoples live in cities, much of the federal government’s funding is not specifically targeted toward them. While all orders of government have a responsibility toward off-reserve Indigenous Peoples, the federal government has a constitutional obligation.

A look at two programs targeted at urban Indigenous Peoples can shed light on the current and projected funding situation. First, the Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund—Urban Component is relevant to calls 4.6 and 4.7 (calling for increased housing supply and funding of shelters and transitional homes), as well as 13.5 (calling for increased infrastructure in response to resource extraction or development projects). Its stated goal was to “provide capital infrastructure support specifically targeted to improving the physical capacity, safety, security and accessibility of facilities for urban Indigenous peoples.” (Indigenous Services Canada 2023b). The program received a total of $190 million from 2022-23 to 2024-25, after which it has not been funded.

Another program is the Urban Programming for Indigenous Peoples (UPIP), which provides funding for “organizations and projects that support Indigenous peoples living in urban centres.” (Indigenous Services Canada 2023c). While it does not directly feature in the 2024-25 Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report, it is an ongoing program that is relevant to many calls for justice. It comprises six funding streams (organizational capacity, programs and services, housing, coalitions, research and innovation, and infrastructure) and six areas of focus (women, vulnerable populations, youth, transition services, outreach programs, and community wellness).

Funding for this UPIP program has decreased significantly since 2020-21. Its peak was $470 million in 2020-21, and it is expected to reach $110 million by 2028-29 (Indigenous Services Canada 2023a, 2026). The number of full-time equivalent staff allocated to this program is also being reduced. This is despite a recommendation in a federal government evaluation of this program to “take concrete steps towards making funding stable, more sustainable, flexible, and readily accessible.” (Indigenous Services Canada 2024). Furthermore, another evaluation of this program (by the National Association of Friendship Centres) recommended enhanced “funding levels to align with current capacity needs, costs, and regional realities.” (National Association of Friendship Centres 2022).

Spending targeted toward 2SLGBTQQIA+ people

Annual spending on the 2SLGBTQQIA+-specific calls for justice is expected to peak at $482 million in 2025-26 and is expected to drop to $5.4 million from 2028-29 onwards. Total spending from 2019-20 to 2030-31 is expected to be $2.8 billion, with $1.1 billion coming from new programs or initiatives.

The largest programs that are specifically targeted toward the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community are increasing the capacity of Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations ($90 million total), supporting Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations ($37 million total), and the federal 2SLGBTQQIA+ action plan ($11 million total).

The other funding comes from broader programs, of which only a portion applies to 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. These include Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy ($1.2 billion total) and the National Housing Strategy ($510 million total). It is the risk of sunsetting these programs that drive the majority of the reduction in expected spending.

Only 17 per cent of the 2SLGBTQQIA+-specific calls have been partially addressed. Given the cuts to Women and Gender Equality Canada, described in the next section, the remainder of the calls are at serious risk of being unaddressed in the coming years.

Conclusion and recommendations

Since the release of the calls for justice, the federal government has made meaningful investments in addressing the ongoing crisis of MMIWG2S+. Total federal spending linked to the 231 calls has been $146.3 billion from 2019-20 to 2024-25, with $24.7 billion coming from new programs spanning key areas such as child welfare, housing and infrastructure, health and wellness, culture, and safety. These investments reflect a recognition that the violence faced by Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people is systemic, and that ending it requires sustained coordinated action.

However, the data make clear that this progress is fragile. Nearly half of all federal programs linked to the calls have ended or are at risk of being sunsetted in the coming years. Annual spending on new programs is expected to fall from a peak of $3.7 billion in 2024-25 to $1.8 billion from 2028-29 onwards—a drop that risks erasing recently developed social infrastructure and reversing progress.

Importantly, this pattern reflects what many Indigenous governance scholars describe as “austerity through expiration”—where commitments are not explicitly withdrawn but are, instead, allowed to lapse, producing structural instability while preserving the appearance of ongoing reconciliation investment.

Families and survivors have long called for sustained long-term investment that allows communities to plan, build trust, and deliver results. As the federal government considers its fiscal priorities in the years ahead, whether it renews and expands these commitments will be a measure of Canada’s willingness to match its stated values with meaningful action.

Recommendations

1. Renew and stabilize funding for core MMIWG2S+ programs

The federal government should immediately renew funding for programs at risk of being sunsetted between 2026–27 and 2030–31, particularly those related to mental wellness, housing, Jordan’s Principle, Inuit Child First Initiative, Indigenous policing, homelessness prevention, and Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations. Multi-year statutory or long-term funding mechanisms should replace short-term proposal-based models wherever possible.

This shift is necessary not only for service continuity but also to address the structural reliance on competitive, time-limited funding models that place disproportionate administrative burdens on Indigenous organizations while undermining self-determination. Stable, long-term funding must also prioritize prevention and upstream investments that address the root causes of violence, including poverty, housing insecurity, child welfare involvement, systemic racism, gender-based violence, and barriers to culturally grounded health, education, and wellness supports. Violence prevention strategies must also include investments in economic security, including income supports, employment pathways, childcare, education, and culturally grounded community development initiatives that reduce vulnerability to exploitation, trafficking, homelessness, and gender-based violence.

2. Establish a permanent MMIWG2S+ funding framework

Canada should create a permanent federal funding framework dedicated to implementation of the calls for justice, with clear long-term fiscal commitments tied to measurable outcomes. This framework should include transparent annual reporting to parliament on spending, implementation progress, and unmet calls.

Such a framework must move beyond symbolic reporting mechanisms toward enforceable fiscal obligations, ensuring that implementation is not subject to shifting political priorities or annual budget cycles.

3. Prioritize Indigenous-led and community-delivered services

Funding should increasingly flow directly to First Nations, Inuit, Métis, urban Indigenous and 2SLGBTQI+ organizations that deliver frontline prevention, healing, housing, safety, and cultural programming. Community-led initiatives are often the most effective because they are grounded in lived experience, cultural knowledge, and local relationships.

This also requires addressing the current intermediary funding structure, which often positions Indigenous organizations as subcontractors of state priorities rather than as autonomous decision-makers with jurisdiction over program design and delivery. Families and Survivors must remain central decision-makers in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all MMIWG2S+ initiatives and funding frameworks. 

4. Address the severe funding gaps facing urban Indigenous communities

Given that the majority of Indigenous Peoples live in urban areas, the federal government should significantly increase sustained investments in urban Indigenous housing, shelters, transitional housing, mental health supports, and violence prevention services. Programs such as Urban Programming for Indigenous Peoples should be expanded and stabilized rather than reduced.

Urban Indigenous funding frameworks must be recognized as core infrastructure rather than discretionary programming, particularly given the longstanding mismatch between population realities and funding allocation models.

5. Protect and expand funding for Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations

Indigenous women’s organizations and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations continue to play a critical role in advocacy, prevention, crisis response, and systems accountability. Dedicated operational funding should be made permanent and expanded to ensure these organizations can retain staff, plan long-term, and meet growing community needs.

6. Improve accountability and public transparency

The federal government should publicly release annual implementation scorecards tracking progress on each call for justice, including which calls remain unaddressed, where funding has lapsed, and how outcomes are being measured. Independent Indigenous-led oversight bodies must be adequately resourced to monitor progress and report publicly. Again, families and Survivors must remain central decision-makers in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all MMIWG2S+ initiatives and funding frameworks. 

Accountability mechanisms must also capture funding discontinuities—not only program existence—so that “implementation” reflects continuity and accessibility rather than nominal program presence. Implementation accountability should further include independent review and investigation mechanisms through a National Indigenous and Human Rights Ombuds Office, consistent with Call for Justice 1.7, to ensure governments remain accountable to Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, families, and Survivors.

7. Accelerate investments in Indigenous housing, shelters, and safe infrastructure

Safe housing remains one of the most critical violence prevention measures. Canada should renew and expand Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy and distinctions-based Indigenous housing strategies, including urban Indigenous housing, second-stage shelters, transportation infrastructure, and safe spaces for women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people fleeing violence.

Federal investments in major infrastructure projects and economic development projects, including extractive industries, resource corridors, and potential pipeline developments, must also include mandatory, Indigenous-led safety and violence prevention measures for affected communities. This should include sustained funding for community safety planning, emergency response capacity, culturally safe supports, housing, transportation, and monitoring mechanisms addressing the documented links between resource extraction projects, transient workforces, and increased violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. 

8. Strengthen Indigenous-led health, mental wellness, and trauma supports

The federal government should make long-term investments in Indigenous-led mental health, addictions recovery, trauma healing, and culturally grounded wellness services. Programs addressing anti-Indigenous racism within health care systems should also be made permanent and expanded nationwide.

9. Advance justice and policing reform in partnership with Indigenous Peoples

Canada should accelerate implementation of Indigenous policing legislation, strengthen civilian oversight and accountability mechanisms, improve supports for families of missing persons, implement a national Red Dress Alert, and ensure sustainable funding for Indigenous-led community safety initiatives and victim services.

10. Recognize implementation of the calls for justice as a core human rights obligation

The calls for justice are legal imperatives grounded in Indigenous rights, human rights, and Canada’s obligations under UNDRIP, CEDAW, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action. Future federal budgets and policy decisions should treat implementation as an essential responsibility tied to reconciliation, safety, and justice.

This requires moving beyond a reconciliation framework grounded in discretionary investment toward one grounded in binding obligations, where fiscal policy is aligned with substantive rights enforcement rather than symbolic progress indicators.

The evidence presented in this report demonstrates that progress is possible when governments make sustained investments and work in partnership with Indigenous women, families, survivors, communities, and organizations. At the same time, the projected decline in funding over the coming years poses a serious risk to the fragile gains that have been made.

The calls for justice were never intended to be symbolic commitments; they were intended to save lives. The decisions made by parliament in the years ahead will determine whether Canada moves toward safety, justice, and accountability, or whether critical progress is allowed to stall. Sustained action is both necessary and achievable. Families and survivors deserve nothing less.

Ultimately, without structural guarantees against funding instability and program expiration, “progress” remains contingent rather than secured—subject to the very fiscal cycles that have historically reproduced the conditions of harm the calls for justice were designed to address.

Appendix A: Methodology

The data used in this report were collected and constructed using the following procedure.

Identification of relevant calls for justice

A review was conducted to identify which of the 231 Calls for Justice are relevant to the federal government. For example, Call 18.9 (“We call upon First Nations, Métis, and Inuit leadership and advocacy bodies to equitably include 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, and for national Indigenous organizations to have a 2SLGBTQQIA+ council or similar initiative”) is not relevant, while Call 12.13 (“We call upon all governments and child welfare agencies to fully implement the Spirit Bear Plan”) is. Calls that are relevant to federal agencies and other institutions, such as Correctional Service Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, are included.

Identification of relevant federal programs and initiatives

Using the Government of Canada’s 2024-25 Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report, federal programs or initiatives that are relevant to each call for justice were identified. Some programs are relevant for multiple calls. For example, the Indigenous Screen Office is relevant to calls 2.7 (in the culture category) and 6.1 (in the media and social influencers category).

Identification and estimation of funding amounts

Funding amounts from 2019-20 to 2030-31 were identified using a variety of sources. Whenever possible, actual expenditure data were used. These were drawn from departmental plans and results reports as well as the GC Infobase federal government spending database. When these were unavailable, budget allocations from federal budget documents were used. When these were unavailable, the amounts specified in the 2024-25 Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report were used.

Where year-by-year data were available, they were used directly. Where these were unavailable, but the program sat within a larger spending envelope, its annual allocation was estimated proportionally based on the envelope’s trend. Where neither applied, spending was distributed evenly across years.

For many ongoing programs (i.e., programs that are continuing indefinitely or are not at risk of being sunset), the available data ended before 2030-31. If the annual funding was fairly stable, it was assumed that it continued that way. If the annual funding followed a trend, the trend was assumed to continue.

In some cases, funding amounts were difficult to identify. Where a program fell within a larger spending envelope and an approximate amount was known, it was assumed to follow the larger program’s trend based on its proportional share.

Data were collected between January 2026 and late April 2026 and, therefore, reflect announced funding up to this date.

Overall, the data in this report should be taken as estimates of past spending and projections of future spending, since they are based on a combination of actual expenditure, projected expenditure, and budget allocations.

Calculation of funding shares

Some programs, such as the National Housing Strategy or Canada’s Action Plan on Combatting Hate, apply to all Canadians rather than Indigenous Peoples exclusively. Where possible, the relevant Indigenous share of these programs was identified and incorporated into the data. Where this was not possible, the Indigenous share was estimated based on Indigenous Peoples’ proportion of the total population (using data from the 2021 Census).

To analyze spending across distinctions, the share of each program going to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples was calculated. Whenever possible, the relevant share of these programs was identified and incorporated into the data. When this was not possible, that group’s share was estimated based on their proportion of the total Indigenous population (using data from the 2021 Census).

In some cases, actual spending data across programs were combined in original sources but separated in the pathways report (for example, funding for Supporting First Nations Children through Jordan’s Principle and the Inuit Child First Initiative). In these cases, combined program spending was applied to each program, prorated based on a spending ratio derived from other spending reports.

Other methodological considerations

• This analysis relies on the 2024-25 Federal Pathway Annual Progress Report, which is the most recent progress report. It is unlikely that our analysis is missing many programs since very few have been announced since 2024-25, and we have corroborated our findings with other sources. Most notably, commitments from the 2025 federal budget and the 2026 federal spring economic update have been included.
• Programs without funding, or funded by reallocating existing departmental resources, are not included in this report.
• Because many programs span multiple categories, spending totals within each category are generally overestimates and will exceed the total across all categories when summed.
• The data presented in this report are in nominal terms. This implies that programs with “stable” funding levels are, in real terms, facing cuts.

Appendix B: References

Assembly of First Nations. 2025. Breathing Life into the Calls for Justice: Thematic Analysis of Human Trafficking (2025 CFJ Progress Report). https://afn.bynder.com/m/2d9148a283482600/original/Breathing-Life-into-the-Calls-for-Justice-Thematic-Analysis-on-Human-Trafficking2025-CFJ-Progress-Report.pdf

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. 2024. Indigenous Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative. https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/project-funding-and-mortgage-financing/funding-programs/all-funding-programs/shelter-and-transitional-housing-initiative-for-indigenous.

Collier, Brittany. 2020. Services for Indigenous People Living in Urban Areas. Library of Parliament. https://lop.parl.ca/staticfiles/PublicWebsite/Home/ResearchPublications/BackgroundPapers/PDF/2020-66-e.pdf.

CTV News. 2025. “First Nations life expectancy 19 years lower than other Albertans.” CTV News. February 9, 2025. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/first-nations-life-expectancy-19-years-lower-than-other-albertans/

First Nations Health Authority and Office of the Provincial Health Officer. 2024. First Nations Population Health and Wellness Agenda: First Interim Update, 2024. Government of British Columbia. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/health/about-bc-s-health-care-system/office-of-the-provincial-health-officer/reports-publications/special-reports/first_nations_phwa_full_report.pdf

Gahagan, Jacquie, Dale Kirby, Melanie Doucet, and Mary Holland. March 25, 2026. “The crisis of youth aging out of care is why Canada needs a children and youth commissioner.” The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-crisis-of-youth-aging-out-of-care-is-why-canada-needs-a-children-and-youth-commissioner-277362.

Government of Canada. 2024. “Indigenous Screen Office.” https://www.canada.ca/en/services/culture/arts-media/film-video/indigenous-screen-office.html.

Indigenous Services Canada. 2023a. “2022-23 Details on Transfer Payments Program.” Government of Canada. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1642089540833/1642089614522#chp13.

Indigenous Services Canada. 2023b. “Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund, Urban Component.” Government of Canada. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1663943527338/1663943752726.

Indigenous Services Canada. 2023c. “Urban Programming for Indigenous Peoples.” Government of Canada. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1471368138533/1536932634432.

Indigenous Services Canada. 2024. “Evaluation of the Urban Programming for Indigenous Peoples Program.” Government of Canada. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1743776373551/1743776420361.

Indigenous Services Canada. 2026. “2026-27 Details on Transfer Payments Program.” Government of Canada. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1767991086528/1767991165626#sec1-27.

Katz, Alan, Kathi Avery Kinew, Leona Star, Carole Taylor, Ina Koseva, Josée Lavoie, Charles Burchill, Marcelo L Urquia, Andrew Basham, Leanne Rajotte, Venkata Ramayanam, Jessica Jarmasz, Susan Burchill. 2019. “The Health Status of and Access to Healthcare by Registered First Nations People in Manitoba.” Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. http://mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/FN_Report_web.pdf

McLeod, Marsha. February 13, 2025. “Indigenous safe housing in limbo.” Winnipeg Free Press. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/featured/2025/02/13/indigenous-safe-housing-in-limbo.

National Association of Friendship Centres. 2022. Urban Programming for Indigenous People (UPIP) Evaluation. https://nafc.ca/downloads/upip-en.pdf.

Native Women’s Association of Canada. 2025. Annual Scorecard: The Federal Government’s MMIWG2S+ National Action Plan. https://nwac-afac.ca/assets-documents/en_MMIWG2S_scorecards_MMIWG2S_V4.pdf

Natural Resources Canada. 2025. “Funding to renew support for the Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committees for the Trans-Mountain Expansion Project and the Enbridge Line 3 Replacement Project – Natural Resources Canada.” https://natural-resources.canada.ca/corporate/transparency/funding-renew-support-indigenous-advisory-monitoring-committees-trans-mountain-expansion-project-enbridge-line-3-replacement-project.

Snyder, Marcie, Lisa Avery, Monica Cyr, Julia Iannace, Kate Mazzietti, Genevieve Blais, and Janet Smylie. 2025. Our Health Counts First Nations & Metis Winnipeg. Community Report #1: Wahkotowin ~ Kinship: Project Overview & Adult Demographics. Well Living House. http://www.welllivinghouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/OHC-FNM-Winnipeg-Mini-Report-1-March2026_compressed.pdf.

Statistics Canada. 2022. “Indigenous population continues to grow and is much younger than the non-Indigenous population, although the pace of growth has slowed.” Government of Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/dq220921a-eng.htm.

Statistics Canada. 2023. “Indigenous languages across Canada.” Government of Canada. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/98-200-x/2021012/98-200-x2021012-eng.cfm.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Senior Economist David Macdonald and Senior Researcher Katherine Scott for their assistance with this report.

The post Fragile progress: Analysis of past spending and future commitments on MMIWG2S+ calls for justice appeared first on CCPA.

On the one hand, the latest Statistics Canada report shows that the income gap between the richest and poorest 40 per cent of households has continued to widen in 2025. For the lowest income households, rising consumption expenses due to inflation has outpaced wage growth, pushing many further into debt. Meanwhile, the wealthiest households have seen above-average gains in both income and investment earnings. As it become increasingly difficult for a growing number of Canadians to make ends meet, income and wealth continue to concentrate at the top.

On the other hand, Canada’s pace of greenhouse gas emissions reduction is far from sufficient to meet its climate targets. Since 2020, national emissions have oscillated between 681 and 696 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year; a far cry from the federal government’s commitment to reach between 343 and 382 megatonnes by 2035, let alone full decarbonization. As extreme weather events driven by climate change already affects communities across the country, insufficient climate action carries a mounting human cost.

While these debates are typically treated as separate policy challenges, our new research shows they are not. In an analysis of the social factors of the climate crisis, it is clear  that concentrating income at the top accelerates emissions, while broader income distribution reduces them. 

This reframes affordability and climate action as complementary rather than competing goals. Understanding this relationship is essential for guiding public policy. Redistributive policies are not a distraction from climate action, but part of the solution.

Linking disposable income shares with carbon emissions

We analyzed how disposable income distribution has affected carbon emissions across Canadian provinces from 1999 to 2023. Disposable income refers to the money a household retains after taxes and government transfers. Using emissions data from Canada’s Official Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Statistics Canada’s income data, we examined how shifts in income distribution affect provincial emissions, while controlling for total population, GDP per capita, and energy intensity.  

In a previous study, we found a significant relationship between the income concentration of Canada’s top five and 10 per cent with provincial gas emissions. This time, we turned our attention to the lower quintiles of disposable income. We modeled the short- and long-term effects of a one per cent increase in the share of disposable income of five groups: the highest household quintile, the four lowest quintiles, the three lowest, two lowest, and the lowest quintile alone.

Higher disposable income shares for the richest quintile drive emissions up. However, higher shares for the bottom four quintiles drive them down, and this relationship is asymmetrical at the top. In other words, a reduction in the highest quintile’s income share produces a larger drop in emissions than an equivalent increase produces in additional emissions. As such, redistributing income would thus simultaneously reduce inequality and cut carbon emissions.

As an example, the table below shows what a one per cent increase in the share of disposable income of the different quintile groups would have meant for national carbon emissions in 2023, and the long-term impact of such an increase over 20 years. We express these effects in kilotonnes (kt) of CO2 equivalent and in a corresponding number of combustion engine vehicles added to or removed from Canadian roads.

Our findings indicate that a redistribution of income would lead to important reductions in carbon emissions, all while drastically improving the lives of Canadians. While our study does not identify a single mechanism driving this relationship, the most plausible explanations are that higher disposable income allows lower-income household to shift toward better quality, more locally sourced, or more environmentally friendly goods and services. Alternatively, the consumption patterns of lower income groups may be simply less emissions-intensive than those of the wealthiest, even if the former were to increase.  Further research is needed to understand the drivers of this relationship. 

Our findings also underscore the importance of measuring income inequality through more precise instruments than the commonly used Gini coefficient. Because the Gini coefficient captures overall distributional spread, it can show improvement even when the top-end income concentration remains unchanged, which is precisely the dynamic our research identifies as a key driver of emissions. Disposable income shares by quintile better isolate where in the distribution the climate-relevant dynamics actually occur.

The climate and affordability crises go hand in hand

Concerns over inflation and cost of living have become defining issues across Canada. Yet, Canadians have not abandoned their interest for the environment. A recent national survey conducted by Re.Climate found that three quarters are concerned about the climate crisis and its effects on current and future generations, while 65% of them want political leaders to take stronger climate action.

Our research suggests these priorities do not need to compete. Improving affordability can, in fact, contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Redistributive fiscal policies are not a distraction from climate ambition. They can serve both goals at once.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has modeled concrete redistribution scenarios for Canada, demonstrating that meaningful shifts in the tax-and-transfer system are fiscally achievable. Our findings suggest such shifts would also lead to a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Additionally, our work offers a more constructive way of communicating climate policy. Climate regulations are too often framed as an added burden on households already strained by rising living costs. The perception of having to give up something for the environment is shown to be an important barrier to public support for climate action. 

By emphasizing how climate policy can also help create a fairer, more equal society, our study offers a more hopeful message, not about what we must give up, but what we stand to gain from moving toward a low-carbon future.

The post Reducing inequality can help tackle the climate crisis appeared first on CCPA.

Access to primary care varies by province, provider, and income

In 2024, one in five Canadians lacked access to a regular family doctor or nurse practitioner. The percentage of Canadians with a regular family doctor declined in seven out of 10 provinces between 2015 and 2024:

• Prince Edward Island (declined from 88 per cent to 53 per cent of Canadians 18 and over with a regular family doctor);
• Newfoundland and Labrador (declined from 86 to 67 per cent);
• Nova Scotia (declined from 86 to 72 per cent);
• New Brunswick (declined from 88 to 76 per cent);
• British Columbia (declined from 82 to 75 per cent);
• Ontario (declined from 87 to 85 per cent); and,
• Saskatchewan (declined from 78 to 77 per cent).

Between 2015 and 2024, the share of Canadians with access to a regular nurse practitioner (NP) increased from 0.8 per cent to 2.1 per cent. Although NPs represent a small share of primary care provision overall, their role in building a stronger primary care system is important and growing.

In 2024, 80 per cent of the lowest-income Canadians had a regular health provider (family doctors, nurse practitioner or other provider) compared to 86 per cent in the highest-income quintile (Figure 3). This gap did not improve between 2015 and 2024.

Primary care reforms have focused on physician payment, rather than structural change

In 2025, Health Workforce Canada reported that there were 193 primary care policy interventions in 2024 and 75 in 2025 across all provinces and territories. Changing and increasing physician compensation remains one of the most common interventions across the country. But it’s not translating into increased access to primary care.

The lack of alternatives to the independent contractor model—where doctors and nurse practitioners are expected to own and operate a business—and investment in not-for-profit primary care infrastructure actively encourages the growth of investor-owned corporate chains. This privatization of primary care infrastructure has significant implications for care delivery, quality, and the commercialization of patient data.

Closing the primary care access gap requires strong federal leadership

Timely access to primary care remains a challenge across the country. Federal leadership is required to hold provinces accountable for addressing the primary care access gap:

• All federal funding, including the Canada Health Transfer, should have strings attached to hold provinces and territories accountable for closing the primary care access gap.
• The federal government should report annually on the progress of provinces and territories in achieving timely access to a primary care provider or team that also accounts for equity, including income, gender, age, and race and ethnicity.
• The federal and provincial governments should focus efforts on increasing access to primary care providers and teams by implementing the lessons from Scotland’s reforms and the community health centre model.

Introduction

Patients struggle to access primary care across Canada. While these challenges are not new, they have become acute in recent years.

Primary care is intended to serve as the foundation of the health care system. Globally, policy-makers face the challenge of improving population health while also containing health care spending. Evidence demonstrates that countries with a strong primary health care orientation have lower health care costs, better health outcomes, and reduced inequities.¹

Primary care refers to services that are the first point of contact in the system (e.g., clinics and health centres). They are intended to prevent illness and they are where patients can be referred to specialized services. Primary health care refers to both a focus on interventions at the clinical level as well as improving population health by reducing health inequities that cause poor health in the first place (i.e., social and economic policies that reduce poverty and inequality). Effective primary care can help contain public spending by reducing the use of expensive hospital and emergency services.

Historically in Canada, primary care has been provided by individual or groups of family doctors who are independent contractors and operate leased or owned practices. They have significant autonomy as practitioners who are independent from government, and their practices have varying degrees of integration with the broader health care system.

These arrangements can be traced to the evolution of publicly funded health care in Canada. The medical profession reluctantly agreed to only bill government for its services and not patients. In exchange, the profession maintained business autonomy as independent contractors rather than publicly employed providers.²

Drawing on the Canadian Community Health Survey and the author’s dissertation research, this report analyzes the growing primary care access gap in Canada and the provinces. It offers recommendations for closing the primary care access gap through lessons from Scottish primary care reforms and team-based non-profit primary care models that have a proven record of improving access and health outcomes.

Access to a regular family doctor declined in Canada and most provinces

In Canada, access to a regular family doctor declined from 80 per cent to 78.5 per cent of the population between 2015 and 2024—or by 1.5 percentage points (Figure 1).³ Canadians’ access to a regular family doctor declined in Canada and every province between 2015 and 2024, except Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta:

• Prince Edward Island (declined from 88 per cent to 53 per cent of Canadians 18 and over with a regular family doctor);
• Newfoundland and Labrador (declined from 86 to 67 per cent);
• Nova Scotia (declined from 86 to 72 per cent);
• New Brunswick (declined from 88 to 76 per cent);
• British Columbia (declined from 82 to 75 per cent);
• Ontario (declined from 87 to 85 per cent); and,
• Saskatchewan (declined from 78 to 77 per cent).

In 2024, P.E.I., Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec had the lowest percentage of Canadians who had access to a regular doctor. Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba had the highest.

Access to regular nurse practitioners increased in every province

First regulated in Alberta in 1996, nurse practitioners (NPs) are important primary care providers. They represent a growing share of regular primary provision. Although NPs represent a small share of primary care provision in Canada and the provinces, their contributions are important and growing⁴.

Between 2015 and 2024, the share of Canadians with access to a regular NP increased from 0.8 per cent to 2.1 per cent (Figure 2). Access increased in every province, with the largest increases in P.E.I. (7.2 percentage points), Newfoundland and Labrador (4.9 percentage points), B.C. (3.5 percentage points), and Nova Scotia (2.9 percentage point).

Lowest-income Canadians have the worst access to a regular health provider

In 2024, 80 per cent of the lowest-income Canadians had a regular health provider (family doctors, nurse practitioner or other provider) compared to 86 per cent of the highest income (Figure 3). In fact, this gap has remained the same since 2015.⁵

In five out of nine provinces with data, the highest-income group had better access to a regular health provider than the lowest-income group, including Manitoba (11 percentage points), B.C. (10 percentage points), Saskatchewan (eight percentage points), Alberta (eight percentage points), and Ontario (five percentage points). These numbers demonstrate the importance that primary care reforms are designed to close income-based inequities in access.

Primary care policy interventions across Canada

Declining access to family doctors remains one of the most significant public policy challenges facing provincial and federal governments. Policy interventions to address primary care access challenges fall into four main categories: increasing the supply of providers; increasing and reforming family physician payment models; introducing new governance structures and networks; and introducing new primary care providers and team-based care delivery models.⁶

In 2025, Health Workforce Canada—a new organization created with the support of Health Canada and CIHI—reported that there were 193 primary care policy interventions in 2024 and 75 in 2025 across all provinces and territories.⁷ Despite the diversity of primary care policy interventions, changing and increasing family physician compensation—rather than structural reforms—remains one of the most common interventions across the country.

New payment models increase compensation but aren’t transforming primary care

Significant discontent with fee-for-service (FFS) payment has been building for many years in Canada, and family physicians have been frustrated with the lack of payment alternatives and the administrative workload. One of the main critiques is that FFS does not recognize (and compensate for) administrative work, including paperwork and patient follow-up on test results, which could not be billed under FFS.

Following British Columbia’s new Longitudinal Family Physician (LFP) payment model in 2023, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia have also introduced new family physician payment models.⁸ All models are a form of “blended payment” whereby doctors receive compensation for the time spent with patients and on administrative work, the volume of procedures or consultations performed, and for the medical complexity of their patient list (called a “panel”).

The B.C. LFP payment model was developed by the B.C. Medical Association—the bargaining agent for doctors—with the explicit aim of addressing this frustration with FFS and concerns of low pay relative to specialists and surgeons, despite generous pay for Canadian doctors compared to other high-income countries.⁹

B.C.’s LFP retains the basic premise of FFS payment: family physicians working in solo or group practice as independent contractors who are still responsible for administrative tasks. The significant increase in primary care expenditure predominately flows through individual physician compensation, rather than supporting the creation and development of non-profit primary care organizations with teams, administrative support, and physical infrastructure.

This practice of funding primary care infrastructure via individual physician payment—whereby they pay a portion of clinic overhead, including real estate (lease or mortgage), electronic medical record/IT systems, non-physician clinical and administrative staff—is no different than FFS. The biggest change is that LFP family physicians in B.C. are now compensated for time in addition to the specific procedures performed and panel.

The fact that both recent graduates and later career family physicians still do not have the option to practice outside of the independent contractor model is at odds with family physician practice preferences in Canada. A large and growing body of B.C. and Canadian research shows that family physicians, especially those who are new(er) to practice, are overwhelmingly unsatisfied with their independent contractor status and the lack of access to basic employment provisions, including parental leave and organizational support, that are standard in physician salaried employment relationships in other health systems in Canada and internationally. FFS also remains a significant barrier to team-based care because it disincentivizes collaboration.¹⁰

For example, a 2021 survey of 525 Lower Mainland family physicians found that 76 per cent indicated “a need for fundamental change to how primary care is delivered” and 44 per cent preferred to be salaried employees.¹¹ And while this body of research largely predates the inception of B.C.’s LFP—and similar models across Canada—these new payment models do not fundamentally shift family medicine practice away from owning and operating a business.

This continued reliance on the independent contractor business model, with physicians either owning the real estate or contributing to the lease payment, also means that provincial governments have not prioritized investment in public or non-profit-owned primary care infrastructure. Instead, provincial governments generally expect capital funding to flow from physician compensation into privately owned primary care infrastructure. This provides governments with little ability to plan and guarantee primary health care services at the neighbourhood and community level.

Across the country, the lack of alternatives to the independent contractor model and investment in not-for-profit primary care infrastructure is actively encouraging the growth of investor-owned corporate chains in the primary care sector, with significant implications for care delivery and commercialization of patient data.¹²

Academic research and investigative reports have shown that corporate chains may pressure doctors to sell medically unnecessary services to patients. These corporate providers increasingly blur publicly funded services with private-pay services in order to increase profits. In British Columbia, for example, there are estimated to be 131 clinics owned by non-physician corporations—representing eight per cent of the total.¹³ Many family physicians are attracted to corporate primary care clinics precisely because they provide a salary, administrative support, clinic infrastructure, and they do not require physicians to run a business.

Learning from Scotland: Shifting away from the business of general practice

Scotland offers promising lessons for how to shift primary care away from the independent contractor business model and into a more public primary care model as a strategy to improve recruitment and retention of family doctors and improve primary care access.

In Scotland, “general practice” refers to care provided by a general practitioner (GP) (typically called a family physician in Canada) and a multidisciplinary team including advanced nurse practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and other allied health professionals. “Primary care” is a broader term that refers to general practice, eye care, and dental care, which are often provided in other community settings.

Scotland takes a place-based approach to the organization and delivery of general practice. All Scottish residents have a right to access a general practice within their defined postal code-based boundary. Residents register by mail or online to be added to the practice nearest them, subject to availability.¹⁴

Traditionally, GPs have practised as “partners” who buy into the practice business using their own equity. As practice preferences have changed, the Scottish government has worked collaboratively with the medical profession to shift away from the business model of general practice.

In the 2018 General Medical Services contract between the British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland and the Scottish government, the parties agreed to work towards a future where GPs are not presumed to be business owners and operators of their practices. The 2018 contract was a groundbreaking agreement because it offered a path forward to move away from the dominant independent contractor model. The 2018 contract was a collaborative effort to address some of the key reasons for declining interest in general practice, namely the financial cost, risk, and burden of running a business.¹⁵

The National Code of Practice for GP Premises establishes the Scottish government’s approach to gradually shifting premises ownership over to NHS Scotland.¹⁶ These policy directions offered GPs the option to have the local NHS health board take over their lease or buy the GP partners out at market value, if the practice real estate is owned. The Scottish government offers “GP Sustainability Loans” as a way to avoid the problem when retiring doctors leave the capital liabilities on the shoulders of the last GP in the practice. These interest-free loans allow GPs to release their equity in the property when a partner leaves, without having to sell the real estate or add unsustainable debt to the remaining partner(s).

These policy reforms also dovetail with efforts to build out the multidisciplinary team in primary care. Other providers, including physiotherapists, social workers, and nurses, are employed by NHS health boards, but work in community-based primary care practices. A senior NHS Scotland official describes this policy transformation as part of the strategy to bolster primary care at a time of declining interest in the independent contractor model:

We’re seeing general practitioners…wanting to move away from partnerships because of the business model, the HR, and all of the bits and pieces that are attached to owning your own business, are not attractive to everybody and GPs that are coming out of training are telling us that they want a portfolio career, they don’t want to be stuck… What the Scottish Government has done that England [hasn’t] done is they’ve retained the locus of control in terms of multidisciplinary teams being employed by the NHS…and that…gives us control over how and what that workforce does, which is different. So, in essence, NHS Scotland can direct the outcomes of health through a multidisciplinary team, which has got much more control over it than if we were to negotiate the fee-for-service outcomes through a GP contract.¹⁷

Scotland’s transformative reforms have not been without challenges. Taking the practice liabilities off the shoulders of family physicians can be complex legally and practically, but the Scottish Government remains committed to this policy direction. Early data show promising signs of the increasing GP workforce, but more research will be needed to show the effects of Scotland’s reforms on access to care.¹⁸

Unlike Canadian provinces, Scotland has embraced the changing practice preferences among a new generation of family physicians who want reasonable work-life balance, reduced financial risk, and the ability to practice what is called a “portfolio career” in the UK. This means practising in a diversity of settings over one’s career, which may include clinical work, academic research, and focusing in certain sub-specialties, rather than feeling constrained working only as a GP partner.

As one key informant put it, “we were willing to give up some of the profit-making elements and reduce the risks. As I said, we’re moving more towards salaried practice and we’re giving the government a way to eventually purchase the building stock.”¹⁹

Closer to home, there are lessons to draw from Canada’s community health centres.

Learning from community health centres in Canada: An evidence-based model to scale nationally

Community health centres have been an effective but undervalued model for delivering primary health care in Canada. This non-profit, community-governed model allows physicians to practice medicine with a team and administrative support without the requirement to run a business. It is also a model with strong evidence behind its effectiveness.²⁰

One of the unique features of the model is its strong focus on the socio-economic determinants of health, health equity, and preventing acute illness among groups who are more likely to experience poor health and suffer from chronic conditions, including those who are low-income, racialized, Indigenous, as well as frail seniors.

CHCs generally have the following characteristics:

1. CHCs provide team-based, interprofessional care from medical providers and social care providers, including family physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, occupational therapists, housing support and outreach workers, amongst others.

2. CHCs integrate medical care, mental health and substance user services, health promotion and chronic disease management. Many CHCs also integrate vision and dental care within the same organization.

3. CHCs are community-governed and responsive to the patients/members they serve. They are legally established as non-profit societies or co-operatives and provide open membership to their patients, who are members and can serve on the board of directors.

4. CHCs actively address the social and economic determinants of health, including access to housing, food, and income supports.

5. CHCs demonstrate commitment to health equity and social justice, and recognize that disparities in health status are socially, economically, and institutionally produced—and that these disparities are avoidable and must be addressed through a community development and health equity approach.²¹

Today there are more than 300 CHCs represented by the Canadian Association of Community Health Centres. About a quarter of these are located in Ontario, where CHCs have a long history of growth and sustained funding by successive provincial governments, which totalled $596 million in 2024-25.²²

Ontario CHCs are composed of a diversity of health occupations,²³ including 447 nurse practitioners, 690 nurses, 468 family physicians, 519 community health and outreach workers, 209 social workers, 133 health promoters, hundreds of allied health professionals and administrative specialists who support clinical providers.²⁴

Ontario CHCs serve more than 500,000 patients each year and another half a million through social and community programming, representing about six per cent of Ontario’s population. CHC patients have an expected need for primary care that is 60 per cent greater than the average Ontarian. On average, one-third of CHC patients live in neighbourhoods from the lowest-income quintile and also disproportionately live with complex medical and social needs and may face barriers to accessing care in other settings.²⁵

CHCs in Ontario have core funding (one funding envelope to cover all operating and staffing costs, including physician and NP salaries) by the Ontario Ministry of Health. The core funding model is critical to their success because it gives them considerable flexibility to hire staff and develop services appropriate to the specific needs of their patient population and to also shift funding priorities in response to changes in community needs and demographics. It also opens up opportunities for them to develop novel funding partnerships to support new community initiatives, sector-wide improvement strategies, and needed infrastructure.

As part of the Primary Care Action Team’s efforts led by Jane Philpott, CHCs have been on the forefront of connecting Ontarians to primary care who have not had a regular provider or team.²⁶ CHCs have helped attach additional patients, especially those who are low-income, racialized, and have faced barriers to access other primary care. The CHC sector has also played a significant role helping deliver Ontario’s Primary Care Action Plan to close the primary care access gap by 2029 as a network hub for other primary care clinics in their communities.

However, Ontario’s implementation of its blended payment model for physicians working as independent contractors risks undermining the positive role CHCs have played, especially if public funding is tilted in favour of increasing physician pay outside of CHCs.

Conclusion: Closing the primary care access gap requires strong federal leadership

The federal government has provided inconsistent leadership when it comes to improving primary health care. From 2000 to 2006, the Primary Health Care Transition Fund provided provinces, territories, and health care system stakeholders $800 million. One of the aims of the fund was to facilitate the introduction of new models of team-based care that could improve access and outcomes. Among the provinces, Ontario used its funding in one of the more effective ways by expanding team-based primary care, including Family Health Teams and 22 new CHCs.²⁷

In 2023, the federal government signed bilateral agreements with the provinces to provide $46 billion in new funding for health care. As part of this funding, the federal government provided $25 billion over 10 years to support shared priorities, including primary care, health workforce, backlogs, mental health and substance use, and information system modernization.²⁸

The bilateral agreements establish indicators to report on provincial and territorial progress towards meeting the shared health priorities. For primary health care, the federal government and provinces and territories use the Canadian Community Health Survey indicator of the percentage of Canadians who report having access to a regular primary care provider, which is reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) on its Shared Health Priorities website.

The federal government has a critical role to play—not only reporting on progress, but establishing primary care standards through federal transfers and also enforcing existing legislation.

The federal government’s obligations under the Canada Health Act—to ensure that everyone has reasonable access to physician and physician-equivalent services without financial barriers—compels the federal government to ensure that the provinces and territories are working to close the primary care access gap. It also requires the federal government to crack down on provinces that allow corporate and virtual care providers that charge patients for publicly insured services.

The federal government needs to more effectively use federal transfers to effect change. This report makes the following recommendations:

1. All federal transfers payments, including the Canada Health Transfer, should have strings attached to hold provinces and territories accountable for closing the primary care access gap. Provinces should be given until 2030 to use existing bilateral agreements and CHT funds to ensure that the entire population has timely access to a regular primary care provider or team, based on Statistics Canada measures.

2. The federal government should report annually on the progress of provinces and territories in achieving timely access to a primary care provider or team that also accounts for equity, including income, gender, age, disability status, race and ethnicity, and Indigenous status.

3. The federal and provincial governments should focus efforts on increasing access to primary care providers and teams by implementing the lessons from Scotland’s reforms and the community health centre model. Both of these approaches account for changing practice preferences among family doctors and nurse practitioners and the desire among providers to work in collaborative teams. By supporting alternatives to the independent contractor model, the lessons from Scotland and CHCs suggest that provincial and territorial governments must plan for a future where primary care providers are not expected to be business owners and operators. The federal government can provide policy direction and guidance to support the spread of team-based non-profit delivery models rooted in equity, including the community health centre model.

Access to a primary care provider or team remains a significant challenge for many across the country. In 2024, one in five Canadians lacked access to a regular family doctor or nurse practitioner. While access to a family doctor declined from 2015 to 2024, the percentage of Canadians with access to a regular nurse practitioner increased.

Income is one of the key determinants of access to a primary care provider. The primary care gap between the highest-income and lowest-income Canadians did not improve from 2015 to 2024. Federal and provincial governments need to prioritize equity when implementing policy interventions.

The post Improving primary health care access: Lessons from Canada and Scotland appeared first on CCPA.

Michel claimed that aligning Canada’s drug approval system with those of international drug regulators like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency will reduce the time between when companies submit a new drug application and when the drug is approved by 50 per cent. There is already good evidence that faster drug approvals mean more safety problems once those new drugs are on drugstore shelves, a point Michel omitted. 

Over two-thirds of the drugs that the federal government wants approved more rapidly are, at best, minor therapeutic advances over existing products. The main beneficiaries from these drugs are the companies making them, not the patients taking them—another point the health minister did not mention. 

When we use the decisions by foreign regulators to approve new drugs for Canadians we are essentially harmonizing Canadian regulatory values with those of foreign regulators. Harmonization increases the risks that potentially dangerous drugs will be sold in Canada. 

Take the case of Aduhelm, the controversial Alzheimer drug which the FDA approved, prompting the resignation of multiple members of a FDA advisory committee. Biogen, the company behind the drug, eventually discontinued the drug because of concerns about safety and because it was a commercial flop. It was never approved by Health Canada despite the FDA approval. 

The health minister touted her government’s investment of “$1.7 billion to attract world leading researchers, transforming the nation into a clinical trial powerhouse.” Innovative Medicine Canada, an industry association for pharmaceutical research companies, already brags about the number of clinical trials in Canada for drugs for rare diseases (orphan drugs). The reality is that fewer than half of the orphan drugs that Health Canada approves have clinical trials that are done in Canada.

The federal government is also infusing $131 million into the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA), the body that negotiates with drug companies for the amount that federal/provincial/territorial drug plans will pay for new drugs. The new investment is meant to accelerate drug price negotiations and reduce administrative burdens. Collective bargaining by Canadian governments is a good thing, because it lowers drug prices. But only a little more than 40 per cent of total prescription spending comes from government, the rest is spent either by private drug plans or out of pocket by individual patients—and pCPA bargaining doesn’t affect the prices that private plans or individuals pay. 

Bargaining for the entire country is important. It’s one of the main reasons why Australian prices for patented drugs are almost 30 per cent lower than Canadian prices. The Pharmacare Act, passed by the previous Liberal government in October 2024 could have eventually led to drug coverage for all residents of Canada for all medically necessary drugs. It only offered a modest start, coverage for drugs for diabetes and for contraceptives. Before the last election only three provinces and one territory had signed agreements with Ottawa to receive Pharmacare money. Since the election there have not been any further agreements despite efforts by some provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador to sign on. 

Now, it appears that the federal government will not renew even existing deals  when they expire. That will be the end of any hope of national bargaining for lower drug prices.

What Michel had to say and didn’t say points to the federal government’s policy priorities when it comes to prescription drugs. . Federal policymakers like Michel want drug companies to be able to bring drugs to market faster, so that drug companies can start collecting revenue sooner—all while drug prices remain high and those high prices are maintained for longer periods of time. Profits first, public health last.

The post The federal government is prioritizing Canada’s pharma company profits appeared first on CCPA.

First, let’s look at the problems: for one, union density has been on a secular decline since the early 1980s. Whereas nearly 40 per cent of employees across the country were union members in 1981, today only around 30 per cent are covered by a collective agreement. The private sector has accounted for the entire decline observed over this period and now hovers at just over 15 per cent. 

Second, precarious forms of employment have become troublingly common in the contemporary labour market. Nonstandard forms of work—including involuntary part-time, temporary, sub-contracted, and solo self-employment—grew from the late 1980s to the late 1990s and presently encompass a considerable share of the Canadian job market. Employment in franchised firms and other “fissured workplaces” where employers seek to reduce their responsibility to workers has also generated a range of problems. The emergence and spread of app-based gig work has only exacerbated these issues. In general, low-wage, service sector employment remains stubbornly precarious. 

For workers, the twin crises of low union density and precarious employment translate into economic and job uncertainty, unstable and often low incomes, weak regulatory protections, and a lack of control over labour processes.

The crisis of private sector union density derives from the growing mismatch between Canada’s “Wagner model” of collective bargaining and the contemporary, service-based economy. Designed for large, industrial enterprises and based on worksite-level bargaining, Canada’s private sector union model was built through struggles by (and for) workers in mass-production industries, and is ill-suited to the needs of workers most in need of union protection today—i.e. those in low-wage, service sector workplaces. 

Despite the relatively widespread recognition of these problems within the labour movement (and among sympathetic policymakers), there is little consensus about an alternative industrial relations framework. Periodic efforts across several provinces to develop and propose alternative sectoral bargaining arrangements where unions and employers negotiate at the industry or regional level have failed due to a combination of employer resistance, lack of government commitment, and disagreement among unions. 

In some senses, that final issue has proven particularly sticky. Without labour unified around an alternative, sectoral bargaining framework, there was and remains little chance of overcoming business and government opposition. 

Below, we review how Canadian union density has changed over time, with a particular focus on Manitoba. Falling and persistently low union coverage in many industries call for a reconsideration of sectoral bargaining models. With single-step, card-check unionization reinstated and a ban on replacement workers now in force, the Manitoba government has shown a willingness to respond to workers’ needs. Manitoba may, therefore, be the place to put sectoral bargaining back on the agenda. 

The crises of private sector union density 

Shrinking union density is a near universal story across Canada. In all but three provinces (Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia), union coverage fell between 1997 and 2025. The extent of coverage decline varies considerably, as does overall density. British Columbia, for example, experienced the largest loss of union coverage, going from 36.5 per cent of workers in unions in 1997 to 30.5 per cent in 2025. 

In 1997, 37.8 per cent of Manitoba workers were covered by a union contract. By 2025, coverage had fallen to 34.1 per cent, still above the national average but trailing higher-density provinces such as Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. Quebec maintains its place as the most highly unionized jurisdiction in Canada, while Alberta continues to lag well behind other provinces. 

Notably, in no Canadian province were a majority of workers covered by a union contract at any point between 1997 and 2025. 

Across the country, high public sector union coverage masks often extremely low coverage in the private sector. 

In all provinces, over 70 per cent of public sector workers are union members. In Quebec, the figure was 86.2 per cent in 2025. In Manitoba, just over 79 per cent of public sector workers had union coverage in 2025. 

By contrast, private sector union density lags behind, and in many provinces far behind. 

Nearly every province has experienced a sharp drop in private sector union coverage over the past three decades. Nearly 10 full percentage points fewer private sector workers in British Columbia enjoyed the protection of a union contract in 2025 than in 1997. In Manitoba, private sector density dropped by five percentage points over the same period. Ontario, once the heartland of industrial unionism, had only 12.9 per cent of private sector workers in unions in 2025. New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island now have single-digit private sector union coverage. 

These are not just empty statistical measures. Low private sector union coverage has significant material consequences for workers’ lives and livelihoods. It means stagnant real wages, weaker health and safety protections, and a lack of worker voice on the job. 

And for workers in several industries, these consequences of weak union coverage have been apparent for decades. 

The persistence of Manitoba’s low density industries 

Manitoba offers a test case, both because of the persistent problems generated by low private sector union density and the potential to chart a different path. 

In many respects, Manitoba looks similar to the country overall when it comes to the unevenness of union density between sectors. Public sector density remains high, while private sector coverage sits one percentage point above the national average at 16.1 per cent. At the same time, goods-producing sectors have seen coverage fall from 34.1 per cent in 1997 to 27.6 per cent in 2025. In services, the decline has also been notable, though less pronounced (38.8 per cent in 1997 vs. 35.9 per cent in 2025). 

As in other Canadian provinces, the industries with the highest density are all predominantly in the public sector. Over 82 per cent of Manitoba workers in public administration were union members in 2025, up from 74 per cent in 1997. While union density fell in utilities, educational services, and healthcare and social assistance between 1997 and 2025, all three industries still posted coverage above 57 per cent as of last year. 

However, when we consider all industries in Manitoba, the nature of the problem is clearer. Contrasted with the high density industries isolated in Figure 5 are two other sets of industries: a cluster of mostly blue-collar industries where density has fallen considerably over the years but remains in the mid-range; and a cluster of industries with very low density, the most notable of which pay low wages and generate frequent employment quality problems. 

Among the blue-collar trades, there has been a notable fall in the share of workers covered by a union contract. In forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas, density fell from a peak of 59.2 per cent in 1998, to 37.3 per cent in 2025. Transportation and warehousing went from having union coverage of 55.6 per cent in 1997 to just 31.4 per cent in 2025. In manufacturing, 35.4 per cent of workers belonged to a union in 1997, but by 2025 the figure had fallen to 31.4 per cent. Construction as well has not been immune to this trend. Whereas a high of 27.1 per cent of construction workers were covered by a union contract in 2006, just 15.4 per cent enjoyed union protection in 2025. 

It is among private service sector industries, however, where the problem of low union coverage is most pronounced. While services overall have experienced a small decline—going from 38.8 per cent union coverage in 1997, to 35.9 per cent in 2025—this relatively high density masks the persistence of low coverage in several low-wage industries. 

In 1997, just 15.8 per cent of workers in wholesale and retail trade were covered by a union contract. In 2025, a slightly smaller share (14.3 per cent) had union coverage. In business, building and other support services, density increased marginally over the past three decades, but still remained at just 16.7 per cent last year. Accommodation and food services, the industry grouping with the lowest union coverage, had only 3.1 per cent of workers in unions in 2025, down from seven per cent in 1997. 

We have been describing this crisis as one of falling union coverage, and indeed that is part of the story. But a focus on the overall decline of union density also obscures the degree to which workers in particular industries have always been systematically excluded from union membership. For these workers clustered in low-wage private service industries, such as wholesale and retail trade and accommodation and food services, the lack of union coverage has always been a crisis. Canada’s model of worksite-level bargaining was never designed to facilitate and support collective bargaining in these industries. As these areas of the service sector have grown over the last few decades, the consequences for workers have become more pronounced. 

Low-wage work and weak employment standards

Low union coverage is directly related to the persistence of low pay, in Canada as a whole and in Manitoba in particular. 

Although Canada has made some progress when it comes to reducing the share of workers earning low pay (defined by Statistics Canada as making less than $20 per hour in constant 2024 dollars), the problem continues. In 2006, nearly a quarter of Canadian workers (24.2 per cent) earned low wages. By 2024, this had fallen to 18.5 per cent, partly because of stronger minimum wage protections and a relatively robust post-pandemic labour market. 

By international standards, Canada nevertheless still stands out as a country with a high share of workers earning low pay. For example, as of 2021, the average share of workers with low pay across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was 12.9 per cent. In countries with sectoral bargaining and high union density, such as Norway, Finland and Denmark, just 7.4 per cent, 8.4 per cent, and 9.5 per cent of workers were earning low pay in 2021, respectively. 

In Manitoba in particular, low pay continues to impact a large number of workers. Around one in four workers in Manitoba were earning less than a living wage in 2024 ($19.77 at the time). Nowhere in the province is the minimum wage a living wage. In Winnipeg, the minimum wage misses the mark by more than $3 per hour. Reflecting the twin crises we identified at the outset, workers earning low pay are concentrated in industries with low union density and hence lack the capacity to collectively bargain up their wages. 

But it’s not only low compensation that is the issue. As union density has fallen, more workers find themselves dependent on poorly enforced employment standards. Research consistently finds that workers in precarious employment and industries with low union coverage experience the most frequent employment standards violations, such as unpaid wages, vacation and holiday pay infractions, various working hours and overtime violations, and a myriad of other employer transgressions. 

With no union to protect their rights on the job, workers must rely on the enforcement capacity of under-resourced and overstretched government labour inspectorates, such as the Employment Standards Branch in Manitoba. That is, if they even file complaints at all. The fear of employer reprisal prevents many workers from ever coming forward. 

Even in jurisdictions where governments have undertaken coordinated campaigns to reign in employer non-compliance, the results have been lacklustre. Under-resourced labour inspectors simply cannot address the widespread violation of workers’ rights. 

Instead of expecting employers to voluntarily comply with minimum employment standards or for government agencies to address worker complaints after the fact, we should be encouraging broader union coverage and giving workers greater voice and power on the job.  

Toward a sectoral bargaining model

It’s long been recognized that Canada has a problem of chronically low private sector union density. Innovative approaches to worker organizing, while producing inspirational breakthroughs in some sectors, have been unable to arrest union decline or address the deeper, structural challenges of low collective bargaining coverage in private industry. Despite the best efforts of some unions, deterioration in private sector union density has continued unimpeded. 

Other reforms to union certification processes in some provinces, while welcome, are also unlikely to meaningfully address the decades-long fall in density in some sectors and the systemic exclusion of workers from collective bargaining in others. For example, the return of single-step, card-check certification in British Columbia and Manitoba has increased certification applications appreciably, but thus far the evidence suggests this hasn’t increased overall union coverage. While card-check has allowed unions to form units in small workplaces more easily, we still lack mechanisms for bringing dispersed groups of workers under one contract and expanding the reach of collective representation, particularly in sectors characterized by low wages and precarious employment. 

Tackling the many challenges resulting from chronically low private sector union density—low pay, income inequality, unsafe workplaces, widespread workers’ rights violations, and a lack of worker voice on the job—require a new approach to union certification, representation and bargaining. The time is nigh to consider sectoral bargaining as an alternative, particularly in Manitoba. 

Sectoral bargaining is associated with a range of positive economic benefits. Countries with sectoral bargaining systems not only have higher union coverage, but the share of workers with union protection has also been more stable over time. Countries such as Sweden, Finland and Denmark have not experienced the falling union density witnessed in Canada and the United States. 

Second, there is strong evidence that sectoral bargaining models improve income equality by raising the pay of workers at the low end of the wage distribution who would otherwise lack access to collective bargaining. Canadian provinces have largely failed to meaningfully reduce incidences of low pay through modest minimum wage raises and other statutory protections. International comparisons make clear that the most reliable way to eliminate low pay and encourage income equality is by expanding access to collective bargaining.  

Relatedly, sectoral bargaining can boost productivity by compelling employers to compete on product and service quality, rather than on low labour costs. In this sense, broader collective bargaining and business performance may have a positive and reciprocal relationship. By raising the cost of labour at the low end, employers are incentivized to make productivity-enhancing investments, rendering “low-road” business strategies that are dependent on low wages and poor working conditions unviable. This can additionally open training opportunities and extend career ladders for workers.

Raising union density through sectoral bargaining could also encourage broader positive social impacts, such as more equal incomes, lower rates of poverty, a healthier environment, and better overall public health outcomes. 

Union protection is all the more important at a time when cost-of-living challenges are proving to be persistent, and when workers are caught in the middle of recurring and overlapping economic and political crises. 

The challenge ahead is constructing a workable sectoral bargaining model. The key to avoiding the labour law reform pitfalls of the past will be working collaboratively to construct a model that both serves the workers who need it most and has the necessary support from the unions who will work within it. 

Luckily, we do not need to start from scratch. The legacy of pattern bargaining in blue-collar trades, such as forestry and auto manufacturing, shows that broader-based bargaining is possible. The grocery sector offers another contemporary example of pattern bargaining. In Quebec, the decree system long provided a public policy mechanism to expand collective agreements to workers in industries in need of union protection. And of course, the vast majority of the public sector workers across Canada already bargains sectorally, which in part explains its high collective agreement coverage. We can also draw from international examples of stable, sectoral systems that have maintained high density over time and helped to guard against the spread of poor working conditions and precarious employment. 

Ultimately in Manitoba, a sector bargaining model suitable for this province will need to be organic, built through dialogue with unions and workers themselves. 

Union coverage is a public good. We need a system that makes collective bargaining accessible to all workers. 

The post Sectoral bargaining could be key to fixing Manitoba’s—and Canada’s—labour market appeared first on CCPA.

Still, some things are clearer today than they were a few months ago. They include U.S. Democrats’ expectations for that review, their beefs with Mexico and Canada, and what party members like and don’t like about CUSMA’s performance. Around June 1 we will know how closely these positions line up with those of the administration, as the United States Trade Representative is expected to table demands of Mexico and Canada.

Democratic views about CUSMA matter more to Canada and Mexico the longer the review drags on, given the potential for the party to take control of one or both houses in U.S. midterm elections this November. Commonalities with the Trump administration and some Republican positions on CUSMA could even suggest a bipartisan landing zone with Fortress North America characteristics. 

The Dems speak up

Over the past two weeks, groups of House and Senate Democrats have sent letters to USTR Jamieson Greer with their positions on the CUSMA review. In the same period, House Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) tabled a resolution “calling for a trade policy that supports workers, consumers, independent farmers, small businesses, and the environment.”

DeLauro announced her resolution on May 14 alongside endorsing labour unions, family farm groups and fair-trade advocates including Public Citizen and Sierra Club. The fair-trade resolution rejects both past U.S. trade policies, which favoured offshoring and a race-to-the-bottom on labour and environmental standards, and Trump’s chaotic, investment-chilling, inflation-inducing trade wars with U.S. allies.

Instead, the congresswoman and allies propose U.S. trade policy should include: 

• Strong environmental and worker protections backed by swift and accessible enforcement measures, including facility-specific complaints processes similar to those in CUSMA for Mexican labour violations.
• Stricter rules-of-origin, or minimum U.S. or North American content requirements (e.g., that steel is melted and poured in North America), for products to gain duty-free or low-tariff access to the U.S. market. 
• Fair wage guarantees across manufacturing, food processing, call centres, back-office work and other tradeable sectors.
• Enhanced funding for international development assistance tied to strengthening labour rights and standards in trading partner countries.

The resolution also calls for:

• Policy space for domestic preferences (buy local conditions) on public spending and stricter domestic content requirements for qualifying bidders. 
• Penalties on offshoring and tax incentives for investing in U.S. production.
• Stronger trade penalties for “industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, and intellectual property (IP) theft.”
• Softer digital trade and IP rules, for example, with respect to pharmaceutical goods, so that governments can contain costs and increase access to medicines. 

A lot of this is in line with CCPA and Canadian Trade Justice Network recommendations to the federal government for CUSMA review priorities. Even U.S.-exclusive production tax incentives could have positive spillover effects in Canada and Mexico, as long as the tariffs go down. 

But this is the catch. Trump does not want to lower the tariffs. And DeLauro’s resolution calls on the U.S. government to maintain and strengthen the use of Section 232 (national emergency) tariffs “where they support domestic production and good-paying jobs.”

Tariffs are a reasonable way for countries to protect jobs from economically harmful imports, as when the sudden increase in cheap foreign goods threatens the viability of industries you would prefer to keep healthy. The federal government has been slow to respond to such threats to Canada’s furniture manufacturing sector, resulting recently in devastating factory closures.

However, current Section 232 tariffs on Canadian and Mexican metals, automobiles and wood products are more beggar-thy-neighbour than legitimately protective. They are aimed at draining investment—and therefore jobs—out of America’s neighbours. There can’t be anything you would call fair trade with Canada and Mexico while these tariffs are in place. 

A few days after DeLauro’s resolution, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to USTR Greer with ideas for updating and improving CUSMA. They share the congresswoman’s and coalition’s concerns about offshoring and single out U.S. investment in Mexico as an example of “regulatory or wage arbitrage.” However, the letter speaks of “evaluating” and “clarifying,” rather than “strengthening,” CUSMA’s rules-of-origin, “and to consider updates that may be appropriate as new technologies have matured.”

Reflecting the Ways and Means Committee’s centrality to U.S. trade policymaking, the letter outlines bipartisan (i.e., Trump and Biden administration) concerns with foreign investment in “sensitive” North American industries, noting Mexico’s lack of comparable investment screening measures to those in Canada and the United States. 

The CUSMA review presents an “extraordinary opportunity” to enhance regional economic and national security through cooperation on “critical” minerals, the letter adds. Trump’s Section 232 tariffs undermine U.S. credibility, Democrats say, and national security would be better protected from “predatory trading practices” by a common (continental) customs tariff.

This last point is on the Trump administration’s agenda. Deputy USTR Jeffrey Goettman previewed U.S. demands for the review during a May 12 panel discussion at the American Iron and Steel Institute’s (AISI) annual meeting. He said his agency’s goal is to provide the president with options for a “next generation” USMCA that may include “unified tariff borders with Mexico and Canada,” or a common customs zone in trade speak. 

Steel, aluminum and automotive goods were cited as examples where a common external tariff would help increase North American content in North American supply chains. Linked to that end, Goettman says the U.S. wants to increase transparency in supply chains to ensure firms are abiding by USMCA rules-of-origin. “We need to have all boats lifted though USMCA, but we need the U.S. boat to get lifted a little faster and higher,” Goettman said, in a segment on Trump’s concern with the U.S.-Mexico trade deficit. 

Later that same day, according to Inside U.S. Trade, AISI President Kevin Dempsey said there is support across the industry in all three countries for a unified “melt-and-pour rule of origin” for steel in the North American market, which would penalize imports and potentially lead to greater investment in North American steel production, though the penalties for not meeting those requirements would need to be high to be effective. 

In their letter to USTR Greer, the House and Ways Democrats call for stronger environmental protections and enforcement, and improvements to labour enforcement mechanisms in Mexico and forced labour import bans in both Mexico and Canada. They would like trade negotiators to address “Canada’s long-standing allocation of dairy tariff rate quotas, which serve to unfairly deny U.S. dairy producers” of their “meaningful access to the Canadian market,” and to put U.S. wine and spirits back on Canadian shelves.

The final Democratic foray to mention is a letter to USTR Greer from 15 senators including Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Chuck Schumer (New York) and Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin). Not surprisingly, the group shares House Democrat and U.S. labour concerns with offshoring, perceived lack of progress on Mexican labour reforms and holes in CUSMA-based labour enforcement, and the view that Mexico and Canada “have done little” to enforce the mandatory ban on imports of goods made using forced labour.

However, the senators’ letter is more explicit about the China focus of harmonized North American tariffs and investment screening. They worry that since CUSMA came into force, Chinese investment in Mexico “has more than doubled, while U.S. findings of unfair trade practices by the PRC and Chinese companies have expanded significantly.” This is simply not true or very helpful.

Chinese investment in Mexico collapsed in 2025 due to U.S. market access uncertainty and Mexico’s new tariffs on Chinese imports. The Sheinbaum government has made a very clear choice to pursue a national developmentalist industrial strategy within Fortress North America. Market access in the United States is fundamental to this plan. There are worker-centric reasons to shore up continental supply chains through stricter rules-of-origin without resorting to fearmongering about Chinese investment.

Other legislative trade measures

Alongside the Democratic resolution and letters to the USTR, several recent bills introduced in the U.S. House and Senate also flavour expectations for the CUSMA review.

USMCA Travel and Tourism Resiliency Act: The bipartisan bill introduced in February by senators Catherine Cortez (D-Nevada) and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) would establish a trinational forum of officials responsible for tourism to discuss and collaborate on all matters affecting travel and tourism in North America. The precipitous drop in Mexican and Canadian travel to the United States in 2025 seems to be the main preoccupation. The body would include representatives from USTR, State, Commerce, Homeland Security (yikes), Interior, Labour and Transportation. 

Protecting the USMCA from Harmful Chinese Investment Act: This bipartisan bill from senators Cortez (again, D-Nevada) and David McCormick (R-Pennsylvania) seeks to ensure Canadian and Mexican investment screening policies are similar to those in Section 721 of the Defence Production Act of 1950, and that the three governments coordinate to address “shared threats from investments by non market economy countries.” That category mainly means China and likely does not include the Pentagon, a non-market U.S. agency buying up significant shares in Canada’s critical mineral mines and refineries. Canada already screens investment for national security risk but Mexico has not yet introduced comparable procedures.  

Protecting American Streaming and Innovation Act: Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-Pennsylvania) introduced this bill in March with co-sponsors Greg Steube (R-Florida), Nicole Malliotakis (R-New York), Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) and Carol Miller (R-West Virginia). The bill, if passed, would obligate the USTR to investigate Canada’s Online Streaming Act under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a powerful tool used by the U.S. to unilaterally (i.e., without trade dispute settlement) impose tariffs on countries whose policies are found to undermine U.S. corporate interests. Admittedly this is a Republican bill, and Democrats have been much more favourable to policy space in the digital sphere for U.S. trade partners.

Section 232 Public Transparency Act: Senators Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) jointly introduced this short (one page) bill on May 22. It would amend the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to require the Secretary of Commerce to publish Section 232 reports no later than 270 days after an investigation was launched or no later than the day a report is sent to the President, with exceptions for classified or proprietary information. The legislation was tabled, says the Democratic senator’s website, “as the Trump Administration has launched a record number of investigations to justify imposing high, sweeping tariffs without releasing the findings of these investigations and providing little transparency or rationale to justify these broad tariffs.”

A red-blue CUSMA review?

There is a lot more going on in U.S. negotiations with Mexico and Canada than these Democratic positions suggest. The Trump administration has security-related demands of Mexico that they are linking to the CUSMA review, while Canada is under pressure to agree to purchase more F-35 fighter jets and reverse-course on Canadian cultural content fees for U.S.-based streaming companies.

But the Democratic Party positions above—some aligned with North American labour union, farmer and civil society organization positions, others basically MAGA-lite—are important for us to consider in Canada for two key reasons. 

First, it is likely the CUSMA review will drag on past November’s midterm elections in the U.S., which are expected (not guaranteed) to increase Democrat-held seats in Congress and the Senate. Though the Trump administration may wish to avoid adjustments to the North American trade deal requiring congressional approval, control of either house will give the Democrats some leverage over the direction of U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico talks. 

Second, the recently published Democratic positions on CUSMA converge with USTR Greer’s vision for the review on big picture items. There seems to be agreement on Chinese investment in North America, “critical” minerals cooperation, strategic use of Section 232 national security tariffs, and an embrace of managed (versus free) trade in sectors where U.S. producers have any footprint. 

Combine bipartisan alignment on trade with increased Democratic party influence shortly into the CUSMA review period and a picture emerges of a plausibly stable U.S. vision and demand for the future of North American trade. It is a Fortress North America–type vision with more emphasis in the Democratic version on worker rights and livelihoods but a heavy dose of America First industrial policy. 

Canada and Mexico will have to decide how much more integration of external tariffs and investment screening measures they are willing to tolerate to secure trade peace with Trump. When to make that call is just as important. It’s possible President Trump will go against the grain in a mega-deal with China that opens, rather than further restricts, the U.S. market to more Chinese investment in manufacturing, including electric vehicles.

We’ll soon see what happens, as Trump is fond of saying.

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If these cuts had been implemented, the women’s movement would have been thrown back to the wrenching Harper years when then minister for Status of Women Canada, Bev Oda, famously excised the word “equality” from the agency’s mandate, arguing it wasn’t needed any more. Indeed, funding for the Women’s Program was set to fall to $18.9 million in 2027-28, 36.5 per cent lower than it was in 2014-15.  

Alive to the threat, gender equality organizations rallied across the country to save critical community services and supports along with the national infrastructure that has been key to advancing gender equality in Canada over the past four decades, calling out a government that used to brand itself “feminist.”

On October 29, 2025, the Carney government blinked. New funds were announced for the three grants and contributions programs hosted by WAGE: the Women’s Program (including the Women’s Economic and Leadership Opportunities Fund); the Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression Program (including the 2SLGBTQI+ Community Capacity Fund); and the Gender-based Violence Program—a total of $660.5 million to be spent over five years, with $132.1 million ongoing. 

This was an extraordinary win for the women’s movement and a testament, as a coalition of gender equality organizations wrote in a public statement on October 31st, “to generations of people who have fought to build a country where care and equality are cornerstones of public life.” 

With the publication of the 2026-27 Departmental Plan in March 2026, we now have a better understanding about how these funds are being allocated, including the monies being set aside for grants and contributions in support of organizations working to advance gender equality. In late May, Minister for WAGE, Rechie Valdez, announced a one-year project funding extension for almost 400 organizations. The next section unpacks the funding announcements and sets the figures in historical context. 

At the same time, while the government has renewed investments in groups working to advance gender equality, it’s hard not to question the government’s commitment to gender equality as dozens of programs such as pharmacare, long term care, and child care are on the chopping block, set to quietly expire in the next couple of years. There was no word on the fate of these programs in the Spring Economic Update (SEU) released on April 28^th—or on the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence and the Federal 2SLGBTQI Action Plan. Meanwhile women and gender diverse people continue to wait. 

Unpacking the October 2025 funding announcement 

Historically, the Women’s Program has been the largest funding program at WAGE. Last year, in early 2025, grants and contributions awarded under this program were set to decline by over 90 per cent from a high of $226.3 million in 2022-23 (in constant 2026 dollars) to $18.9 million by 2027-28. With the October 2025 announcement, $76.5 million of new annual funding will now be available over the next five years, to be continued thereafter, for “time-limited” projects “that address systemic barriers to women’s equality in Canadian society.”

What will this mean for gender equality organizations? Last year, in 2025-26, just over $100 million was budgeted for grants and contributions under the Women’s Program, an increase over 2024-25 but much reduced from the post-pandemic high ($226.3 million) in 2022-23 when the government flowed critical emergency support to gender-based violence organizations and others. This year (2026-27), $97.3 million is being allocated for grants and contributions, falling to $90 million for 2027-28 and 2028-29. At $90 million, funding for external organizations will be roughly one-third higher (37.3 per cent) than it was before the pandemic in 2019-20—and about three times higher than the funding provided in 2014-15 (here including funds for GBV programs).

It is important to note, however, that overall funding for the Women’s Program including research, expertise and outreach, and grants and contributions is being reduced at the same time. The total program budget is forecast to fall by $42.3 million between 2026-27 and 2028-29, from $149.1 million to $106.8 million—a decline of 28.4 per cent. At that point, grants and contributions will account for almost all of the program’s funds, the government’s own capacity to invest in research, new data, community engagement, and so forth severely reduced. 

Under the 2025-26 Departmental Plan, grants and contributions under the Equality for Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression Program were set to fall effectively to zero by 2027-28 with the expiry of provincial and territorial agreements under the National Action Plan to End Gender-based Violence ($539.3 million over five years) and the Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan ($100 million over five years) in March 2027. (The Menstrual Equity Fund pilot was also delivered through the SSOGIE program. It was a $60 million two-year initiative that ran from 2023 to 2025, extended until March 2026.)

In October’s announcement, $54.6 million over five years, with $10.9 million ongoing, was allocated to renew funding for 2SLGBTQI+ programming, including the 2SLGBTQI+ Community Capacity Fund, which aims to build the capacity of 2SLGBTQI+ community organizations and networks to protect rights and advance equality across Canada and support for security at Pride festivals. 

With the increase in funding, there will be a boost in grants and transfers from $207.7 million in 2025-26 to $219.0 million in 2026-27. Funds are then expected to drop sharply with the expiry of the NAP and Federal Action Plan funds to $26.9 million in 2027-28 and 2028-29—instead of the $1.9 million allocated in last year’s departmental plan. This new level of funding is an increase over 2019-20 levels ($2.1 million in 2026 dollars) but still a very modest sum given the scale of need and urgency of the challenges confronting 2SLGBTQI+ communities.

Additional funding was also made available to the Gender-Based Violence Program. Budget 2025 included $223.4 million over five years, with $44.7 million ongoing, “to strengthen federal action in response to gender-based violence (GBV).” 

Grants and contributions provided through the program were expected to fall to $10.7 million in 2027-28. With the new funding, available support for external organizations is now forecast to be $29.2 million per year for the next three years. This is a decline of roughly $10 million from 2023-24 but higher than before the pandemic when funding under the GBV Program was just $12 million (in constant 2026 dollars). 

Please note that, over recent years, gender-based violence groups received significant funding support through the Women’s Program and through the National Action Plan to End Gender-based Violence via provincial and territorial governments. And the bulk of funding dedicated to implementing the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls is delivered by Indigenous Services Canada. Many of these programs are set to expire too. 

At this juncture, gender-based violence groups are facing a huge funding cliff in the face of persistently high rates of violence. While Budget 2025 stated the government’s intent “to continue the important ongoing work with the provinces and territories to end gender-based violence—including through the current bilateral agreements that enable these jurisdictions to fund essential prevention services and direct support for survivors,” no details were provided about what form future support might take. The 2026-27 Departmental Plan is similarly vague about what support financial or otherwise might be on offer and how it will deliver on its commitments after March 2027. 

There’s a growing national crisis that demands urgent, co-ordinated action from all levels of government. Women’s Shelters Canada is now calling for $360 million over three years to stabilize the violence against women shelter and transition-house sector and address fundamental funding gaps in services, as well as $200 million annually to support the continued efforts of provinces and territories through a renewed National Action Plan. 

WAGE’s total budget set to decline

Last year’s 2025-26 Departmental Plan presented a bare-bones budget, setting a target of $76.3 million in 2027-28 for meeting its mandated obligations, including a radically-reduced combined pot of $31.5 million for grants and transfers under WAGE’s three grants and contributions programs. According to this year’s Departmental Plan, $146.1 million has now been allocated for grants and contributions in 2027-28, significantly higher than the $31.5 million proposed in the 2025-26 departmental plan and almost twice the level it was in 2019-20 before the pandemic. 

But WAGE’s overall budget is set to decline once funding for the NAP, the Federal 2SLGBTQI Action Plan and other time-limited programs expire—and planned cuts to operations totalling $24 million over the next three years are implemented, part of the austerity program announced by the federal government in July 2025. In total, WAGE’s budget will fall by half from $414.6 million in 2026-27 to $206.2 million in 2027-28, and then $205.7 million in 2028-29. 

Staffing levels are projected to decline as well from a high of 475 posted in 2023-24 to 359 by 2027-28. (In the 2025-26 Departmental Plan, staffing levels were forecast to fall even more steeply to 254 by 2027-28.) These figures suggest that while increased financial support for national and community organizations is now available, the overall size and capacity of the Department is still on a downward track. 

One step forward, two steps back

There is much on the table this coming year—including the renewal of the Health Accords and fate of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program and the national pharmacare plan The new WAGE funding to stabilize organizations working to advance gender equality has been positive, but there are real concerns about the government’s commitment to gender equality in light of the massive cuts to federal programming across the board, hitting sectors like immigrant settlement and Indigenous services particularly hard. 

The Carney government continues to make nods to Trudeau-era programs, noting child care’s positive impact on women’s labour force participation in the SEU for instance, but its embrace of austerity—quietly targeting time-limited programs for cuts as it re-directs critical programming dollars to the military and physical infrastructure—speaks volumes about its actual commitment to gender equality and the scale of the challenge ahead for feminists to protect and build upon hard-won gains.

Many will remark on the notable shift in tone and priorities between the Trudeau and Carney governments, but there are important similarities as well. The Liberal government of 2015 to 2025 acknowledged and celebrated the contributions of women and gender diverse people but all too often the time-limited policies on offer failed to deliver a truly transformational approach to gender-based violence, the division of caring labour or access to economic security—especially for the most marginalized. 

This is why we are at a crisis moment with the national child care program because the government failed to plan and resource the expansion of quality services while lowering fees—opening the door to criticism and attack from right-wing politicians and for-profit business interests seeking to expand their market share.

Neither the Trudeau or Carney governments have treated gender equality organizations and service providers as the essential services that they are with long-term resourcing tailored to demonstrated need. The new funding will certainly make a difference, but their efforts can only be truly successful within the context of high-quality public services, an inclusive labour market, strong social safety net, and a vibrant democracy. 

Gender equality organizations, as Lindsay Tedds writes, will be expected to thank the government for walking back the funding cuts to civil society organizations. Likewise, 2SLGBTQI+ community centres will be expected to thank Ottawa for being allowed to apply to the $75 million Canada Community Security Program and disability groups for streamlining the Disability Tax Credit application process for 43 specified medical conditions, the key to accessing the new Canada Disability Benefit. 

But that’s the problem. Because “the gratitude performance” gets read as file closed, the structural reforms that didn’t get done—like pharmacare—get pushed out of public view. “And because the alternative — saying “this isn’t enough” — gets you characterized as never satisfied, as moving the goalposts, as the constituency that can’t be pleased,” driving the issue of access to reproductive health care in this example even further from sight. This funding dance is particularly toxic for women, constrained by gender stereotypes, expected to go along to get along. 

Gender equality organizations understand these power dynamics. They also understand the stakes in rolling back welfare state and institutional architecture sustaining the pursuit of gender equality in Canada for the lives of women and gender diverse people in Canada. Which is why tomorrow they’ll continue to push for a society where all can thrive. 

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Within Agriculture Canada alone, seven research sites are to be closed. A report from the House of Commons Standing Committee On Agriculture and Agri-Food has already recommended that these closures  be reversed.

I am an insect taxonomist—a scientist who specializes in midges, describing species and interpreting their evolutionary relationships (vital for good classifications and interpreting most biological phenomena). I have worked independently since 1989 and hence can speak to these issues.  Federal scientists are, unfortunately, forbidden from doing so.

First some background. The Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes (CNC) is a world class and world-famous collection of insects in Ottawa that includes more than 18 million specimens. It incorporates specimens from the early 1900s until the present and is a depository of most of the biodiversity found in Canada. The professional taxonomists working there describe species and identify thousands of specimens every year for other biologists. It is their unique skill, with their  knowledge extending far beyond species identity. They really know their groups in nearly all their aspects. 

There are more than 80,000 named species in Canada, excluding viruses and bacteria. The insects make up the bulk of those species and most are in four orders: butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera), wasps (Hymenoptera), beetles (Coleoptera) and true flies (Diptera).  The 9,777 named species of flies represent 12 per cent of all species of Canada, making the flies one of the most diverse groups of organisms in Canada.

However, it is important to know that much of our fauna remains unnamed. DNA barcoding, which provides information on a single gene, suggests that there are more than 34,000 species of flies in Canada. This is largely confirmed by taxonomists studying whole organisms.  Thus, much of our fauna is unnamed. Finding a unique DNA barcode identifier is insufficient for understanding a species, what it looks like, its likely adaptations and its evolutionary status. This makes it vital that collections and the scientists who work on these specimens continue their work on whole organisms.

Insects are the movers and shakers of ecosystems and understanding them provides vital information on biodiversity and how best to conserve and manage our biological heritage. They are most often the first evidence of environmental change, making them critically important in understanding the impact of climate change and other environmental impacts. There are already published reports of blackfly and mosquito species having expanded their ranges into the Arctic. We know this because of recent collections made and compared with those from earlier decades—all based on specimens in the CNC.

Canadian courts have recently issued landmark rulings affirming that climate inaction threatens our national welfare. Our Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the federal government has the authority and obligation to address the climate emergency nationwide. Our prime minister has written eloquently about the importance of addressing climate change.

This all makes it particularly shocking that the recent cuts to staffing within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada include the scientists and their support staff working on flies (Diptera Unit). This gutting of a whole unit will leave a substantial gap in our capacity to identify flies in Canada.  In 2023, one of the scientists working on flies and holding one of the highest positions available in the federal service (a Research Scientist 4) was suspended for what were clearly minor infractions during a field trip (for example, buying new tires for a government vehicle without permission) and this individual was subsequently not permitted to work in the collection. The Diptera Unit has been steadily undermined by administrators over a number of years. It is hard not to wonder if this is retribution against a group of scientists who have been an amazingly productive and cohesive group—international leaders for decades. Those being terminated now are in the later stages of their careers. One, an older expert working on parasitic flies and a group of major importance in biological control, was terminated and was refused even emeritus status (called HRA, Honorary Research Associate). Meaning he cannot continue to volunteer to do research there. There used to be seven taxonomists studying the flies of Canada and so the reality is that there is a need to hire more scientists to fill the need to study the fly diversity of Canada.

When I learned of these terminations, announced in January and which I heard about from international colleagues, I wrote a petition, along with my colleague Dr. David Grimaldi (American Museum of Natural History) and sent this to our community.  The result was a flood of emails, lamenting these cuts and expressing shock that this was even considered. The scientists at the CNC are international experts with a broad, worldwide knowledge, including of course, strong connections to that international community. I gathered the 495 names of colleagues, representing 47 countries and the petition was delivered to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in February. Letters have also been sent to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. None of this has had any impact on the ground. Emails sent to two pertinent administrators in Agriculture and Agri-Food resulted in the expected responses and reassurances that all is well.

The whole of the Canadian National Collection (CNC) has only 10 taxonomists left to work on the insect fauna of our entire country. In British Columbia, for example, there are an estimated 30,000 species of insects, with about a third of these unnamed.  Of the remaining 20,000 named species, we know virtually nothing about their biology except largely by conjecture. In short, we live with an extremely high level of ignorance about the true biodiversity of Canada.

What is at stake here is the continued existence and further development of a core scientific capability: the ability to document, identify, curate, and interpret insect biodiversity in support of biosecurity, health, conservation, environmental policy and economic pursuits (like agriculture, forestry, etc.). At the same time, biodiversity loss is consistently ranked among the top global risks for the coming decade, making the attrition of this capacity particularly difficult to justify. At a time of accelerating global change, Canada is needlessly eroding its capacity to understand and respond to biodiversity change. Species are moving, new disease vectors will arrive, and yet the institutional expertise and collections infrastructure required to identify and contextualize these organisms is being removed (here and elsewhere over the past several decades). This is not an abstract academic concern, but a matter of national preparedness.

We can do much better with our limited resources. Reducing bloat in the federal government should not result in a loss of vital scientific capacity. We need evidence-based information to guide us through the coming years and firing scientists and their support staff is not the way to proceed.  

Some may wonder if there are insect taxonomists at universities who fill in the gap, but the few that are active are hampered by the drive to obtain grants and support. Insect taxonomy is still being taught at a few universities in Canada, but the reality is that there are no jobs for graduating students. Part of the problem is that describing our insect fauna doesn’t generate money and, although essential to most other biological studies (you’ve got to know what species you have), is very poorly supported nearly everywhere in the world. Governments need to support this research.

Insect taxonomy is my own restricted area of science, but it is certain that other scientific arenas in the federal service are also being impacted in similar ways across the public service—with decisions being largely made by higher-level managers, based on mandates from politicians—all, with inherently limited knowledge, and without consultation with the experts they should be supporting.

The Canadian National Collection faces a lack of awareness of its value and the importance of its work. It is presently under the authority of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and there has been a repeated drive by administrators to press the work done there to the needs of Agriculture. This has resulted in recurring conflicts and miscommunication (and a fear of managers by staff).  The federal government should broaden its mandate, separate the CNC from Agriculture Canada and merge it with the Canadian Museum of Nature, where the collection was originally born. 

Many are already familiar with how the United States government, under President Donald Trump, has gutted numerous scientific institutions such as the Center for Disease Control and Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. federal government has terminated thousands of medical studies and dealt a body blow to the country’s scientific capacity that will take many years to resurrect. Does Canada want to follow in its footsteps?

If Canada is serious about understanding and protecting our biodiversity, there needs to be some major renewed support for vital institutions such as the CNC, and the important work being done there. 

The post What cuts to insect scientists tell us about federal austerity in Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Garnering less attention, the federal government has been concentrating legislative and regulatory powers within the executive branch, sidelining the legislative branch’s role in holding the executive branch accountable for its actions. 

Regulations are a critical function of government. They interpret, implement, and enforce government laws and policies largely away from public scrutiny. They are also essential for business providing guidance and certainty, regarding democratic values and economic plans going forward. The number of regulatory agencies is extensive, covering, health, food, drugs, energy, finance, transportation, workplace health and safety, environment, and more.

According to the government’s Cabinet Directive on Regulation , their primary purpose is to advance the public interest including protecting citizens’ health, safety, security, social and economic well-being, and the environment. Their purpose, as stated, is also to support a fair and competitive economy that benefits Canadians and Canadian businesses. 

The tension between these goals, under the current corporate-government power relationship has often compromised the public interest in favour of corporate interests (profits and shareholder value). 

The government’s accelerating deregulation agenda 

Bill C-5 introduced in June 2025—entitled an Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act— gave the cabinet the ability to prioritize and fast track major projects including scrapping regulations it views as red tape. 

Four months later, The Budget Implementation Act (Bill C-15),  gave cabinet ministers the power to effectively exempt any individual or company from virtually any federal law or regulation under their responsibility except for the criminal code. 

Budget 2025 also outlined plans to reduce federal spending by $60 billion over the next five years—eliminating an estimated 40,000 positions in the public service by 2028-29, roughly 10 per cent of the total workforce. This will undoubtedly include cuts to regulatory agencies, including staff that design, implement, oversee, and enforce regulations.

If history is any guide, “eliminating red tape” (that is, deregulation) is invariably accompanied by fiscal austerity—including cuts to regulatory agencies, notably staff who propose, monitor, and enforce regulations. Gutting regulatory resources is replaced by corporate self-regulation. 

Acceleration of Major Project approvals 

On May 8, the government announced further changes to the regulatory architecture to accelerate the deregulation process and speed up and broaden major project approvals deemed to be in the national interest.

It released two discussion papers , Getting Major Projects Built  and Strengthening One Economy Through Trade and Transportation, detailing its planned changes to regulations and legislation, which will be implemented after a 30-day consultation period with the public, organizations, etc. The consultations are largely rubber stamps for what the government plans to implement. 

The cabinet will be granted power to pre-approve projects in “federal economic zones,”—namely, transportation corridors, telecommunications networks, energy production and transmission infrastructure including pipelines, and industrial regions—thereby removing the need for separate project reviews and exempt projects from requiring individual environmental reviews. 

The cabinet will, as needed, exempt projects from requiring individual reviews not withstanding environmental impacts and risks to public health and safety. It will also be able to grant exceptions to rules governing fossil fuel and nuclear oversight, habitat preservation, and laws which protect species at risk of extinction.

Ironically, the law coincided with a Canadian teenager’s filing of a submission to the CUSMA Secretariat asserting that Canada is failing to effectively enforce its environmental laws with respect to the protection of migratory birds and species at risk by allowing the release of harmful substances into the environment beyond the legally permitted limits.

Cabinet would also have the power to declare major pipelines “in the public interest,” before the energy regulator is required to complete its review of the project’s conditions or location of the pipe.

Proposed changes to major project development rules risk trampling on the rights of First Nations. According to the Assembly of First Nation Chiefs President, there hasn’t been enough consultation with First Nations on major projects to date, and that the government risks making the situation worse if it proceeds without engaging with community leadership.

Shortly thereafter, the Federal and Alberta governments reached a so-called “climate and energy agreement” that could see construction of an oil pipeline to the west coast begin as early as September 2027.

Potential consequences

The federal government, since the new administration took office over a year ago, has been laser-focused on growing the economy, strengthening internal and international trade, mobilizing private investment–domestic and foreign. It has done so in the face of a fractured world order and tensions within the country. Its energy policies prioritizing economic growth over protecting the environment  according to polling, have gained widespread public support.

However, it must be emphasized, these actions—concentrating executive branch power, streamlining regulations, accelerating project approvals— could have dire consequences: risks of massive harm to the environment, to human health and safety. They may also result in catastrophic accidents.

I have documented the consequences of the Harper government which, bent on building an “energy superpower,” weakened or removed regulations in line with corporate interests and implemented fiscal austerity and privatization. These forces aligned on the night of July 6, 2013, with the oil train derailment and explosion which decimated the town of Lac-Mégantic, killing 47 people, leaving 27 children without their parents, leaving a community with a legacy of economic, health and environmental aftershocks. 

Canadian citizens and policy makers should never forget what happened in Lac-Mégantic: why it happened, who was responsible, and what lessons should be learned? So often the lessons are forgotten. 

Then it happens again.

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This tragic event has only come to light because emergency physicians have spoken out about the overcrowding and capacity challenges at the hospital. 

Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency medicine physician and section president at the Alberta Medical Association, attributed the death to the deteriorating state of emergency departments in the province. “I’ve said before, publicly, that there have been deaths in the emergency department and deaths in the waiting room due to overcrowding and wait times,” he told CBC News.

In December, another patient died in the waiting room at Grey Nuns Hospital in Edmonton from cardiac arrest. The government subsequently ordered a review into the death, which found overcrowding, lack of capacity, and long wait times at issue. 

Dr. Paul Parks, the former president of the Alberta Medical Association’s emergency medicine section, wrote a letter to the provincial government in January detailing examples of six additional deaths and 30 cases that almost ended in death. 

ER and hospital admission wait times have increased dramatically

These tragic deaths are not isolated incidents. They are associated with the systematic underfunding and under-resourcing of Alberta’s hospitals by the provincial government.

Emergency room wait times are a canary in the coal mine for health care system performance.

Publicly available data reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that the maximum wait times for 90 per cent of patients increased by 86 per cent between 2020-21 and 2024-25 (Table 1)—from 2.9 hours to 5.4 hours. (2024-25 is the most recent publicly available reporting year available. The 90th percentile of the wait-time indicators represent the maximum length of time that 90 per cent of patients waited.)

In the Calgary Zone, ER assessment maximum wait times increased by 111 per cent, by 89 per cent in the Edmonton Zone, and by 90 per cent in the South Zone, which includes Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.

The other important indicator is how long it takes for patients in the ER to be admitted to an inpatient bed. If patients cannot be admitted to the hospital due to a lack of inpatient beds, it leads to overcrowding and long wait times in the ER.

In 2020-21, 90 per cent of patients waited a maximum of 26.2 hours for hospital admission, which increased to 37.3 hours in 2024-25—or by 42 per cent (Table 2). Hospital admission wait-times jumped the most over this period in the North Zone (79 per cent) and the Edmonton Zone (72 per cent)—where these two patients have died waiting for care.

Alberta hospitals are being starved of needed funding

Between 2014 and 2023 (the most recent data available), provincial real per capita hospital spending in Alberta declined by four per cent, from $2,252 to $2,169 (Table 3). Alberta was the only large province to experience real, per capita spending cuts over these years. 

That means provincial funding has not kept pace with population growth and inflation. Alberta is not providing sufficient hospital funding to meet the needs of the population, as the tragic ER deaths vividly demonstrate.

The other larger provinces—B.C., Ontario, and Quebec—increased real per capita hospital spending over this period. The only other provinces that saw spending declines were P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Alberta has been an outlier over the last decade, and the latest provincial budget appears to solidify Alberta’s status by failing to provide the funding necessary to increase capacity and reduce wait times. 

These tragic deaths are symptoms of a much larger political failure to meet the acute care needs of Alberta’s population. 

The foremost goal of the provincial government should be the proper funding of Alberta’s public hospitals in order to prevent additional tragedies. 

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During the prime minister’s visit, Canada and China signed memorandums of understanding to cooperate in a variety of areas, including energy and clean technology. Triggering the most attention, though, was a détente on electric vehicle tariffs, which had been set at 100 per cent in Canada for Chinese-made cars since the Biden administration. Canada would now allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country tariff free.

The expectation is that this will lead to the development of joint ventures in auto manufacturing within three years, creating jobs and building a more robust EV supply chain in Canada, and providing more affordable EVs to Canadian customers. U.S. President Donald Trump initially called the move “a good thing.” But one week later, following Carney’s “rupture” speech in Davos targeting U.S. unilateralism, Trump threatened to slap a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian goods if the country struck a trade deal with China, which is not on anyone’s agenda.

It is widely believed that the “poison pill” provisions in Article 32.10 of CUSMA, which would allow the U.S. to withdraw from the agreement if Canada or Mexico sign a free trade agreement with a “non-market country,” are designed to prevent China from treating Canada or Mexico as a gateway to the North American market. Given U.S. trade minister Dominic LeBlanc’s insistence Canada does not want a China free trade agreement, the Prime Minister’s China tour appears at least partially intended to create leverage in the upcoming CUSMA review—more risk management than a pivot away from the United States.

The joint review mechanism in Article 34.7 of CUSMA fits within Trump’s global reciprocal trade strategy. The first joint review begins on July 1. If all parties agree, the agreement will be extended for another 16 years (to 2042). If no consensus is reached, the review becomes annual, and continued disagreement would lead to the agreement’s automatic termination in 2036. 

As former United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ambassador Robert Lighthizer explains, “this mechanism (joint review) was designed to ensure that the U.S. ‘never again be in a position where it has permanently given away its economic leverage or become hostage to outdated rules.’” In this sense, the mechanism has transformed CUSMA from a certainty-based trade agreement into a periodically re-opened negotiation table, allowing for recalibration toward reciprocity from the U.S. perspective. 

On December 16, 2025, Jodey Arrington, the Republican chair of the U.S. House budget committee, introduced the Consistency in Foreign Investment in the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement Act. The bill would require USTR to push, in the joint CUSMA review, for Canada and Mexico to align their national security screening of foreign investment with that of the United States, including closer monitoring and review of foreign investment, to strengthen North American coordination in addressing investment-related risks.

Given the importance of harmonizing investment screening measures in recent Trump agreements and in the Pax Silica pledge it is selling to critical minerals and silicon chip producing nations, and the evolving changes to Canada’s EV import policy, we should expect the conversation to come up in the CUSMA review. It’s worth looking at Canada’s existing screening measures in the Investment Canada Act (ICA) and Canada’s investment obligations in the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) signed by the Harper government in 2012. 

Under the FIPA, Canada’s federal government retains the ability to screen Chinese investment in Canada under the ICA, and China can similarly screen Canadian investment under its own laws and practices. These investment screening policies are excluded from the treaty’s controversial investor-state disputes settlement and state-to-state arbitration system. However, there is an imbalance in the treaty noted by Gus Van Harten in his assessment of the FIPA. 

Canada’s investment policy space is tied specifically to decisions made pursuant to the ICA, whereas China’s carve-out applies broadly to laws, regulations and rules, present or arguably future amendments, reserves substantially wider regulatory flexibility at multiple levels of government, while Canada’s preserved authority remains linked primarily to the existing ICA framework. The ICA itself also contains structural limitations as an investment screening mechanism.

To assess foreign investment in Canada, the ICA operates through two parallel review procedures: one focuses on whether an investment provides a “net benefit” to Canada, and the other assesses whether it may be injurious to Canada’s national security. On March 5, 2025, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada issued updated Guidelines on the National Security Review of Investments (Guidelines), introducing economic security as a factor and expanding the scope of national security review to include risks related to supply chain control and dependency. The government may initiate a review where it has reasonable grounds to believe that an investment could be injurious to Canada’s national security.

With the exception of national security review powers, the ICA traditionally authorized review only where a foreign investment involved the acquisition of control of an existing Canadian business. Greenfield investments generally fell outside the ordinary review mechanism. In addition, the ICA imposed relatively high monetary thresholds before a transaction became reviewable under the “net benefit” test. As a result, the design of the Canada-China FIPA may constrain Canada’s future policy space in emerging strategic sectors such as electric vehicles, batteries, critical minerals, and semiconductor supply chains, including future compliance with the kind of harmonized North American investment screening scheme envisioned by the Trump administration.

In recent years, the Canadian government has explicitly included critical minerals (iron, silicon, phosphorus, etc.) in the “trinity of supervision” of national security, economic security, and supply chains. Through the Policy Regarding Foreign Investments from State-Owned Enterprises in Critical Minerals under the Investment Canada Act (2022) and its guidelines (2025), it’s becoming harder to pass investment screening in the critical minerals sector. 

In November 2022, Canada ordered three Chinese companies to divest from lithium assets they held inside and outside Canada via ownership stakes in Canadian-listed companies. However, cases have shown that such foreign investment is still possible if it responds to the government’s key concerns: retaining control, securing supply, and reinvesting in domestic capacity. Commitments go a long way in facilitating the completion of such deals. 

For example, in the La Arena gold-copper project, which was approved in 2024, the Chinese party committed that 60 per cent of future copper concentrate output would be supplied to Pan American Silver for sale in the North American market. In the merger between Anglo American and Teck, commitments included setting the merged company’s headquarters in Canada, maintaining local job positions, and investing $10 billion in Canada. 

As this demonstrates, Canada is already taking steps to restrict Chinese investment in sensitive industries in the North American market.

In terms of EVs, while Canadian consumers may welcome more affordable vehicles, the auto industry has expressed concern about the policy, particularly opposing the possibility that Chinese firms may establish joint ventures focused on assembling vehicle kits in Canada, which could generate limited domestic employment. “We cannot ship cars to Canada as kits. Making cars in Canada must help support the local supply chain,” said Canadian Minister of Industry Melanie Joly.

On the other hand, the first 24,500 import permits are allocated on a first come, first served basis. While Chinese brands (such as BYD or Geely) are still hiring and scouting, Tesla has already made its move. The company recently launched its Shanghai-built Model 3 Premium RWD in Canada at a reduced price. Industry estimates suggest Tesla could secure 7,000 to 10,000 of the first 24,500 import permits, roughly 29 to 41 per cent of the total first-half allocation. Canada is weighing whether to impose company-specific limits within the new 49,000-vehicle low tariff quota for China-made electric vehicles.

With domestic restrictions in place and pressure from the U.S., the partnership between China and Canada remains limited at this stage. For China, investing in either Mexico or Canada may be seen as a way to mitigate the negative effects of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” under which projects involving “prohibited foreign entities” may be ineligible for certain clean energy tax credits. However, given the uncertainty surrounding the renewal of CUSMA, China may be more cautious in expanding its investment in Canada, anticipating potential regulatory or political constraints. 

For Canada, this renewed “honeymoon” with China may provide some leverage in navigating the upcoming review, but its practical impact appears limited. Difficult choices are likely to arise, and the broader goals of diversifying trade partnerships and achieving greater independence may still have a long way to go.

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There was no meeting where anyone decided he could not return. No letter withdrawing his place. The process unfolded quietly, the way absences sometimes accumulate when something has already begun to break. The classroom had always been loud. Thirty children speaking at once. Chairs scraping against the floor. The low electrical hum of fluorescent lights overhead. For most students the noise blurred into the background, part of the ordinary atmosphere of school. For him it arrived all at once, every sound demanding attention.

At first the teachers tried small adjustments. A desk moved closer to the wall. Short breaks in the hallway when the room became too overwhelming. Instructions repeated slowly while the other children began their work. The teachers cared about the boy and wanted him to stay. But classrooms run on momentum. Lessons move forward whether every student can follow them or not. Without additional support, the structure could only bend so far.

His parents asked the school for help. The specialized program for students with complex needs had already reached capacity. Educational assistants were assigned to other classrooms earlier in the year. The waiting list for formal assessments stretched months, sometimes years. The administrators explained the situation in careful language. They did not question that the child needed support. The difficulty was that the system had no place to put him.

For a while the family tried shorter school days. Then mornings only. Eventually the boy began staying home entirely on the days when the noise felt unbearable. Officially he remained enrolled. In practice he disappeared from the classroom almost without anyone noticing.

By the time a system fails someone, the decision has already been made. It was made when the budget determined how much care, space, and attention the system could afford to give.

Later the explanation arrived in language that sounded administrative rather than tragic. During the previous budget cycle, the district had reduced specialized support positions. Fewer staff meant fewer placements. The waiting list grew quietly. So did the number of children learning that the school system had not been built for them.

Stories like this rarely appear in policy debates. Education discussions tend to revolve around curriculum reforms, test scores, or teacher shortages. When funding enters the conversation, it is usually framed in the language of efficiency and fiscal responsibility. Yet behind every classroom lies a quieter set of decisions. Decisions about how many staff can be hired, how many programs can exist, and how many students a system has been funded to support.

Budgets are usually presented as technical documents. They appear to be neutral tools for managing limited resources. School boards debate them in long evening meetings filled with spreadsheets and forecasts. Administrators describe them as responsible planning. Yet those numbers quietly determine the limits of what institutions can do. A mission statement describes what a system hopes to achieve. A budget reveals what it has decided it can afford.

The consequences of those decisions rarely appear immediately. They surface later in the ordinary moments of institutional life. A waiting list that grows longer each year. A classroom that cannot stretch far enough to include another student. A child who stops coming to school and becomes one more absence in the record.

The architecture of these decisions has a history. For much of the twentieth century, governments funded institutions through stable operating grants that allowed them to respond flexibly to community needs. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating through the 1990s, that model was dismantled across North America. Competitive, project-based grants replaced core funding. Organizations were required to demonstrate measurable outcomes within fixed timelines.

In practice, the shift quietly reshaped what schools could do and who they could serve. Programs that produced countable results flourished. Work that required long-term relationship building, open-ended support, or sustained attention to students whose needs resisted tidy metrics became harder to fund and harder to justify. In British Columbia, that transition is visible in school district special education budgets, in educational assistant staffing ratios, in the length of assessment waitlists. The money follows the measurable. The students who fall outside the measurable fall outside the system.

Scholars who study public institutions have long observed that organizations shape their services around the financial structures that sustain them. Economists call this resource dependence: institutions that rely on external funding adapt their activities to match the priorities of those who control the resources they need to survive. In schools, this looks like special education programs that expand where targeted grants exist and contract where they don’t, regardless of whether the student population has changed. It looks like district administrators who genuinely want to serve every child designing programs around the students their budget was built to support.

Researchers studying education systems describe a related consequence as mission drift. Schools and districts founded with broad commitments to inclusion gradually narrow their focus as they align their work with available funding. The shift rarely reflects a change in values. It reflects the reality that even the most committed institutions must operate within financial systems that determine which forms of need are considered fundable.

Political scientists describe a third dynamic through the concept of policy feedback. Once a funding structure is established, it begins to shape the institutions built around it. Assessment tools develop around the categories that funding systems recognize. Evidence of success emerges from those programs. Future funding flows toward the initiatives that already exist. Over time the system reinforces itself. Students whose needs fit the recognized categories remain visible. Those who don’t gradually disappear from institutional attention.

The consequences extend across generations. Sociologists describe this as cumulative disadvantage. Small budget decisions that appear practical in the moment accumulate into long-term inequality. Schools develop expertise around the students they already know how to serve. Infrastructure evolves to support existing programs. Decades later the system is highly effective for some students and nearly inaccessible for others. Not because anyone chose that outcome. Because the budget did.

This pattern is rarely described as injustice. It appears instead as limitation. Officials speak about fiscal constraints, capacity limits, and sustainability. The language suggests that the boundaries of public education are natural consequences of scarce resources. They are not. They are the result of decisions about how resources will be allocated and which priorities will receive protection in a budget.

Why this persists

If the consequences are so visible, the question becomes unavoidable. Why do systems continue to reproduce these exclusions year after year?

Part of the answer lies in the quiet incentives embedded within fiscal structures themselves. Programs designed for students whose needs fit existing funding categories tend to produce measurable outcomes. They generate statistics that can be reported to school boards, ministries, and the public. A workshop delivered, a case resolved, a student who graduated. These outcomes allow institutions to demonstrate success. Serving students with more complex needs often produces fewer visible results, requires more time, and introduces uncertainty into systems evaluated through efficiency.

Political leaders benefit from these arrangements as well. Budget decisions framed around fiscal responsibility are easier to defend than those framed around expanding services indefinitely. A balanced budget, a funded program, rising graduation rates as evidence of good governance. The students who remain outside those systems rarely appear in official metrics.

Even families who benefit from public education often benefit from these arrangements without realizing it. Schools function well for students who fit the classroom structure. Parents whose children receive services quickly and reliably tend to perceive the system as working. The concentration of resources around students already well served reinforces the perception that the system is functioning effectively. This is not cynicism. It is the ordinary operation of a system that has structured itself around the students it can most easily count.

For this reason, calls for increased funding, while important, rarely resolve the underlying problem. New funding almost always flows through the same fiscal frameworks that already exist. Programs continue to be evaluated through the same metrics that defined earlier budgets. Additional resources often strengthen the parts of the system that already function while leaving structural exclusions intact.

The pandemic offered a striking illustration. Emergency funding expanded education supports at unprecedented speed. Yet most of that support flowed through institutions and service networks that already existed. Students already connected to disability services, learning support programs, or resourced schools received help quickly. Those who were outside those systems often struggled to access anything at all. The expansion of funding increased the scale of the system without changing its architecture.

The obstacle is rarely the absence of money alone. It is the architecture through which money moves. Systems built around efficiency, predictability, and measurable outcomes struggle to accommodate forms of need that fall outside those categories. Accountability frameworks count how many students have been served. They rarely ask how many remain excluded.

What structural change looks like

If the problem lies in the architecture of fiscal systems, meaningful reform cannot rely on funding increases alone. It requires reconsidering how education budgets are designed.

One approach involves participatory budgeting. Instead of allowing financial priorities to be determined exclusively by administrators or ministries, communities most affected by school systems are invited to help decide how resources are allocated. Several school districts and municipalities have experimented with this model, shifting focus away from abstract efficiency toward the lived realities of those who depend on the system. When families who have experienced exclusion sit at the table where budgets are built, the categories that get funded tend to change.

Another possibility involves reversing the metrics through which institutional success is measured. Most schools evaluate their performance by counting the students they serve. This obscures an important question. Who remains outside the system entirely? Measuring exclusion rather than participation would force districts to confront the students their programs fail to reach.

Structural change also requires applying principles of universal design from the beginning rather than treating complexity as an afterthought. Many schools attempt to expand accessibility only after systems are in place. Additional supports are layered onto structures that were designed for a narrow set of learners. Building systems that assume diversity from the outset would shift budgeting priorities. Complexity would be treated as a foundational condition rather than an optional add-on.

Funding models themselves may require reconsideration. Grant frameworks that define narrow categories of eligible students often determine which children districts can serve. Flexible, unrestricted funding allows institutions to respond to emerging needs rather than fitting their work into predefined program structures. Some provincial funding models have begun moving in this direction, though the distance remaining is significant.

The most consequential shift may involve rethinking where education budgets begin. Most systems are designed around the students easiest to serve. Programs expand outward from that foundation, adding specialized supports as resources allow. A different approach would reverse that logic. Start with the students whose needs are most complex. Build the system around them. It would almost certainly work for everyone else as well.

Such changes require reimagining how institutions understand efficiency, accountability, and fairness. They also require acknowledging something school systems rarely state directly. Budgets do not simply distribute resources. They draw the borders of belonging within the institutions they sustain.

By the end of the school year, the classroom had rearranged itself. Projects covered the walls. Desks shifted as groups changed. The quiet choreography of a busy classroom continued as it always had.

The empty desk near the back of the room remained unused for a while.

Eventually it disappeared.

So will others. Not because school systems fail dramatically, but because they succeed at exactly what they were built to do: serve the students they were funded to serve and quietly exclude everyone else.

Until we recognize education budgets as moral documents, as maps of who we have decided matters, we will keep building schools that claim universality while budgeting for exclusion. The child who stopped going to school did not fall through the cracks. He encountered the border the budget drew. And unless we are willing to redraw that border, to restructure fiscal frameworks around the students currently outside them, we are not building public education. We are administering inequality with spreadsheets.

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Over the past year, the Ontario government has repeatedly accused school boards of financial mismanagement. The Minister of Education then took over eight boards, appointing generously paid supervisors to replace trustees and run boards with an iron fist. These eight boards have a combined enrolment of 733,000, or 36 per cent of all students in the province. 

The allegations justifying the takeover have not been backed by hard numbers. Yes, schools across the province are facing financial challenges—any educator or parent will tell you that. But is mismanagement really the problem? 

The CCPA closely monitors education funding in Ontario, using hard numbers, and we have a different explanation. Our analyses show that, year after year, schools have been asked to do more with less; we have now reached a breaking point, where the holes in the foundation are literally visible. 

The Core Education Funding figures released yesterday further support our stance, regretfully. 

This year’s per-pupil funding, once adjusted for inflation, falls slightly below last year’s level and $180 below what it was in the 2018-19 school year. In a school system with more than two million students, every cut adds to substantial budget shortfalls. In 2026-27, the Ontario government will spend almost $362 million less on Ontario’s schools than it did in 2018-19, in real dollars. We continue to move backward. 

The other problem with funding cuts is that they add up. Some funding cuts simply mean that students miss opportunities they will never get back. Other cuts create financial pressures on future years: waitlists for special education supports continue to grow, in-class resources are never restocked, leaks in the roof are never fixed, the anti-racism programs continue to be kicked down the road for the next year, as do additional supports for students from lower-income families, whose allocated funds are diverted to other priorities. The list is long. 

You can take from Peter to pay Paul only so many times. 

The accumulated shortfall for Ontario schools since 2018-19 is now at a whopping $6.4 billion. This is the total amount that Ontario’s school boards have lost compared to what they would have received if their funding had kept pace with enrolment and inflation over the past eight years, assuming no additional funding injection in the next school year. 

The supervisors of the eight school boards under provincial supervision will have to face these impacts of budget shortfalls. 

As the charts below show, all eight boards have been deprived of considerable amounts of funding in the past years: $950 million in the Toronto District School Board, $290 million in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, $266 million in the Peel District School Board, $347 million in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, $123 million in the York Catholic District School Board, $235 million in the Thames Valley District School Board, $221 million in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, and $22 million in the Near North District School Board. The amount varies by board size, but most shortfalls represent between 20 and 30 per cent of a year’s funding. 

These sizable cumulative budget shortfalls are a much more credible explanation of the financial challenges schools and boards are facing than allegations of mismanagement, which have not been backed with evidence. Regretfully, this year’s school board allocations are not reversing the trend that got us into this mess. 

Notes on method

• The Ministry of Education has not released the actuals for 2022-23 and 2023-24; this analysis uses the revised estimates for those years.
• All years exclude debt service and one-time pandemic-related funding, no longer part of the Core Education Funding.
• In previous analyses, I excluded unjustifiably large planning provisions, but since the amounts are now back at reasonable levels, they are included.

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Prior to formally taking the pledge, councillors asked city staff to review Brampton’s contracts and investments to determine if any were supporting companies complicit in Israeli apartheid. On April 8, a report from the city’s assistant commissioner of corporate support services recommended the city “not proceed with the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge due to the legal and financial risks arising from the pledge’s numerous principles.” 

One of the main reasons the report cites is Canada’s supposed commitments under a variety of free trade agreements, which would apparently be violated by the municipal government taking such a stand. In particular, the report cites provisions under the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the internal Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). It claims that these agreements contain provisions which ban governments from “discriminating” against specific countries using procurement restrictions. 

Those supposed problems do not line up with reality. The report contains a number of factual errors about Brampton’s procurement obligations and allowances in domestic law and international trade agreements. These inaccuracies discouraged elected officials from taking an action they felt morally compelled to take and for which there would be no serious financial or legal repercussions. 

Late last year, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs sent a letter to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown urging city council not to sign the pledge. That letter also erroneously states that the pledge asks cities and communities to take actions “far beyond municipal jurisdiction.” 

As other Canadian municipalities see campaigns to endorse the Apartheid Free Communities pledge, elected officials are likely hearing similar misinformation about their trade-related obligations with respect to public procurement. To clear the hot air, we sent a letter containing the following information to Brampton’s mayor and councillors and hope that it can be useful to other cities looking to become Apartheid Free Communities.

Israeli firms not covered by procurement commitments

 Canadian municipalities have no public procurement obligations to Israeli suppliers. Israel is not a party to any of the three trade agreements referenced in the report (the CETA, CUSMA, and CFTA). Israel and Canada are both parties to the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) at the World Trade Organization, but this agreement does not cover municipal public procurement. Thus, Israeli suppliers have no reasonable expectation that they will be included in any municipality’s procurement and no recourse to dispute settlement under any trade agreement.

Brampton’s public procurement obligations

The Brampton report states that “the Purchasing By-law does not allow the City to impose restrictions on procurements based on the vendor’s location or the place where the goods or services are produced.” However, the by-law’s non-discrimination clause (Article 2.1) is tied to “the requirements of any applicable trade agreements.” In other words, if there are circumstances in the applicable trade agreements in which the non-discrimination rules do not apply to certain procurements, those exceptions would cover procurement by the City of Brampton. 

In his report, the Commissioner lists the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) and the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) as relevant applicable trade agreements. These agreements all contain exceptions that would safely shield procurement policies that directly or indirectly discriminate against firms profiting from Israel’s international law and human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as could be aspired to under the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge.

Canada-EU CETA

The Canada-EU CETA contains the most extensive procurement commitments Canada has made in a trade agreement. Despite widespread municipal opposition, the federal government agreed to European demands to cover public spending down to the municipal, school board and hospital level. CETA prohibits covered public agencies from discriminating against EU firms or in favour of domestic firms in public tenders for goods, services and construction. The agreement also prohibits “any condition or undertaking that encourages local development … such as the use of domestic content.”

Notwithstanding these onerous terms, which frustrate governmental efforts to foster domestic economies of scale to withstand the U.S. trade war, CETA includes exceptions to these rules that should allow for the novel use of public spending to support local causes. Article 19.9 allows procurement agencies, including municipalities, to set “technical specifications to promote the conservation of natural resources or protect the environment,” for example. 

More relevantly, while CETA is silent on social or environmental procurement (i.e., public spending that takes into account working conditions, human rights or the environmental impact of bidding companies), the European Court of Justice has determined that such policies are acceptable under EU procurement directives derived largely from the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), on which the procurement chapter in CETA is based.

CETA contains further safeguards for the kind of procurement restrictions that could align with the aspirations of the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge. In language drawn from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Article 19.3.2 of the procurement chapter grants public entities the right to take any measure necessary to protect public morals, order or safety, or necessary to protect human life or health.

Article 19.3.2

Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner that would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between Parties where the same conditions prevail or a disguised restriction on international trade, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed to prevent a Party from imposing or enforcing measures:

a.    necessary to protect public morals, order or safety;

b.    necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health;

c.     necessary to protect intellectual property; or

d.    relating to goods or services of persons with disabilities, of philanthropic institutions or of prison labour.

A similar public morals exception in Article 28.3 of the CETA covers much of the rest of the agreement. States can rely on these exceptions in state-to-state disputes where a dispute panel finds that a policy has violated some aspect of the trade agreement. However, for two reasons, it is highly unlikely that a procurement policy at the City of Brampton would generate an international trade dispute of this kind.

First, European countries, including Spain and Slovenia, are taking much more trade-restrictive measures—including import bans on goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements—to exert pressure on Israel to end its violent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. States have non-derogable obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent further loss of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

Dozens of European municipalities already have procurement policies that restrict bids from companies identified by the international Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement as being complicit in Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. Among the priority companies listed by the BDS movement are Dell, Reebok, Re/Max, Chevron and Teva Pharmaceuticals, while pressure targets include Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Siemens and Cisco. 

Second, under the procurement rules in CETA, Canada is only obligated to provide EU-based firms with an administrative or judicial means to dispute procurement tendering decisions they believe violate the terms of the agreement. Such a process exists in Brampton under the procurement by-law. Trade-related procurement disputes at the Canadian International Trade Tribunal rarely lead to fines against federal agencies.

Canadian Free Trade Agreement

The CFTA does not have a public morals exception, but the agreement allows provinces (and their cities) to deviate from its terms, including the procurement chapter, in the pursuit of legitimate objectives, which include “protection of human, animal, or plant life or health” and “protection of health, safety, and well-being of workers.” As the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge is concerned with stopping harms to people and protecting workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, procurement restrictions emanating from the pledge should easily pass this test. 

Canada-US-Mexico Agreement

Contrary to the report, Canada is not covered by the procurement rules in the CUSMA. Canada’s procurement obligations to the United States are covered in the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) at the World Trade Organization, which does not apply to Canadian municipalities. This is how the City of Brampton itself was able to safely pass a “Buy Canadian” procurement policy in March 2025 to prevent U.S. firms from participating in city procurements while U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports remain in place. 

However, even if Canada had agreed to cover municipal procurement under the GPA or CUSMA, both allow plenty of room for the kinds of procurement restrictions that could align with the aspirations of the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge. As mentioned already, the WTO procurement agreement includes a public morals exception almost identical to Article 19.3.2 in the CETA. As opposition to genocide is a nearly universal moral belief and international law obligation on states, municipal actions aimed at ending genocide would likely survive a trade challenge.

Final comments

Brampton’s report grossly exaggerates the legal and financial risks to the city—and, by extension, all other Canadian municipalities—from signing the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge or from excluding bids from firms profiting from Israeli apartheid. The pledge does not ask the city to take actions that would be illegal or impossible under Ontario or Canadian legislation. Rather the pledge is aspirational in nature. As such, the assertion in the report that the city “does not have the authority to direct OMERS investment decisions or require divestment from specific countries, companies, or sectors,” while true, is beside the point.

The report asserts that discriminating against companies that enable apartheid or Israeli violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will “reduce the pool of qualified vendors” as well as “reduce quality” and “lead to service disruptions.” There is no data to support this claim. At the federal level, Israeli firms account for a fraction of contracts. Specific to 2025, only 29 of 56,092 contracts went to Israeli firms. This is one-twentieth of a percentage point. This number is likely much lower in provincial and municipal procurement where auctions are generally lower in value and salience. If the city has data that proves that the exclusion of Israeli suppliers and suppliers that profit from apartheid would meaningfully raise its procurement spending, it should supply that data to the public.

As it happens, the staff report’s line of critique contradicts both the city’s and Ontario’s own local procurement strategies. As mentioned above, Brampton excludes U.S. vendors under its “Made in Canada” preference. The city also has a local social returns policy (the “Community Benefits Policy”) that could potentially be challenged as a prohibited offset under the CETA or the GPA procurement rules. Meanwhile, Ontario purposefully restricts municipal procurement competition through the Buy Ontario Act. 

Finally, the report raises the potential of “reputational harm” in dropping Israeli suppliers from its procurement auctions. This is a baseless scare tactic that ignores the reputational harm of inaction in the face of apartheid and genocide. 

In municipalities across the country, residents are pressuring their municipal governments to adopt policies that ensure local governments are not materially supporting Israel’s crimes. If municipal elected officials aren’t interested in doing so, they should say so explicitly and defend their position, rather than hiding behind false interpretations of trade agreements.

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Against a background of renewed nuclear tensions, two separate international studies examine steps towards bringing about the demise of nuclear weapons and the importance of recalibrating security thinking away from belief in their relevance.

Their analysis is of relevance to Canada as it grapples with the uncertain consequences of U.S. threats to withdraw the ‘nuclear umbrella,’ and has echoes of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s “strategy of suffocation” to end the arms race in 1978.

In 1986 the world came close to abolishing nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, leaders of the Soviet Union and U.S., whose legacy was major arms control agreements.

But current weakening of nuclear restraints threatens a renewed arms race. U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambiguous threat to Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight” and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats in the Ukraine war have fanned nuclear angst three decades after the end of the Cold War left the impression nuclear dangers had been interred with it. 

Planners tend to view contemporary nuclear risks through the prism of the 1950s and 1960s, says Nick Ritchie, a professor of international security at York University in the UK, part of a research program to determine how nuclear ‘abolition or relinquishment’ can be achieved.

The investigation, led by the Nuclear Knowledge Program at Sciences Po, a public research university in Paris, is examining the conditions under which nuclear-armed states would most likely give up their weapons. 

The lack of urgency regarding nuclear disarmament is illustrated by the absence of study it receives, the investigators point out. Research is hamstrung by the “relative scarcity of direct evidence of nuclear disarmament” to which specialists can turn.

The importance of the project stems from the fact that “we live in a different world from the Cold War and nuclear weapons aren’t going to provide stability,” says Ritchie. 

Separately, a policy paper, the conclusion of a two-year project coordinated by the London School of Economics Non-Nuclear Deterrence Project, draws the same conclusion: it urges a shift in security thinking away from nuclear deterrence, while warning against a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to current tensions.

The paper, produced by the Network for Effective Security, a group of scholars and practitioners from across Europe and North America including the former head of Britain’s Royal Marines, declares, “democratic resilience offers a safer, more effective path to securing Europe and defending democratic values than nuclear deterrence.”

“In response to Russia’s war against Ukraine and growing uncertainty about the U.S. commitment to European security, European countries have agreed to increase defence spending and are discussing the possibility of a European nuclear deterrent,” the paper says.

“There is, however, very little public discussion about the nature of current threats and about the most appropriate way to counter them. There is a risk that decisions being taken now may mis-frame the threat, with long-term dangerous implications for the future.”

Despite the widespread perception among policymakers that nuclear weapons are irreplaceable and alternatives unrealistic, growing opposition to the war with Iran—waged on dubious claims about that country’s nuclear activities—offers context for changing the narrative. While the war demonstrates the limits of military intervention and may reshape the global order, it offers no reassurance about the use of nuclear weapons and highlights the strain the global nuclear non-proliferation regime is under. 

Whether nuclear arms control has reached an inflection point may become clearer from the outcome of the five yearly review (April 27 – May 22) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global bargain attributed with curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.   If its 191 member states cannot reach agreement, says Izumi Nakamitsu head of the UN’s disarmament office, it risks being ‘hollowed out;’ UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned the treaty is ‘eroding.’

A bookend to current discussion about nuclear weapons is provided by a new history examining the roles of experts who established the architecture of arms control in the Cold War. Benjamin Wilson’s ‘Strange Stability’ publication catalogues how disarmament was rejected in favor of the continued modernisation of weapons by strategists and science advisors, many in the pay of the US military industrial complex, in pursuit of so-called strategic stability.

“Strategic modernisation is not a failure of arms control. It is an accomplishment of arms control’s most important Cold War success: the intellectual marginalization and political defeat of disarmament,” Wilson writes. Tellingly, some estimates put the final bill for the 30-year modernisation of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at three trillion dollars.

Canada appears to have forsworn its own nuclear option after Trump’s threat to deprive the 32 member NATO alliance, of which it is a prominent member, of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. 

But 81 years after the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the more than 12,000 thermonuclear nuclear weapons in possession of nine countries are more than capable of destroying life on earth, the nuclear Gordian knot becomes  tighter bound.

Time to recall an observation of the Cold War by Robert McNamara, the longest serving and reviled U.S. defense secretary who recanted after his support of the Vietnam war and became an opponent of nuclear weapons: “it was luck that prevented nuclear war.” 

The post Nuclear disarmament is more important than ever appeared first on CCPA.

Summary

The deepening Ontario hospital funding crisis is harming patients and communities. New analysis of Ontario’s 136 hospitals shows that the majority of hospitals had operating deficits over the last three years. In 2024-25, 55 per cent of hospitals had deficits.

Geographical analysis of hospital deficits by region show that hospitals in northern and western regions of the province were more likely to be in deficit in 2024-25. In the LHIN regions of Erie St. Clair and Mississauga Halton, all hospitals were in deficit, followed by Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant (78 per cent), Waterloo Wellington (71 per cent), and the North East (63 per cent).

Costs in the hospital sector have been increasing by about six per cent per year due to population growth, aging, and inflation, according to the Ontario Hospital Association. However, the Ontario budget plans to increase total health care funding to by only 3.5 per cent in 2026-27 and 2.3 per cent in 2027-28.¹ These increases are insufficient to address the health care needs of the population.

Smaller and rural hospitals hardest hit

When analyzed by size of hospital, smaller hospitals with operating revenues under $100 million disproportionately had deficits in 2024-25: Smaller hospitals made up 61 per cent of the hospitals in deficit but made up only 49 per cent of all Ontario hospitals (Figure 3). Meanwhile, larger hospitals with operating revenues over $100 million made up 49 per cent of hospitals in deficit and accounted for 51 per cent of Ontario hospitals.

Hospital funding austerity harms patient care

Emergency department (ED) wait times are a canary in the coal mine for health care system performance. “Hallway medicine” occurs when patients have long waits in the ED, waiting to be admitted because there are no inpatient beds available. Two indicators demonstrate the risks to patient care:

• In 2020-21, 90 per cent of patients waited 2.7 hours in the emergency department for their initial physician assessment, which increased to 4.5 hours in 2024-25—an increase of 67 per cent.
• In 2020-21, 90 per cent of patients spent 29 hours in the emergency department while waiting to be admitted, which increased to 44 hours in 2024-25—an increase of 52 per cent.

Misleading claims by the Ontario government

The Ontario government is wrong when it claims that health care spending is “unsustainable.” The increase in total Ontario health care spending—from $53.9 billion in 2014 to $84.8 billion in 2023—appears large in absolute terms. However, as a share of the economy (measured as GDP), total health care spending was 7.4 per cent of GDP in 2014 and increased modestly to 7.6 per cent by 2023. These increases are sustainable over this time range and well within historical norms.

The Ontario government also suggests that the care economy is not the ‘real’ economy. These claims are used to justify underinvestment in health care and the devaluing of work in the care economy. In 2024, there were 1.4 million jobs in the care economy—representing one in five jobs in Ontario.

These ideas are harmful to workers as well as the patients and communities who depend on their skills and commitment. Between 2016 and 2025, the average wage for vacant hospital positions was seven per cent lower in 2024 than 2016, when adjusting for inflation. Over the same period, hospital job vacancies per 100,000 people increased by 101 per cent. Over the past decade, hospital funding austerity has contributed to ongoing and severe workforce recruitment and retention challenges.

Recommendations

Based on the findings of this report, the provincial government should implement an aggressive plan to address the hospital funding and capacity crisis:

Provide immediate and sustained funding to improve hospital finances and capacity: Hospital funding needs to increase by $3.2 billion to put hospitals on stable footing. The province should provide six per cent annual increases to the hospital sector to account for population growth, aging, and inflation.

Develop a provincial health workforce strategy and capital plan: Unlike other health systems in Canada and internationally, the Ontario government does not have a provincial health workforce strategy and capital plan to ensure that physical infrastructure, bed capacity, and equipment planning align with workforce expansion.

Introduction

In March, the Ontario Hospital Association warned that the hospital sector requires a cash infusion of $2.7 billion to address the dire financial situation.² This report provides a three-year geographical analysis of the deepening hospital funding crisis in Ontario.

For this analysis, a custom CCPA dataset of the finances of 136 hospital corporations was created. Operating revenues, expenses, deficits, surpluses, and margins for all hospitals in Ontario were analyzed. In addition, this report draws on publicly available data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), the Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO), and Statistics Canada.

Ontario hospital deficits and the harms to patient care

The majority of Ontario hospitals had deficits over the last three years

New analysis of Ontario’s 136 hospitals shows that the majority of hospitals had deficits over the last three years. Operating deficits occur when expenses are greater than revenues. The largest source of revenue for Ontario hospitals is public funding from the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health. The largest expense for Ontario hospitals is staff compensation.

In the last fiscal year (2024-25), 55 per cent of public hospitals ran deficits. In 2023-24 and 2022-23, 50 per cent and 63 per cent of public hospitals had operating deficits (Figure 1). In absolute terms, London Health Sciences had the largest operating deficit of $153 million in 2024-25.³

Hospitals in the northern and western regions more likely to be in deficit

Geographical analysis of hospital deficits by region show that hospitals in northern and western regions were more likely to be in deficit in 2024-25 (Figure 2). In Erie St. Clair and Mississauga Halton, all hospitals were in deficit, followed by Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant (78 per cent), Waterloo Wellington (71 per cent), and the North East (63 per cent).

Smaller and rural hospitals are the hardest hit

While the hospital funding crisis affects all hospitals, analysis of financial data from the last three years shows that smaller and rural hospitals are among the hardest hit by provincial funding austerity (Figure 3).

When analyzed by size of hospital, smaller hospitals with operating revenues under $100 million disproportionately had deficits in 2024-25: Smaller hospitals made up 61 per cent of the hospitals in deficit but made up only 49 per cent of all Ontario hospitals (Figure 3). Meanwhile, larger hospitals with operating revenues over $100m made up 49 per cent of hospitals in deficit and accounted for 51 per cent of Ontario hospitals.

Smaller hospitals generally have fewer resources to draw upon than large urban hospital systems, including working capital, if they want to backstop shortfalls and maintain service levels.

Hospital funding austerity harms patient care

Multiple important indicators suggest that hospital funding austerity is undermining care and putting patients at risk.

Emergency department wait times are on the rise

Emergency department (ED) wait times are a canary in the coal mine for health system performance. EDs with long wait times and overcrowding signal that the overall health care system is struggling to meet patient demand for care. The causes are multifactorial. However, hospital capacity—including staffed beds—is a significant influence.

“Hallway medicine” occurs when patients have long waits in the ED, waiting to be admitted because there are no inpatient beds available. Although Ontario Health discontinued public reporting of its hallway medicine indicator, there were an average of 1,390 inpatients being treated in “unconventional spaces” in March 2024.⁴

According to provincial data reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Ontario ED indicators are moving in the wrong direction. Table 1 shows that the ED wait time for patients to receive an initial physician assessment has significantly increased over the last five years. The 90th percentile of patients waited 2.7 hours in 2020-21, which increased to 4.5 hours in 2024-25—an increase of 67 per cent. The 90th percentile represents the maximum length of time that 90 per cent of patients waited for an initial physician assessment in the ED.

The second indicator—shown in Figure 4—demonstrates that wait times to be admitted to an inpatient bed are dramatically increasing for patients waiting in the ED. In 2020-21, the 90th percentile of patients waiting in the ED spent 29 hours to be admitted to an inpatient ward, which increased to 44 hours in 2024-25. This is an increase of 52 per cent. The 90th percentile represents the maximum length of time that 90 per cent of patients admitted into hospital from the ED spend in the ED.

When analyzed geographically, the 90th percentile of patients waited the longest in the Central, East, and North East regions in 2024-25 (Figure 5). The Central region includes cities from Mississauga to Huntsville and Orangeville to Markham, the East region includes the communities from Pickering to the Quebec border north to Deep River, and the North East region includes the communities of West Parry Sound, White River, Peawanuck, the James Bay Coast, Mattawa and all points in between.⁵

The significant increase in wait times for patients to be admitted demonstrates a system under immense strain, unable to cope with the demand for acute care services. The longer patients languish in the ED waiting to be admitted, the risks of deteriorating health status and poorer outcomes increase.⁶

Staffed hospital beds are far below what is required—and projected to get worse

Projecting inpatient hospital bed demand is complex and depends on multiple factors, including population growth, aging, and utilization. Primary and community care, disease prevalence, and the socio-economic determinants of health are also contributing factors. A sicker population without access to primary and community care is more likely to access emergency departments and require inpatient hospital services.

There is widespread agreement among analysts that Ontario’s hospital sector is the most undersized in Canada relative to size of the population—and it is one of the most under capacity when compared to high-income countries.⁷ In 2022, Ontario ranked number 33 when compared to 38 OECD countries.⁸ At 199 beds per 100,000 people, Ontario had fewer beds than the Canadian average (217 beds per 100,000 people) and fell behind many other high-income countries with universal, publicly financed health systems, including Norway, Finland, New Zealand, and the U.K. Even though many northern European countries generally have stronger systems of primary and community care, these countries still have more hospital beds, per capita, than Ontario.

New analysis shows that while population growth and aging increased by 27 per cent between 2014-15 to 2024-25, the actual number of hospital beds increased by only 14 per cent (Table 2). In 2024-25, Ontario had 35,540 inpatient beds when it should have had at least 39,892 beds, if the number of hospital beds increased by 27 per cent.

Ontario had a gap of 4,352 beds in 2025.

This is a conservative estimate of the missing hospital beds in Ontario. Based on rapid growth of the population 65 and older, the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions estimates that 41,777 staffed beds were required in 2025—a gap of 6,237 beds.⁹ Between 4,352 and 6,237 staffed beds were required in 2025 to avoid hallway medicine and meet demand for inpatient care.

For multiple years now, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) has also raised concerns over the shrinking size of the hospital sector relative to demand for care. Analysis shows that the provincial government’s funding budget plan for 2025-26 to 2027-28 is projected to result in a reduction in staffed hospital beds from 220 beds per 100,000 people in 2024-25 to 203 beds in 2027-28.¹⁰

Provincial funding austerity is shrinking the public hospital capacity required to ensure patients receive timely access to care.

Fact checking the Ontario government’s claims

Hospital spending is not “unsustainable”

In February, the Ontario finance minister claimed that health care spending growth is “unsustainable.”¹¹ However, when the hospital and total health care spending increases are put into perspective—that is, relative to the size of the economy (measured as GDP)—the government’s claims do not withstand scrutiny.

Drawing on provincial expenditure data reported by CIHI, we see that between 2014 and 2023, Ontario’s hospital spending increased from $19.6 billion to $30.7 billion (Figure 6). This may seem like a big jump in spending, but when we look at it in relation to the size of the growing economy, hospital spending in 2014 to 2023 represents the same share of the economy—2.7 per cent of GDP.

Similarly, the increase in total Ontario health care spending—from $53.9 billion in 2014 to $84.8 billion in 2023—appears large, in absolute terms, but represents an increase of only 0.2 percentage points as a share of GDP. In 2014, total health care spending as a share of the economy stood at 7.4 per cent and increased modestly to 7.6 per cent by 2023.

These increases are sustainable within this time range and well within historical norms. The provincial government’s claims are misleading. In fact, Ontario ranks below the Canadian average for provincial hospital and total health care spending (Table 3).

The province is also below the Canadian average when it comes to hospital and total health care spending as a share of the economy. In 2023, Ontario spent 7.6 per cent of GDP on hospitals versus eight per cent in Canada. Clearly, Ontario has the capacity to invest in critical public health services.

However, in order to invest in the health care services that Ontarians depend on, the provincial government must ensure that the province benefits from the significant wealth created in the province by increasing taxes on higher-income households and corporations, and generating revenue that can increase health care access and strengthen the care economy.

The care economy is the economy

In February, Ontario’s finance minister stated that “85 per cent of the spending in the budget is actually for social spending [and] about 15 per cent is for infrastructure and the economy.”¹²

This statement assumes that jobs in the care economy are not part of the ‘real’ economy. This is a very outdated and sexist belief about what counts as Ontario’s economy. Work in the care economy is overwhelmingly performed by women in the public sector who pay taxes, support families, and contribute to community wellbeing. The care economy includes employment in health care, social assistance, and educational services.¹³

When we look at the employment data, a very different picture emerges than what the government presents. In Ontario and Canada, there are more jobs in the care economy than in many industries, including finance and insurance, construction, and professional and technical services. In 2024, there were 1,410,087 jobs in the care economy—representing one in five jobs in Ontario (Table 4). In Canada, there were 3,857,142 care economy jobs in 2024—also one in five jobs.

To suggest that this work is not part of the ‘real’ economy devalues the critical contributions of hundreds of thousands of frontline Ontario workers in health and social care. At a time of great geopolitical uncertainty, governments must recognize the central importance of the care economy to Canada’s ability to care for its population and sustain itself in the world.

Devaluing of the care economy—by the numbers

The problem of devaluing the care economy—and care workers—unfortunately, has a long history in Canada.¹⁴ These ideas are harmful to as well as the patients and communities who depend on their skills and commitment. Devaluing of the care economy comes in the form of cuts to post-secondary training institutions, lower immigration targets, hospital privatization, and real spending cuts to health care services.

We can examine the relationship between hospital wages and vacancies to understand how the devaluing of care work by the Ontario government is detrimental to the ability of hospitals to recruit and retain the workforce that Ontarians depend on. Between 2016 and 2025, the average wage for vacant hospital positions was seven per cent lower in 2024 than 2016, when adjusting for inflation (Figure 7). Over the same period, hospital job vacancies per 100,000 people increased by 101 per cent (Figure 8).

The recent history of public sector wage suppression is important. Passed in 2019, Bill 124 was an explicit attempt by the government to suppress wages and was ultimately found to be unconstitutional. This wage suppression legislation and hospital funding austerity over the past decade have contributed to ongoing and severe workforce recruitment and retention challenges.

Conclusion and recommendations

The majority of Ontario public hospitals had operating deficits over the last three years—this is a clear sign of a deepening hospital funding crisis in Ontario. It demonstrates that the available resources are insufficient to meet the population’s needs. Although the funding crisis is felt in rural and urban communities and hospitals large and small, hospitals in northern and western regions of the province were more likely to be in deficit in the last fiscal year.

The funding crisis harms patient care. Multiple health care system indicators provide dire warnings of the growing harms. Emergency department wait times have dramatically increased, leaving Ontario short thousands of inpatient beds. Rather than “hallway medicine” becoming a thing of the past, it has become a permanent fixture in Ontario’s hospitals. Unfortunately, the Ontario government mistakenly claims that health care spending is “unsustainable” when, in fact, it has remained relatively stable as a share of the economy.

Based on the findings of this report, the provincial government should implement an aggressive plan to address the hospital funding and capacity crisis:

Immediately increase funding to improve hospital finances and capacity

The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) estimates that $6.4 billion in new health care spending is required in 2026-27 just to maintain 2024-25 service levels.¹⁵ Budget 2026 only adds $3.4 billion in additional spending, which leaves the health care system short by $3 billion in this fiscal year.

Costs in the hospital sector have been increasing by about six per cent per year due to population growth, aging, and inflation, according to the Ontario Hospital Association.¹⁶ However, the Ontario budget plans for total health care funding to increase by 3.5 per cent in 2026-27 and 2.3 per cent in 2027-28.¹⁷ These increases are insufficient to address the health care needs of the population.

The Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) estimates that hospitals require financial stabilization funding of $2.7 billion in 2025-26. While the provincial government offered an additional $1.1 billion for 2026-27, this falls short of addressing the dire financial situation. Detailed analysis by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (CUPE) finds that core hospital funding needs to be increased by $3.2 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2026.

In 2026-27, the provincial government is projected to increase base and targeted hospital funding by four per cent, which falls short of the six per cent annual needed to account for population growth, aging, and inflation—and to simply maintain service levels.

Develop a provincial health care workforce strategy and capital plan

Ontario lacks a health care workforce strategy with provincial and regional solutions to address staffing shortages. Importantly, the provincial government and health care sector employers must recognize that the conditions of work are the conditions of patient care, and that improving the workplace environment is associated with better-performing organizations that deliver safer patient care and better outcomes.¹⁸

A workforce strategy should be accompanied by a long-term hospital capital infrastructure plan to ensure that physical infrastructure, bed capacity, and equipment planning aligns with workforce expansion.

The Ministry of Health and Ontario Health should establish a provincial advisory table, including researchers, unions, educators, employer representatives, professional associations, and patient and citizen advocacy groups, to inform development and implementation of a provincial health workforce strategy and capital plan.

The post Failure, by design: Ontario’s deepening hospital funding crisis appeared first on CCPA.

The key announcement was a new (so-called) sovereign wealth fund to finance physical infrastructure and $6 billion for apprenticeships in the trades. By contrast, the SEU was notably silent on investments in health and education, affordable child care, caregiving leave, and growing economic precarity—all issues of consequence to mothers and families. 

On any number of metrics, Canadians are struggling, young people and low-income families in particular.  A year ago, four in 10 adults reported that their household found it “difficult” or “very difficult” to meet their financial needs, more than double the level in 2021. In 2022, 38 per cent of young adults (aged 20 to 29) said that they wouldn’t be able to afford to have a child in the next three years. 

Little left for food and basic needs

The soaring cost of rent, lack of affordable housing, and overstretched health and community services have left many overburdened. 

The situation of single mothers is particularly precarious. Single mothers were hugely impacted by the pandemic. The economic lockdown in 2020 wiped out two decades of economic progress at a stroke. Concentrated in “flexible” occupations such as sales and service, over one-third (37.5 per cent) of single mothers with kids under 12 lost their jobs or a majority of their working hours when the economy shut down in the spring. 

Without access to supports such as child care, many were forced out the labour market altogether, reducing their autonomy and entrenching their poverty—to say nothing of the individual toll on the women’s aspirations and hopes for the future. 

Five years later, single mothers (25-54 years) with kids 0 to 12 years have still not recouped their employment losses (down -43,000 between 2019 and 2025), coinciding with a sizable drop in their overall numbers (-63,500).  

A key part of this story is that single mothers are having a much more difficult time living on their own. There’s been little change in their after-tax incomes since 2021. And little change in the sizeable wage gap between single mothers (especially never-married mothers) and mothers in couple families. 

In 2023, “unpartnered” mothers with young children earned 19 per cent less, on average, than their “partnered” peers. This was true among Canadian-born, immigrant and Indigenous mothers—a reflection of deep-seated occupational segregation. Absent meaningful community and family support, single mothers will always be forced into low paid service work, low paid precisely because these workers have no choice. 

High poverty rates among single mother families is another economic indicator that has changed little over the years. It is about four times higher than in couple families, up 10 percentage points from 22.8 per cent in 2020 when pandemic-era benefit programs dramatically halved poverty in Canada. 

An even higher share of single mother families (47.4 per cent) reported being food insecure in 2024 compared to 27.3 per cent of couple families with kids according to the most recent Canadian Income Survey. It’s up from 2020 particularly among Black single mothers and those that rely on government transfer programs.  

Glaring holes in Canada’s economic plan

Mothers looking for relief in the April 28 Spring Economic Update were sorely disappointed. A one-time top of 50 per cent to the Goods and Services Tax Credit, announced in January, will certainly deliver relief to low-income families this summer. As a result of this change, 172,000 adults and children will be lifted out of poverty. 

But temporarily suspending federal excise taxes at a cost of $2.1 billion in foregone revenues, like the cut to the lower income tax bracket last year, will deliver little relief to low income households, just $59 on average for those in the bottom quintile according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. 

Likewise, new measures to boost the construction of private homes and the HST rebates on these new unaffordable homes benefit housing developers and wealthy investors, not those in acute housing need. Where were the measures to expand non-market housing for low-income households or new protections for renters, both of which would make a huge difference for single parents and other low-income households.  

For single mothers, indeed all women, the failure of the Spring Economic Update to prioritize poverty reduction and economic resilience is further compounded by the government’s austerity efforts that are  eroding access to critical public services.  

The government’s silence on the renewal of funding for the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program as well as the National Action Plan to End Gender-based Violence and the national pharmacare program is profoundly troubling. It’s hard not to question the government’s commitment to gender equality with these programs on the chopping block, set to quietly expire in the next one to two years.

Care work doesn’t make the cut in today’s Ottawa

Research on family policy conclusively shows that where there is affordable, accessible, high quality care services, mothers, children and families all benefit—especially those such as single mothers who confront the largest barriers.

Federal investments in child care, for instance, have greatly reduced child care fees for the lucky parents who have access to “federal” spots. The creation of new spaces, however, has fallen woefully short of targets, unable to respond to heightened demand. Perversely, low income parents now have less access to low cost child care than before the federal program, pushed out by higher income families because of faulty implementation. 

Shortages of qualified staff due to low wages, minimal benefits, and poor working conditions are compounding the problem. New capital and operational funding is urgently needed for the expansion of nonprofit and public spaces, including in Indigenous communities, as well as resources for improving staff recruitment and retention. 

Instead, the Spring Economic Update noted that the federal $625-million infrastructure fund launched in 2023 to support creating non-profit, licensed child-care spaces will end this year. 

It appears among policy-makers in Ottawa that you need to wear a hardhat to qualify as a nation builder. Child care workers and the millions of women who work in Canada’s care economy don’t make the cut. 

Investments in the care economy are precisely the type of “dual purpose” investments we need, not only supporting and sustaining communities across the country but generating tremendous economic benefit for all. This Mother’s Day, let’s keep fighting for progressive family policies and income security programs that hold up all families. These are the gifts that keep on giving. 

The post No gifts for single mothers in Canada’s Spring Economic Update appeared first on CCPA.

Canada did not similarly manage its petro wealth. Our federal structure means that provinces control their resources, so provinces have created their own fund, which they mostly use to lower taxes and reduce deficits. In contrast, the federal government subsidizes the oil and gas sector with direct funding, tax breaks and financing to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

The federal government announced last week the intent to create what they call a Sovereign Wealth Fund, but rather than use the publicly owned profits from our oil and gas industry, they want to create the fund with debt financed by Canadians to build infrastructure like oil and gas pipelines that will improve the bottom line of private companies. 

Where will the debt to finance the fund come from? Well, the federal government put in an initial $25 billion, but if you have some extra money sitting around, you can ‘invest’ in the fund. If the fund doesn’t make money then, no doubt, the government will cover your losses. 

Another idea floated by the federal government last week is to use what we already own as Canadians, namely our airports, and turn these over to private investors. 

Canadians, through Transport Canada, currently own 26 airports, most of which are managed by private not-for-profit local airport authorities. They operate airports from Iqaluit to Gander, including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. Canada wouldn’t be the first country to completely privatize its airports. That was the UK back in 1987. They definitely made profits for investors, but it meant higher prices for travellers, because private airports are more expensive. And in some countries, private airports have meant poorer working conditions and lower pay for the thousands of airport employees. 

With investor schemes like subleases and subcontracts, each private company gets a slice of the pie, but workers find that employers’ contracts and collective agreements are cancelled as companies look for cheaper options. That usually means lower pay, often without union protection. 

Airports look like a sure thing investment for financiers and a safe bet for governments looking to offload the costs of airport upgrades. But airports are an essential service, a requirement for travellers. They are not suited to the creation of a monopoly that has a captive audience and can charge what it wants. 

But even these ‘sure thing’ investments can be problematic. During the COVID-19 epidemic, airport investors found that their investments were not without risk. As air travel tanked, so did profits. 

The real risk of airport privatization, however, is for the public. The history of selling off public assets, from airports, to highways, to hydro, is that the sale price is too low. It’s a boon to investors. And the costs charged by these private entities can escalate with no public accountability. If a private company decided to reduce service or even close the airport in, say, Thunder Bay or Charlottetown, that would be a business decision without government control.

One example is the Ontario firesale of the publicly built highway 407. This was a badly needed commuter highway across the top of Toronto. A Spanish investment consortium bought the highway for a mere $3.1 billion in 1999 with a 99-year lease. Today, Ontarians pay about $2 billion a year in tolls. A sweet deal for the highway owners, and an infuriating loss for Ontarians. The non-tolled highway 401 is usually jammed bumper to bumper all day long while the 407 offers an easy driving experience—for a steep price. 

A more recent example is the Metrolinx Crosstown Eglinton LRT. It was delayed by five years, was $1 billion over budget and is plagued with deficiencies and service delays.

Canada is not Norway, and we can’t pretend to build a sovereign wealth fund with debt. However, if we want to invest in infrastructure like upgrading airports or harbours, we get a better price as a sovereign country because of our government’s ability to tax. We could start with raising taxes on oil and gas companies and cutting their subsidies. 

The government should not sell off our public assets to create monopolies so that investors can jack up prices and skim off profits. The lesson is that once we lose ownership over our common assets, the price is high for the public to use these assets, and, once we understand what we’ve lost, the price to regain what we’ve lost is usually too steep.  

The post Keep Canadian airports public appeared first on CCPA.

“The clause was designed to be invoked by legislatures in exceptional situations, and only as a last resort after careful consideration. It was not designed to be used by governments as a convenience or as a means to circumvent proper process.”—Roy Romanow and Roy McMurtry Attorneys General Saskatchewan and Ontario, 1981

The “clause” in question is the “notwithstanding clause,” also known as Section 33 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Over the past few years, premiers have come to see it as a handy tool to avoid court challenges over questionable or controversial legislation. The practice is making a joke of democracy, and the problem is getting worse.

What the notwithstanding clause does

Section 33 allows Parliament or provincial legislatures to enact laws notwithstanding some of the rights provisions of the Charter. These include fundamental freedoms: of conscience, belief and expression; of the press; of peaceful assembly and association such as the right to strike (Charter, Section 2).

Using Section 33 in relation to a particular law, governments may bypass basic rights like that of life, liberty and security of the person, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, arbitrary arrest and detention and right to trial within a reasonable time. This applies also to protections from cruel and unusual punishment and self-incrimination. Section 33 allows governments to suspend Charter principles of equality before the law (Charter, Sections 7 through 15). Governments have used it to pass laws they fear might not meet the constitutional smell test of Canada’s court system.

Section 33 stays in effect for five years, but may be renewed indefinitely. With respect to a certain piece of legislation it can render key rights in the Charter meaningless.

Section 33: A pistol on the wall

Peter Biro is a lawyer and founder of Section 1, an organization formed to stave off democratic backsliding. In conversation, he explained the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s pistol. The writer once noted: “If in Act 1 you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act. Otherwise, don’t put it there.”¹ Biro likens this to psychology of the political theatre: if a tool is available it’s going to be used.

That pistol was hung on the wall in November 1981 when the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau was searching for a way to get provincial buy-in for the proposed Charter. Premiers wanted a balance between Charter rights and provincial power in areas like those prescribed in Sections 2 and 7 through 15. Section 33, the “notwithstanding clause”, was a compromise between the federal and provincial governments to insure the Charter came into being.² At the time, Biro explained, the Charter’s framers thought it would be used rarely—only as a last resort.

But some politicians found Section 33 just too tempting. It has been invoked over two dozen times since its inception, and while nearly half of these instances were in the 80s as part of Quebec’s protest against the constitution, there has been a significant uptick in governments using Section 33 as a relatively recent and worsening phenomenon to justify the violation of rights.  

It has been used over the years to enable: 

• Quebec to limit the use of English in outdoor signs to that of half the size of French (Bill 178, 1988)

• Saskatchewan to enact back-to-work legislation (Bill 144, 1986 p52) and overrule a court decision to cut funding for non-Catholic students attending Catholic schools (2017)

• Alberta to declare that marriage was legitimate only between two people of the opposite sex (Bill 202, 2000). Section 33 lapsed in 2005 and wasn’t restored

• New Brunswick to override non-medical exemptions to its vaccination rules (2019)

• Quebec to ban public sector workers like educators, lawyers and peace officers from wearing religious garb—“clothing, a symbol, jewelry, an adornment, an accessory or headwear…” (Bill 21, 2019). In 2025, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government introduced Bill 9 to extend these secularism rules to ban praying in public parks and streets without a permit and serving so-called religious food without a secular option. Section 33 was applied pre-emptively to shield the bill from legal challenge.

• The Ford government of Ontario to set time limits for third party political advertising (Bill 307, 2021). Bill 307 was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in March 2023. That decision was based on Canadians’ constitutional right to vote, something not covered by Section 33.

• Québec to investigate alleged breaches of its language laws regarding the amount of French used by the public and businesses—notwithstanding protections from arbitrary search and seizure held within the Charter (Bill 96, 2022)

• Ontario to pass back-to-work legislation against low-paid education workers (Bill 28, 2022)

• Saskatchewan to require schools to obtain parental permission for students to use their preferred names or gender identity. Saskatchewan also allowed parents to opt their children out of sexual health education. (Bill 174, 2023)

• Alberta to protect four pieces of legislation: one that broke a strike and three that interfered with the rights of trans youth.

Where are the righteous causes, imperative to preserve fragile provincial rights described in the above examples? The Ford government was facing an election and was worried about the amount of money public groups could raise to oppose them. Saskatchewan, Ontario and Alberta used Section 33 to avoid the hassle of defending union-busting in the courts.

Whatever Québec lawmakers might say about diversity and respect, it’s meaningless in light of its authoritarian moves to preserve “laicity of the state.” How does the CAQ credibly justify any of its protected legislation designed to shelter independent-minded people from predations like praying in public, eating religious food or wearing religious symbols? Labour lawyer Susan Ursel calls this secular posturing “hypocritical.” The state-as-religion is invoked in the place of what practices people choose to observe. She adds that using Section 33 to pull this off, undermines the political structure, social norms and consensus of what we value in this society.

What about Alberta’s justification for shutting down challenges to its laws concerning gender? Where is the evidence to support this intrusion into doctor-patient relationships? What overwhelming social need justifies restricting kids from choosing their names and pronouns? From excluding Trans women from playing in women’s sport? Questions like these are swept off the table with Section 33.

Section 33 enables governments to keep ill-conceived and malicious laws in place while muffling courts’ fundamental democratic role of challenging them. Its use is becoming a fact of life rather than cause for outcry. Peter Biro calls this habituation—one of several major threats to democracy he outlined in a recent Massey Lecture. Autocracy doesn’t only march in a column of ICE agents; it enters politics gradually, tolerated as people become used to suppression of liberal democratic norms and lower their standards for what is permissible.

Alberta: A closer look—four bills in a month

At the end of October, Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) broke a 3-week strike of 51,000 teachers by applying Section 33 pre-emptively to back-to-work-legislation. So, in case the legislation was challenged in court, Section 33 would kick-in automatically and override it. Alberta teachers were forced back to work notwithstanding Charter protections over all of the sections noted above as well as . The UCP also ignored the Alberta Bill of Rights.

It was clear from the outset of the strike that the UCP was not in the mood to negotiate a settlement with teachers. It responded to teachers’ demands, by immediately locking them out. After breaking their strike, it imposed a contract.

Smith and the UCP used the same tactic last in November 2025 to make sure that previous assaults on transgender rights wouldn’t be jeopardized by appeals to the Charter. The provincial government It applied Section 33 to two pieces of legislation passed in 2024: Bill 26 banning the use of puberty blockers and reassignment surgery for trans youth, Bill 27 mandating permission from parents for kids under 16 to use their preferred name or pronoun in school; students over 16 would have to inform their parents. These two laws face court challenges: Bill 26 for interfering in doctor-patient relations and Bill 27 for its “unconstitutional attack on the rights of gender diverse youth in Alberta.” More recently, Bill 29, prohibits athletes not designated female at birth from participating in women’s sports. Danielle Smith said in a recent press conference that it was necessary to use Section 33 to avoid years of litigation—possibly to the Supreme Court.

These four pieces of legislation deserve the scrutiny of court challenges. But like other provincial legislatures, Alberta chose to avoid the inconvenience.

Regarding the back-to-work legislation, the Canadian Bar Association responded: “The government has invoked the notwithstanding clause before the Court has had an opportunity to examine the law and determine whether it constitutes a reasonable limit (to the Charter)…If the notwithstanding clause is to be invoked, it should only be used as a tool of last resort, after the Courts have had a chance to examine the legislation.”

Section 33 was not a tool of last resort. The legislation was embargoed so the press couldn’t release it to the public. The bill was a done deal.

Pushing back against Section 33

It’s going to take a huge public outcry to preserve the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Charter. When Ontario used Section 33 to suspend the right to strike for low-paid education workers in 2022, it sparked a furor. CUPE members went on strike anyway, supported by the labour movement threatening a general strike. The Ford government beat a rapid retreat and repealed the offending Bill 28.

There are other options. Section 33 has no effect until a court rules that a law breaches certain Charter rights. Yet a law that might trip a Section 33 remains in force until it’s challenged—even if it violates the Charter. So, challenging the offending law illuminates the violation of Charter rights. That’s what happened when the 2SLGBTQ+ rights group UR Pride contested Saskatchewan’s 2023 policy requiring teachers to refer to students under age 16 by their birth names and pronouns. UR Pride argued this constituted a breach of the Charter’s security of the person and equality provisions.

The Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench paused the policy, so the governing Saskatchewan Party promptly turned it into law and protected it with a pre-emptive application of Section 33. UR Pride came back with the argument that the law violated the Charter right to be free from cruel and unusual treatment. Even though this wouldn’t stop the law from being enacted, UR Pride did get the Court to declare that it violated these students’ Charter rights. Saskatchewan challenged that declaration, raised it to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and lost. Unwilling to let go of Chekhov’s pistol, Saskatchewan has appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The result? Saskatchewan has shone a bright light on its policy that harms vulnerable young people. Perhaps this case, while unfortunately not prompting the demise of Section 33, might help to stiffen the spines of those in a position to limit it. Some options:

• Introducing term limits to the application of Section 33 to laws so that it can’t be used over and over to deny people Charter rights

• Declining to use Section 33 pre-emptively—at least waiting for courts to rule against a law that may violate people’s rights.

• Limiting the Charter rights that may be violated by Section 33. Shield freedom of the press, belief, speech and association (Section 2), Life, liberty and security of the person protections (section 7), the prohibition of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment (section 12) and equality rights in (section 15).

Actions like these might impede the erosion of liberal democracy in Canada, but they won’t happen without serious pressure on provincial governments that reach for autocracy to replace the inconvenience of governing with respect for people.

The post The “notwithstanding clause:” Or, how to avoid the Charter of Rights appeared first on CCPA.

Between 1999 and 2023, the average debt of post-secondary students who borrowed to pay for their studies rose from $17,600 to $20,400 (adjusted for inflation), while the total student debt held by Canadian households ballooned from $25.3 billion to $41.2 billion (adjusted for inflation).

Student debt has also become more widely accepted as the norm. 

Statistics Canada’s data shows that high-income parents are saving ever more aggressively for their children’s education, while a recent public opinion survey found that 53 per cent of post-secondary students believe “graduating with debt is part of the student experience.” 

While struggling to pay for post-secondary education and training is often portrayed as a noble sacrifice, the reality is that high tuition fees and the resulting student debt constitute a massive wealth transfer. They shift the cost of workforce training onto working families, whose skilled hands and minds make Canada (and its corporations) rich. 

High tuition fees and reliance on loans also prevent many from accessing or even considering post-secondary education and training. For people struggling financially, education costs are often out of reach, and debt financing is risky given low and volatile incomes.

Post-secondary education and training is a strategic, nation-building investment that should be paid for with tax revenues.

Using the best available data, this report paints a picture of the impact of this wealth transfer: financial insecurity for indebted households of all ages, and a growing wealth gap between low-income households burdened by bad debt and higher-income households building wealth and financial security. 

Who has student debt? 

According to the 2023 Survey of Financial Security (SFS), 12.1 per cent of Canadian households carry student debt. This percentage varies by region. British Columbia (8.9 per cent) and Quebec (9.6 per cent) are below the national average, Ontario (13.9 per cent) and the Prairies (14 per cent) are above it, while the Atlantic region is close to the average.

Debt burden is not evenly distributed. Across Canada, racialized families are more than twice as likely as non-racialized families to have student debt. The reasons for this discrepancy vary. It is, however, clear that the impact of higher tuition fees and weaker student aid programs will be felt more strongly among families that have historically been underrepresented in higher education and high-paying jobs.

Regarding age breakdowns, households with a main income earner aged 35 or younger are 2.2 times more likely to carry student debt, as expected. That said, in only 42.2 per cent of households with debt, the primary income earner is under 35; in 42.1 per cent of households with debt, they are between 35 and 54; and in 16 per cent, they are aged 55 or older. The large share of households in the 35 to 54 category is due to this group including older adults who are still paying off their student debt, households with students living with their parents, and households where both parents and their children have debt. 

The takeaway from these age breakdowns is that, although younger people are more likely to have student debt, this is not only a young person’s problem. The financial burden of student debt spreads across families with varied age compositions.  

Households with student debt face greater financial challenges

High-income earners often borrow to invest and build wealth, so not all debt is tied to everyday financial difficulties. However, student debt is. As shown below, families with student debt are more likely to miss bill payments, borrow from payday lenders, and live paycheque to paycheque. They’re not building wealth; they’re falling behind.

Student debt versus mortgage debt 

Some debt is part of a wealth-building strategy, like a mortgage on a house whose value is expected to rise above inflation. Some debt is outright bad, like a missed credit card payment that accrues high interest. Student debt is not as bad as a credit card balance since post-secondary training is associated with greater opportunities and higher incomes, but it is not a straightforward wealth-building strategy either. 

Student debt is a burden that thwarts the financial security of families of all age compositions. Families in the bottom 40 per cent of the wealth distribution carry a disproportionate share of that burden—63 per cent of all student debt. 

Meanwhile, families in the top 20 per cent are heavily invested in real estate, which, because of the regrettable financialization of the sector, is the main wealth-building strategy in Canada.

There is no nation building without post-secondary education and training

The past couple of years in Canadian politics have seen the re-emergence of terms like nation building, industrial policy, and generational investments—popularized by slogans like Elbows Up and Buy Canadian. Oddly, post-secondary education and training has not been part of this conversation.

Provincial governments are raising tuition fees while cutting back on financial aid, turning post-secondary education into a privilege for children of wealthy parents or a lifelong debt sentence for others. At the household level, this approach worsens the financial insecurity documented above. At the aggregate level, it will weaken Canada’s economy as workers of all ages postpone or forgo further training, ultimately exacerbating inequality. It’s an extremely short-sighted approach, even from the most fiscally conservative perspective. 

The federal government is doing very little—or practically nothing—to address this situation. In March 2026, it announced changes to the Canada Student Financial Assistance (CSFA) program that allow students to receive up to 40 per cent of their aid as grants and borrow up to $300 per week of study. While ultimately insufficient given the scale of the crisis, these changes should have been made permanent once and for all. Instead, the federal government is making piecemeal concessions while failing to address the key problem driving unaffordability: high tuition fees.

Despite all the talk of nation building and generational investments, the federal and provincial governments are failing to invest in the most important factors of production: labour. 

Debt does not have to be an inevitable part of the student experience. It is the result of short-sighted policies that limit funding and access to post-secondary education and training, thwarting the country’s ability to reach its full social and economic potential and reinforcing the divide between those for whom debt is part of the student experience, and those who had the foresight to choose wealthy parents.

The CCPA would like to thank the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) for supporting this research.

The post Student debt: A key driver of financial insecurity across Canada  appeared first on CCPA.

Those were the words of the federal government in the November 2025 budget.

Fast forward to spring 2026. 

From the Spring Economic Update, it appears that there will be no new federal funding for additional pharmacare deals. With the bilateral health funding dropping from $4.3 billion in 2025-26 to $3.1 billion in 2027-28, it seems that the federal government doesn’t see a future for national pharmacare.

This is disappointing, considering the progress that has been made advancing pharmacare in Canada. The Pharmacare Act was passed in 2024, and under the Trudeau Liberal government, the federal government signed four bilateral agreements with British Columbia, Manitoba, P.E.I., and the Yukon. 

If the federal government walks away from pharmacare, it puts at risk ongoing funding that has only recently been committed. In 2025-26, the federal government contributed $88.1 million to support these provinces and one territory in the expansion of public coverage of diabetes medications and contraception for all residents. The federal pharmacare contribution is expected to increase to $269.6 million by 2028-29.

But after 2029? 

It appears that the federal government is killing any hope of national pharmacare before it even got off the ground.

In April, P.E.I.’s health minister revealed that Ottawa will be cutting $29 million in health care funding to the province over the next three years. 

After P.E.I. raised public concerns, Newfoundland and Labrador’s health minister said, “the door was closed on our province.” 

The federal government appears poised to allow existing bilateral funding agreements to expire without renewal, translating into cuts for existing provincial health care services, including funding for diabetes medications and contraceptives, which was negotiated with these three provinces and one territory. And if those jurisdictions want to maintain the existing universal coverage for diabetes medications and contraceptives, they will have to fill the funding gap created by the federal government.

Out-of-pocket drug costs add to the cost of living crisis

In 2023, Canadian residents spent $8 billion on out-of-pocket prescription drugs. Another $15.8 billion was spent on drugs through private insurance plans. 

Cost-related medication non-adherence, as it is referred to in the research, remains a pressing concern in Canada. Estimates from 16 studies of non-adherence range from five to 10 per cent of the population that is not able to follow medical recommendations for prescription drug therapy due to inability to pay. 

The factors predicting non-adherence include “high out-of-pocket spending, low income or financial flexibility, lack of drug insurance, younger age, and poorer health.” Cost-related medication non-adherence is two to five times higher in Canada than comparable countries with universal pharmacare.

Even still, these studies may underestimate the extent to which Canadian residents are unable to afford medications. Survey evidence has shown that upwards of one in five people in Canada have not taken prescribed medication because it was too expensive.

The evidence hasn’t changed: pharmacare benefits population health and health care

Since the federal government has walked back its commitment to build out national pharmacare in Canada, the evidence about its benefits has not changed. 

Numerous governmental reports have recommended Canada move to a system of universal, publicly funded, single-payer pharmacare, including the 2018 parliamentary committee report Pharmacare Now, 2019 National Advisory Council report on the implementation of national pharmacare, and the 2025 Final Report of the National Pharmacare Committee of Experts.

National pharmacare is estimated to benefit population health by ensuring that patients can receive the treatment they require and manage health conditions and chronic diseases. The benefits also accrue for the health care system as individuals: when able to access prescription drugs, people are less likely to end up in emergency departments or inpatient care because their medical conditions go unmanaged.

The economic benefits of national pharmacare are clear. The 2019 report, A Prescription for Canada, estimated that by 2027, with a comprehensive formulary of drugs, Canada would spend $5 billion less on prescription drugs while at the same time improving access for all. These are substantial cost savings, which could help reduce the financial pressures facing people across the country.—and improve their health. 

National pharmacare can help address widening inequality and cost of living pressures, but we need the federal government to recommit to this nation-building project.

The post Canada’s federal government abandons national pharmacare appeared first on CCPA.

The “U.S. has changed,” Carney began his remarks. “That’s their right. And we are responding. That is our imperative.”He then proceeded to outline the Federal government’s new $25 billion investment in what he termed “Canada’s first national sovereign wealth fund.”  

The federal government’s goal in creating the CSF is to support it’s Build Canada agenda by investing “in strategic Canadian projects and companies alongside other investors—with a clear objective to achieve commercial returns to build the wealth of Canada.” The federal government plans to achieve this goal by co-investing with private finance in infrastructure projects, with an emphasis on market returns that are equal to other investors.

Despite the rhetoric around the fund as a nation-building exercise belonging to all Canadians, details on how the fund will work—and what makes it distinct from similar funds, such as the Canada Infrastructure Bank and Canada Growth Fund—remain scarce. Nevertheless, the announcement raises important questions about what the fund will accomplish for whom, and whether the CSF will serve as an engine of privatization.

What is a sovereign wealth fund—and is the CSF one of them?

Despite the federal government  framing it as a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), the CSF sits uneasily among the other models of SWFs. Many SWFs invest a country’s trade surpluses or other excess revenues into foreign assets as a means of diversifying revenue without distorting the domestic economy. The International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds has a useful definition (see p. 27):

SWF are defined as special purpose investment funds or arrangements, owned by the general government. Created by the general government for macroeconomic purposes, SWFs hold, manage, or administer assets to achieve financial objectives, and employ a set of investment strategies which include investing in foreign financial assets. The SWFs are commonly established out of balance of payments surpluses, official foreign currency operations, the proceeds of privatizations, fiscal surpluses, and/or receipts resulting from commodity exports. 

The CSF is notably not funded out of surpluses or commodity exports and is geared at investing internally rather than in foreign financial assets.

If the CSF isn’t a typical SWF: what is it? That question is made more complicated by the presence of two existing Crown Corporations which have clear overlap with the CSF: the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) and the Canada Growth Fund (CGF), both of which have a mandate to work in tandem with private investors to build infrastructure or develop industrial sectors. These are referred to as “derisking funds,” where governments make loans to, or co-invest with, private companies or financiers at a submarket rate to support private sector projects that achieve a government’s priorities. Such priorities can include promoting economic growth in specific sectors (the CGF is tasked with funding projects that reduce emissions) or building important infrastructure (the CIB has a mandate to build infrastructure in particular sectors).

When pressed on what makes the CSF distinct from the CIB, Prime Minister Carney highlighted that the CSF would not provide loans (like the CIB) or pursue sub-market returns (like the CGF). Instead, he argued that the most important difference is that the new “sovereign wealth fund” will generate the types of investment returns that private partners also earn, unlike the CIB.

The Spring Economic Update further highlighted that the CSF will take minority positions in investments, following the lead of private investors. So, while federal policymakers are selling CSF as setting up “nation-building investments,” early statements distinguish it through a focus on market returns that operate as a junior partner. This raises important questions about whether the CSF can achieve the lofty goals those policymakers have set for it.

Worsening an already problematic model

As derisking funds, the CIB and CGF both have a clear mandate to sacrifice returns to achieve government priorities. This is similar to other Trudeau-era funds such as its Social Finance Fund. Academic research on derisking funds has called into question how well such funds achieve government priorities. Instead, many scholars argue that they direct public funding into private profits and emphasize revenue generation over (ill-defined) social and environmental goals (see, for example, the Ontario Nonprofit Network’s statement on the Social Finance Fund). 

Further, the effort to attract investment can lead governments to take on undue risk such as guaranteeing returns for projects. This can lock governments into situations where they have to provide payments for unused infrastructure, reducing the fiscal space available for public services as governments remain on the hook for paying back investors. 

Nevertheless, derisking funds at least provide, in theory, a means through which governments can achieve their priorities. While the press conference for the CSF made claims about ensuring Indigenous ownership / economic benefits and creating high-paying union jobs, the announcement entirely lacked details about how a fund which is distinguished by market-rate returns can achieve those goals. The Spring Economic Update  also explicitly links the Canada Strong Fund to projects that have a potential “major project” designation under the Building Canada Act—a designation which allows projects to bypass environmental assessments and consultations with Indigenous groups—and lays out a deal flow where CSF investment projects are referred to its Major Project Office.

These issues  make it likely that the CSF will be even less effective than derisking funds at achieving national priorities such as Indigenous reconciliation and high-paying jobs. By fashioning a fund that is meant to replicate the goals of private finance in achieving returns, the federal government is just involving the state more directly in the harms of financialization.

An engine of privatization

Perhaps most concerning, however, were references to the funding of the CSF through the privatization of existing Canadian infrastructure. The press release for the fund highlights that beyond the initial government investment of $25 billion, the CSF may grow “through other assets that the government may allocate to it.” Even more problematically, during the press conference, Prime Minister Carney further revealed that the fund could continue to grow through “asset recycling.” This was verified in the Spring Economic Update, which laid out the vision most clearly, stating: “Asset optimisation will help address two complementary priorities: unlocking the full value of existing federal assets and directing that capital toward investments with the highest potential return for Canada and Canadians.”

Pioneered by Australia, asset recycling refers to a process by which existing infrastructure is either sold off, or its revenues are turned into asset streams for private capital, converting a public good into a private asset. Ontarians will be familiar with this process, with Highway 407 a prominent example of a publicly-funded piece of infrastructure sold off to a private conglomerate for well under market value. 

Such sales can have disastrous consequences for the public purse and for the public’s ability to control key infrastructure. In one famous case, the city of Chicago sold off the revenues from its parking meters to a financial consortium, signing a contract that required the city to compensate those investors every time it impacted their revenues through hosting a parade or adding a bus lane that removed a parking space (in addition to paying higher parking fees). 

That the federal government is considering taking part in such schemes to fund a CSF program without a clear avenue to achieving public goals should raise serious concerns about its priorities. In effect, the plan seems to be to sell off or assetize existing public goods in order to fund junior investments in private companies, without defining how the fund can influence those companies and their projects for public goals.

Retail returns

One thing that distinguishes the CSF from other federal funds is the promise that Canadians will be offered retail investment products that will allow them to invest in the CSF. This is to come with a guarantee that no Canadian will lose their initial investment, while having the upside of sharing in the returns of CSV investments. This seems to mirror a similar program in Québec, Épargne Placements Québec, which offers stable but largely below market returns for investors. 

The details of what these investments will look like will be important, as they may be simply a low-cost loan from Canadians to the federal government for these investments, with some return attached. In the worst case scenario, these promises may result in a liability for the Canadian government where they are responsible for ensuring Canadians get these returns if projects fail to pay off. The devil will be in the details.

Confusion, conflation, and concern

The announcement of the CSF is steeped in a narrative of national pride in the face of the challenges of an unsettled economic moment. Drawing on the idea of a SWF, the federal government is clearly evoking the idea of a fund that can serve in building a strong future for Canada. Indeed, the press conference evoked the national mythology of the railway as uniting the county, with the prime minister stating that due to this public/private endeavour “our resources were unlocked. Our trade increased. Our industries grew and a stronger, more united and more prosperous Canada emerged.”

Delving into the details, however, shows concerns that the CSF may increase the power of private capital to set the type of Canada that emerges. Despite allusions to Indigenous reconciliation and high-paying jobs, the distinguishing factor of the CSF is a focus on market-rate returns and the selling off of existing public services to fund junior stakes in new private investments. 

If the CSF is meant to help guide Canada in these uncertain economic times, then we have to ask the question of what type of Canada it is likely to build.

The post Canada’s new “sovereign wealth fund” is not exactly what it seems appeared first on CCPA.

For most of the 67 years since the Cuban revolution, successive Canadian governments played the “Cuba card” to assert independence from U.S. hegemony—that is, they have refused to align themselves with the United States’ hostile approach to Cuba, and used that lack of alignment to differentiate themselves from the U.S. on the world stage. Today, Canada’s failure to play the Cuba card stands out as a confounding failure of Canadian policy and resolve.

To date, Prime Minister Mark Carney has made no comment or statement on Cuba. In February, Foreign Minister Anita Anand refused to condemn the U.S. fuel blockade and announced $8 million in humanitarian assistance to be delivered through UN agencies—described as a “modest and indirect” and paltry by comparison with assistance provided by Mexico and other countries. In April, Anand announced a further $5.5 million in medical assistance to be delivered through the PanAmerican Health Organization.

The federal government has been pestered repeatedly to show leadership. NDP House Leader Don Davies and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet have both made direct appeals to Carney to provide fuel and assistance to Cuba. The Canadian Labour Congress and multiple Canadian unions have called on Canada to assist and defend Cuba, and parliamentary petitions have received tens of thousands of signatures. Canadian labour, faith and solidarity organizations have launched a new campaign to pressure the Canadian government to act.

Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee held two days of hearings on the situation in Cuba stacked with four organizations invited as witnesses—all of them émigré groups hostile to Cuba. The case for Canadian cooperation with Cuba was left to the beleaguered Cuban Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz. While little to nothing in the way of support for Cuba resulted, Liberals Steven Guilbeault and Rob Oliphant, as well as Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe spoke up for solidarity with Cuba.

To state the obvious: Canada has opted to avoid making Cuba another source of friction with the Trump administration. But it is a long descent from Canadian defiance of the U.S. blockade on Cuba by former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1960, or Pierre Trudeau’s Havana visit in 1976 (the first by a NATO leader after the Cuban revolution). The Cuba card also gave us the 1984 Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, first invoked by the Mulroney government in 1990 to protect Canada Cuba trade from extraterritorial sanctions by the U.S. The FEMA was strengthened in 1996 by the Chretien government to explicitly make it illegal for U.S. courts to enforce the U.S. embargo on Canadian people and companies under the Helms Burton Act, the U.S. congressional act which codified the Cuba embargo into law.

And even after the the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) changed Canadian foreign policy—when, as Stephen Clarkson described, “the trade policy interlopers achieved ideational dominance in their new home in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade,”—Cuba remained somewhat of an exception to the integrationist agenda. 

Canada-Cuba relations survived a decade of Cold War politics during Stephen Harper’s time as prime minister. “These guys personally don’t like Cuba. They don’t like communists. And so, they’re still fighting the Cold War,” said Carlos Dade, the head of the government-financed Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL). At the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Colombia, Canada was the only country to support the U.S. decision to exclude Cuba from participating. However, after Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba in 2015, Harper met Cuban President Raul Castro in Panama City. 

A year later, in November 2016, Justin Trudeau followed his father’s path and met Raúl Castro in Havana. The second Trudeau visit resulted in bilateral agreements to improve relationships and an invitation to Canada to be the host country of honour at the 2017 International Havana Book Fair. Before the ink was dry on those agreements, Fidel Castro died, and in a perverse consequence, altered a hopeful reengagement of Canada and Cuba. 

Justin Trudeau issued a statement from the Prime Minister’s office on the death of Castro, a friend of the Trudeau family, and an honorary pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau’s funeral in Montreal: 

“Fidel Castro was a larger-than-life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation… I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba. On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”

However, 17 days prior to Castro’s passing, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States for the first time. And while Barak Obama’s statement on the death of Fidel Castro offered condolences and “a hand of friendship to the Cuban people,” Trump’s statement underscored the abrupt reversal of U.S. policy to Cuba after Obama. He called Fidel “a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

U.S. Republicans, as well as Canadian Conservatives and media, launched an immediate attack against Trudeau for his statement. In the context of the moment, few came to his defence to uphold the friendship between Canada and Cuba that the Trudeau-Castro relationship had come to symbolize.

It was a turning point in Canada-Cuba relations. Only months later, the so-called Havana Syndrome began to make waves, as U.S. diplomatic staff claimed to have been targeted by an “energy weapon” which caused them to suffer debilitating headaches, nausea, and cognitive effects. While the veracity of such claims are highly disputed, they still resulted in a dramatic reduction of Canadian diplomatic presence in Cuba which continues today. The Trump administration, meanwhile, restarted and doubled down on U.S. sanctions and embargos against Cuba.

In 2019, Trump invoked a nuclear option on Cuba relations that no U.S. president before him had been prepared to use with the activation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. This provision made it possible for any American to sue for damages in U.S. courts against any company or party that had economic relations with Cuba relating to properties that had been nationalized. For Canada, it was also a direct rebuke of Canadian sovereignty and the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. Canada’s then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, took the traditional Canadian position: “no judgment issued under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act will be recognized or enforced in any manner in Canada.” 

Freeland’s objections to Title III were, however, subdued, partially due to her ideological framework that singled out Venezuela, Russia, and China as existential threats to liberal democracy. She championed American leadership and rejected criticism of the selectivity of her targets as “the Soviet trick of whataboutism.”

Freeland took the lead in the forming of the “Lima Group” of countries that recognized opposition politician Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela. In 2019, Freeland met three times with her Cuban counterpart, each time linking opposition to Title III with her demand that Cuba disengage from Venezuela and facilitate regime change.

Still, after this long retreat, in 2024 Canadian academic and author Peter McKenna wrote:

“Playing the so-called ‘Cuba card’ or carving out a distinctive Cuba policy from that of the hardline U.S. posture, along with refusing to accept the strictures of Washington’s economic isolation of Cuba, still has political currency in Canada, and is indeed endorsed by many Canadians. Engaging with the Cuban government is clearly viewed by the political leadership in Ottawa as one of the seminal examples of Canada showcasing its policy-making autonomy on the world stage. Whether this nostrum is actually true or not, no Canadian government wants to willingly surrender the independence or sovereignty quotient derived from friendly relations with Havana.”

The Cuba card survived as an expression of Canadian sovereignty because of distinct layers of civil society connections that survived even as governmental relations hollowed out. These layers included the more than one million Canadian tourists who visited Cuba each year prior to the pandemic, and 750,000 who still did in 2025. It includes the significant civil society connections anchored in Canada by CoDevelopment Canada (CoDev), the Canadian Network on Cuba, and trade union exchanges and delegations. Not least, Canadian business and commercial relations with Cuba persevered in defiance of the U.S. economic blockade. 

Canada’s commercial ties with Cuba amounted to C$910 million in bilateral trade in 2024. Tourism is a large part of that, of course, with Canadian companies like Sunwing (Westjet), and Blue Diamond (Royalton) hotels. It also represents $140 million in agricultural exports in 2025, primarily wheat. 

Canada also imports over C$600million of goods from Cuba, and most of that is neither cigars nor rum. The single largest import is cobalt and nickel from Moa, Cuba to the Sherritt refinery in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. The resulting output from the Canada-Cuba joint venture mine and refinery is a key part of Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy. The Fort Saskatchewan refinery is Canada’s third largest source of refined nickel and the majority of refined cobalt products essential for EV and aerospace batteries, electricity grids, superalloys for jet turbine components, communications hardware, satellite and aerospace materials.

McKenna’s affirmation that the Cuba card was still on the table, would be upended again just months later by the reelection of Donald Trump. A violent rupture in global affairs and a new menacing U.S. imperialism immediately followed, with the openly stated goals of annexing Canada and enforcing a so-called “Donroe” doctrine of U.S. dominance of the Americas, with Cuba a principal target. Canada-Cuba policy was collateral damage as the new Carney government manoeuvred in response to U.S. threats, but this approach sacrificed Canadian business and strategic Canadian interests.

In addition to the cancellation of thousands of flights and hundreds of thousands of tourist packages to Cuba, the U.S. fuel blockade on Cuba forced the Moa mine to suspend production in February—putting thousands of Cubans out of work, with Canadian refinery jobs at risk as well. Remarkably, there has been no response from the Canadian government to the U.S. actions disrupting critical supply chains to Canada. 

To the contrary, the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) Cuba Program, a long standing Export Development Canada program to support Canadian business in Cuba was discontinued in January, citing “a convergence of rising financial risk and deteriorating economic conditions.”

It is more than difficult to square the Carney government’s silence, inaction and thinly veiled hostility to Cuba with its own goals of trade diversification and “variable geometry” of middle powers uniting against economic coercion. 

The European nations that Canada is seeking greater cooperation with are, for their part, engaging substantively with Cuba regardless of U.S. sanctions. Spain is restructuring Cuban debt to finance projects in strategic sectors including energy, water, and food security, involving Spanish companies in their implementation. The European Union’s active Cuban development and economic projects dwarf Canada’s with current funding running to 2027 and a larger EU program planned for 2028-34. 

Canada’s CUSMA partner, Mexico, has been outspoken in its opposition to U.S. aggression against Cuba and has responded with four massive naval shipments of food, medical and other supplies in February and March, and an additional US$35 million aid program to assist Cuban agriculture.

Notably, Cuba also has a Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union, which has structured bilateral exchanges and reports on human rights, economic and social issues that inform EU cooperation and investments.

There is no such dialogue with Canada but the Cuban ambassador cited Carney’s Davos speech to the parliamentary committee and diplomatically claimed “a good political dialogue” with Canada. “We don’t avoid any issues. We discuss everything,” he said, “I believe we will find our way to continue constructing this respectful relationship, which has lasted for more than 80 years now.” 

“We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be,”  PM Carney famously said. But Canada has clearly made arbitrary choices to follow the money into some parts of the world and not others—see, for example, its new trade agreements with Indonesia, China, and Qatar, all of which are regularly accused of human rights abuses by the same bodies that accuse Cuba. In this context, Canada’s Cuba policy is confounding and riddled with contradictions, double standards and moral failure.

The Cuba card has been buried beneath decades of shuffles and misplays, but it remains a litmus test of Canadian sovereignty—one which will be played again because Canadians value it.

The post The Canada-Cuba relationship has always been a test of sovereignty appeared first on CCPA.

There was universal condemnation of the legislation from LGBTQ+ advocates as well as from an impressive array of allies, including the Saskatchewan labour movement and from human and civil rights organizations across the province and around the country. Saskatchewan’s child and youth advocate Lisa Broda warned that the legislation “likely violates children’s constitutional rights,” while Saskatchewan human rights commissioner Heather Kuttia resigned in opposition to the legislation, calling it “an attack on the rights of Trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse children.” Students at multiple high schools in Regina and Saskatoon led walkouts in protest and members of the government were banned from participating in official LGBTQ+ Pride activities for as long as the legislation sits on the books.

Despite this concerted opposition and the overwhelming evidence that this legislation would cause significant harm and risk to LGBTQ+ students, Scott Moe’s government showed no hesitancy in using its full weight to pass the Bill. The government would recall the legislature on October 10th for an emergency session solely to invoke the notwithstanding clause to override a Saskatchewan court decision that the law violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But while court challenges still persist, much of the public fervour against Bill 137 has died down. Part of this is outright fear. As Saskatchewan Teacher Federation president Samantah Becotte observes, the law puts teachers in a terrible bind: “do they obey the law, thereby potentially placing a child in an extremely dangerous position, or ignore it and leave themselves open to legal jeopardy?”

Another reason is that, to “solve” the problem,” the implications of the law are sometimes dismissed. Given how few LGBTQ+ students there are in Saskatchewan schools, so the argument goes, such legislation will have little if any impact and therefore does not need to be actively resisted.

But perhaps the most important element of why open resistance seems to have subsided is the almost liminal way the law exists in practice—which to some extent satisfies certain supporters and opponents of the bill alike. While putatively on the books, there has been no official sanction or punishment against a school staff member for violating it. Moreover, we don’t even know what such penalties would entail because the government has not made it known. And whether the act is ever enforced seems arbitrary—dependent on the discretion of school administrators which means the bill’s impact can vary widely subject to an administration’s approval, fear or misunderstanding of the legislation. This leaves students to try and navigate whom (if anyone) within the school they can trust. For some opponents, the fact that the law does not appear to be openly punishing anyone allows for them to tolerate its existence.

It is this kind of stasis that has allowed the law to be grudgingly tolerated that moved teachers Alex Schmidt and Nick Day to found the Saskatchewan Coalition to Repeal Bill 137, a grassroots organization of teachers and community members working to repeal Bill 137 and urging unions and school administrations to take a stand against the law.

Both have heard a litany of excuses as to why the law should not be openly challenged. Day provides a short-list:

I’ve heard from trustees it only affects a small number because there aren’t many Trans people and most have supportive parents. I’ve heard the legislation is not being followed on the ground so it’s not really having harm… I’ve heard, of course, that there’s no harm because there’s a clause allowing the school counsellor to keep the child’s privacy if the counsellor believes the student might face harm. What people don’t realize is that a) the harm is the heteronormative climate created by the bill and 2) the counsellor has to “work with the student to make a plan to inform parents” or some variant of that. The message that ‘Trans is wrong’ is still coming through loud and clear.

Day believes that people are willing to believe such arguments because the alternative might force people to make difficult decisions:

Instead, people are willing to believe—or pretend they believe—an endless cavalcade of razor thin arguments in order to avoid inconveniencing themselves, coming into conflict at work, and being accountable to the universal human rights not being enjoyed by Trans youth.

Part of the Coalition’s mission is to demonstrate that regardless of the law’s enforcement or lack thereof, its mere existence as provincial policy is profoundly damaging to Trans and non-binary students. While others might be able to turn their heads, Day and Schmidt see what Bill 137 has actually wrought within the schools they work at; a toxic mixture of confusion, fear and capitulation.

Day explains how once Bill 137 was made law, Queer students expressed profound confusion over what was and wasn’t allowed in school. Day summarizes what students were saying to him:

Since the pronoun policy, I don’t know what’s allowed anymore… What I’m really feeling here is, I don’t know what the fuck’s allowed. I’m not allowed, none of it’s allowed. Queer shit isn’t allowed. So I’m just kind of going to go dark.

While open, direct confrontation between students and the law has not been commonplace, the phenomenon of LGBTQ+ students’ “going dark” is. Day describes this as students “going back in the closet,” not attending school, or teachers’ forgoing introducing Queer content for fear of backlash.

For example, Bill 137’s provision that parents must be informed and consent prior to any lessons with sexual health content may prevent teachers from adopting lesson plans that could potentially court controversy. Schmidt observes that teaching sex education was already challenging in Saskatchewan, but Bill 137 makes it even more undesirable for teachers; “Teachers don’t want to teach it because [the environment] is just too combative.”

This chilling effect on both students and school staff is the real impact of Bill 137, regardless of its enforcement, and this chilling effect extends far beyond just what is specifically targeted in the Bill.

Despite not being targeted in the legislation, both Day and Schmidt note that since implementation, Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) have come under greater scrutiny by certain school administrations. Since 137 became law, Schmidt explains how GSAs have to navigate a new set of “hoops and rules” that other school clubs do not seem subject to. Schmidt recounts how GSAs are now required to validate their existence by demonstrating connections to the curriculum though formal lesson plans that are not expected of other extracurricular clubs. “If this club has to demonstrate its legitimacy and all other clubs don’t,” Schmidt argues, “what you’re clearly saying is it’s not legitimate, right?” For Schmidt, GSAs, like other extracurricular clubs, are for building a community for students “to have a place to be.” While connections to the curriculum might be a valuable adjunct, it should not be the primary focus of extracurricular clubs, and it certainly shouldn’t be a reason for disallowing these vitally important spaces for LGBTQ+ students. Schmidt fears that the extra scrutiny and work required to run GSA’s under the current conditions may ultimately dissuade teachers and students from participating.

That this legislation would have a chilling effect on students and staff shouldn’t be any surprise. We know from the experience of the United States that anti-Trans laws and policies irrespective of what they target have had the overall effect of erasing the reality of Trans people’s experience and fostering a dangerously hostile climate. The logic of erasure is to render Trans students, parents and educators effectively invisible by removing them from lessons, books, language and spaces. “Over time, writes Ezra Kidowski, “those absences become evidence. They’re used to justify neglect, to minimize harm, and to explain away patterns of violence as isolated or rare.”

Unfortunately it is difficult to document the more insidious impacts this legislation is having behind-the-scenes. Schmidt and Day find this the more frustrating aspect of their activism—constantly having to convince figures in positions of power and authority that, because it is not being enforced, the legislation is benign. “It should have been obvious from day one that a toxic policy environment will create these effects, right?” Day laments, “So, if we have to convince you of that, that’s really challenging.” Both feel that the authority figures they confront are more concerned with documenting individual incidents of harm rather than understanding the pervasive effects this legislation is having throughout the province. “There’s a lot of kids, there’s a lot of teachers that are at risk, and we’re not hearing about it all,” explains Schmidt. “We have not scratched the surface of the way that this has impacted people because the risk in talking about the impacts is too great. It is not safe for students, it is not safe for teachers because of this bill.”

But while both remain frustrated by the myopic way the Bill is viewed by so many in the province, they also understand the stakes of continuing to tolerate its existence. For Day this is a simple question, “Do we acknowledge in our public institutions that Transgender people exist irrevocably and therefore bear rights that are inviolable? And do we exist in a culture where universal access to public education is a guarantee?”

The post See no evil, hear no evil: Anti-trans apologetics under Bill 137 in Saskatchewan appeared first on CCPA.

This analysis contends that mega-scale orbital data infrastructures proposed by Musk risk producing foreseeable and cumulative harms, such as technological determinism, de facto appropriation of orbital space, pre-emptive governance capture, and functional sovereignty exercised through technological dominance. 

These dynamics challenge the foundational principles of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), undermine equitable access to the orbital commons, and accelerate the emergence of an orbital Anthropocene characterized by irreversible environmental and governance capture. 

Orbital infrastructure as a governance problem

The low earth orbit has historically been treated as a lightly occupied and legally neutral domain. 

Existing international space governance frameworks—most notably the Outer Space Treaty and its companion instruments—were not designed to address mega-scale, permanent commercial infrastructures capable of exercising functional control over orbital regions. Their reactive posture towards unfolding outer space developments produces systemic failures.

The existing governance frameworks presume limited congestion, periodic use, and the absence of commercial control over specific orbital regimes. However, recent proposals to deploy orbital data centres represent a departure from these underlying assumptions. 

Unlike traditional communications, navigation, or earth-observation satellites—which are generally mission-specific, replaceable, and functionally flexible—orbital data centres would be different. They would act more like permanent structures in space rather than temporary tools. In this respect, orbital data centres resemble critical infrastructure on earth, such as power grid systems, blurring the line between space activity and infrastructural governance. 

This infrastructural character introduces governance challenges that existing space treaties are poorly equipped to address. Permanent orbital data centres would carry a form of functional control over orbital pathways, and logistical access that exceeds the regulatory logic of non-appropriation as traditionally understood. 

While no formal sovereignty claim would be asserted, the cumulative effect of long-term physical presence, operational importance, and market dominance risks producing de facto appropriation through technological occupation. Such dynamics raise concerns about equitable access, intergenerational justice, and the erosion of outer space as a shared global commons.

As with terrestrial digital platforms, early movers in orbital data infrastructure may constrain future regulatory options and shift political debates from whether such infrastructures should exist to how they should be accommodated. 

From an ethical and governance perspective, orbital data centres, therefore, represent not merely a technological innovation, but a structural transformation of the LEO into a governed, and increasingly privatized environment.

Taken together, these developments suggest that orbital data centres proposed by Musk should be understood as a governance problem rather than a narrow technical or commercial proposal. Their emergence exposes a regulatory gap at the intersection of space law, digital governance, and critical infrastructure oversight—one that demands anticipatory, precautionary, and norm-setting responses before functional sovereignty becomes entrenched through technological dominance.

Technological determinism and governance capture

In parallel, Musk’s proposed large-scale orbital data centres raise significant ethical concerns when examined through the lens of technological determinism. 

Technological determinism, in its strong form, suggests that technological development follows an autonomous, unavoidable trajectory that shapes social, political, and legal structures, often relegating governance to a reactive function. The ethical risk, therefore, is not only environmental or regulatory; it is structural. 

These proposed mega-scale orbital data centres risk framing space-based infrastructural expansion as inevitable rather than politically contestable. When infrastructure is deployed at planetary scale—particularly when integrated with AI, cloud computing, and potentially sensitive systems—it can produce what scholars call path dependency. 

Once established, these systems become: too economically embedded to reverse, too globally integrated to easily regulate and too strategically valuable to politically dismantle. This creates a narrative of technological necessity, marginalizing democratic deliberation about whether such systems should exist in the first place. 

Another ethical concern is that democratic oversight becomes secondary to technological momentum.

Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits national appropriation of interplanetary systems, the proposal for permanent technological occupation can functionally approximate territorial control. In this case, governance capture through technological determinism could be reinforced if regulatory bodies have to adapt to accommodate the infrastructure. 

This will also set a precedent whereby licensing frameworks evolve around commercial, finished projects that are very difficult to reverse.

The move also renders political debate to shift from “should this exist?” to “how do we manage it?”, which is a classic example of governance reacting to infrastructure rather than shaping it. Therefore, the law becomes adaptive to power rather than guiding it. 

Another ethical concern regarding governance capture through technological determinism also arising from Musk’s proposal relates to the potential to marginalize alternative development pathways. This narrows the imaginative horizon. 

Orbital data centres could normalize a future in which space is primarily a commercial computing environment, where access is mediated through proprietary platforms and orbital regimes are structured around private logistical needs. 

This could potentially reduce space governance to efficiency management rather than justice-based stewardship. Alternative models, such as commons-based governance, multilateral infrastructure sharing, or ecological limits could also become politically marginalized.

Musk’s orbital data centres are framed as solutions to terrestrial energy and data bottlenecks. However, these centres risk reinforce the assumption that technological expansion is the appropriate response to socio-economic constraints. 

Instead of questioning energy consumption models, data growth trajectories and AI expansion paradigms, the response becomes “build more infrastructure.”

The imperative of anticipatory ethics

The ethical stakes of mega-scale orbital infrastructure must be explained or highlighted before deployment, because once embedded in low earth orbit (LEO), such systems create structural, legal, and political realities that are extraordinarily difficult to reverse. The moment of decision is therefore not technical. It is normative, because permanent constellations effectively structure who can access orbital shells, what pathways remain viable, and what collision risks future entrants must assume. 

When infrastructure occupies key altitudes and tendencies of hierarchy, it produces de facto exclusivity without formal sovereignty. Although Article II of the Outer Space Treaty prohibits national appropriation, it does not clearly regulate appropriation through technological saturation. 

This gap is ethically consequential.

If governance frameworks do not address this based on forecasts, deployment decisions risk becoming decided on before those affected know about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it (fait accompli), normalizing infrastructural dominance as a market outcome rather than a collective decision about a shared domain. 

The implicit assumption that technological capability confers moral or governance legitimacy has to be challenged. Discussing the stakes before deployment preserves democratic agency. It ensures that orbital governance remains a site of collective deliberation rather than an after the event (post hoc) adjustment.

The ethical response to the proposed orbital data centres is not prohibition, but anticipatory governance, embedding sustainability thresholds, cumulative debris caps, transparency mandates, and intergenerational impact assessments into licensing regimes before approval is achieved. 

Anticipatory ethics, in this case, would require cumulative environmental risk modelling prior to constellation approval, and multilateral orbital sustainability standards. It would also require limits on concentration of orbital computational infrastructure and institutional mechanisms to represent future interests. 

Orbital stakes

Without such measures, mega-scale orbital infrastructure, as proposed by Musk, risks transforming a legally shared domain into a functionally class-based one.

The stakes are not simply technical; they are legal in character. They concern whether outer space remains governed as a shared domain under principles of non-appropriation and peaceful use, or whether it evolves into an elitist infrastructure environment shaped by technological might and market speed. 

Straightening out these stakes prior to deployment preserves the possibility of legitimate, inclusive, and sustainable outer space governance. After deployment, the ethical debate risks becoming merely historical commentary on decisions that have already hardened into irreversible orbital realities.

Debates about equity, sustainability, intergenerational justice, and the integrity of the orbital commons may survive rhetorically, but their practical leverage diminishes as infrastructures harden into functional realities. 

Anticipatory governance is therefore not an optional refinement; it is a progressive necessity. If outer space is to remain a genuinely global commons rather than a class-based technological frontier, the moment for principled intervention is not after entrenchment, but before irreversibility.

The post Data centres in space are a bad idea appeared first on CCPA.

April 29, 2026

KJIPUKTUK/HALIFAX— A new report on Nova Scotia’s labour market finds that precarious employment is widespread and leaves many workers just one setback away from deeper insecurity.

The report shows that 30.4 per cent of paid employees — approximately 131,000 workers — are in precarious jobs, with low wages, limited protection and job instability. About 43 per cent of employees show at least two signs of precariousness, leaving many workers on the edge of precarity, and at risk of deeper insecurity if their job conditions worsen. 

Too many workers in Nova Scotia are working hard without the stability they need to make ends meet,” said Dr. Daniel Cerdas-Sandí, co-author and CCPA-NS research staff. 

“This is not a marginal issue. Precarity is a defining feature of our labour market,” says Cerdas-Sandí.

The study uses two complementary tools: an Employment Precarity Index based on Statistics Canada’s 2024 Labour Force Survey, and for the first time a 2025 survey of workers across Nova Scotia conducted by Angus Reid, which captures the day-to-day experiences such as unpredictable schedules, on-call demands, and fear of losing work.

Key findings include:

• Precarious work is especially common among young workers, part-time employees, and those in temporary roles, with more than half of workers aged 20–24 in precarious jobs.
• Unionized workers are significantly less likely to experience precarious employment, with better access to permanent jobs, benefits, pensions, and paid sick leave.
• A sharp divide exists between public and private sector jobs, reflecting differences in union coverage and job protections.
• Many workers face barriers to basic labour protections due to gaps in coverage, weak standards, and a complaint-driven enforcement system.
• Precarious work is especially concentrated in accommodation and food services and retail trade, the two industries with the highest precarity rates in the index. Together, they represent about one in five employees in Nova Scotia.   

The report concludes that Nova Scotia’s high levels of precarious employment are not inevitable, but the result of policy choices.

“Weak labour standards and limited enforcement leave too many workers unprotected,” said Dr. Rebecca Casey, Acadia University Sociology professor,  “When workers are afraid to speak up or risk losing hours, the system is not working.”

The report is part of the Advancing Decent Work series and outlines a comprehensive set of policy recommendations to improve job quality across the province.

Recommendations include:

• Raising wages and establishing a clear path toward a living wage
• Strengthening rules on scheduling, on-call work, and last-minute shift changes
• Expanding access to paid sick leave, vacation, and basic benefits
• Closing gaps in protections for temporary, casual, and platform workers
• Proactive labour standards enforcement focused on high-risk sectors
• Supporting unionization and collective bargaining
• Embedding job quality standards in regional economic development and public procurement

“Precarious work is a policy choice and it can be changed by policy,” said Acadia University Politics professor, Dr. Rachel Brickner.

“With stronger standards, better enforcement, and support for worker voice, Nova Scotia can build an economy where decent work is the norm, not the exception,” added Brickner.

​​“This first-of-its-kind survey of workers in Nova Scotia helps explain the growing number of labour disruptions by low-wage, insecure workers including in long-term care, universities and housing support,” said Christine Saulnier, Director of CCPA–NS.

 “What’s especially concerning is that even this data likely underestimates the scale of the problem. After decades of employers pushing for flexibility, too many workers are left without benefits, without stable schedules, and unsure whether they can pay their bills,” says Saulnier.

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For more information, embargoed copies or to arrange interviews please contact: Ruby Harrington at ccpans@policyalternatives.ca or (902) 956-3866.

The CCPA-NS is an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice, as well as environmental sustainability.

Full report

Graphics

The post Decent or precarious? Understanding the quality of employment in Nova Scotia appeared first on CCPA.

This economic update is particularly significant because it is the first one the federal Liberals are passing as a majority government—Canada’s first majority since 2019, one which was won primarily through an unprecedented wave of floor-crossings of Members of Parliament from other parties, especially the Conservatives. This spring update will let us know how the Liberals plan to govern without having to collaborate with other parties.

Since being elected Prime Minister, Mark Carney has pivoted significantly to the right compared to the previous administration of Justin Trudeau. The federal government over the past year has embarked on a series of major cuts to the federal public sector while also rolling out the red carpet for “major projects,” particularly in resource extraction.

The update also comes in the context of a simmering economic crisis due to the U.S.-instigated trade war, which has hit key industries and flatlined economic growth for much of the past year. For these reasons, we would normally expect for this update to paint a dire picture of government finances—but, paradoxically, the overall picture of government finances is quite a bit rosier due to the massive explosion in oil prices brought on by the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression in Iran. Those price increases have led to increased resource revenues, softening the blow of the overall economic downturn and shaving a whopping $11.5 billion off of the previously projected deficit, despite the government’s failure so far to adequately capture a proper share of these windfalls. 

What will the federal government do with its majority, and its sudden uptick of resource revenues? The economic update gives us a roadmap. Let’s get into it.

—Jon Milton

Climate: “Major projects” and resource extraction displacing transition planning 

After delivering the worst climate budget since the Harper era, the federal government followed it up with two new fossil fuel subsidies—one for liquefied natural gas facilities and another for the extraction of oil using captured carbon. On a more positive note, the economic update included $500 million in net new international climate finance, in addition to previously announced funding for electric vehicles incentives and nature conservation. These are positive steps, but they do not outweigh the climate cuts from last fall’s budget. Total federal climate spending is on track to decline precipitously in the next several years as Trudeau-era programs expire.

—Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood

Few details on new sovereign wealth fund

The introduction of the $25 billion Canada Strong Fund—what the government is calling a sovereign wealth fund—is intriguing, but the economic update provided few details on how it will work or, more importantly, what kinds of projects it will invest in. A genuine sovereign wealth fund is long overdue in Canada. If it followed the Norwegian model, it would take resource revenues and reinvest them into economic diversification. However, the Canada Strong Fund appears poised to do the exact opposite—to take public money and invest it into resource extraction projects, potentially including oil and gas production.

—Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood

Housing: Lots of bragging, little clarity

On housing, the spring economic update celebrates market corrections: “Growing supply—combined with efforts to bring population growth back to more sustainable levels—is helping to narrow Canada’s housing supply gap and deliver meaningful improvements in affordability.” It also reiterates this government’s optimism regarding “public-private collaboration” and “modern methods of construction” which will create an “entirely new Canadian housing industry.” The update also touts the HST rebates on new homes—a de facto bail out of condo developers—which has been repeatedly presented as a measure to make homes more affordable.

Cutting through all that fog, the update provides no additional information about programs or measures with a direct impact on affordability. Build Canada Homes (BCH) remains a black box, with little known about how projects are chosen or implemented. Concerning the National Housing Strategy (NHS), no information on which programs will be part of permanent funding cuts and which may be renewed.

Once again, Ottawa is asking millions of people struggling with high rising costs to wait for market mechanisms to deliver affordability.

—Ricardo Tranjan

EI reform remains on the back burner

Too many workers still can’t access Employment Insurance (EI), and the program’s benefits remain inadequate. The chilling effect of the recent spike in energy prices is just the most recent assault on the Canadian economy. Economic disruptions have become a constant. Our EI program is ready for none of this.

Despite a reprieve at the beginning of the year, the unemployment rate has been on an upward trajectory and entry level jobs are disappearing. Against this backdrop, Canada continues to struggle with historically low recipiency rates for regular EI benefits, averaging about 40 per cent of unemployed workers, half the rate it was in 1989, and even less this past March, at just 35.8 per cent.

The Spring Economic Update 2026 extends supports for seasonal workers in the 13 targeted regions until October 2028. But where are the fixes needed to create a program capable of responding to 21st century challenges? 

—Katherine Scott

Trade: More of the same free trade, even as the model collapses

Minister Champagne’s spring update reads more like an investor pitch than a realistic account of Canada’s economic challenges. The impact of Trump’s trade wars is sugarcoated, the potential for trade treaties to diversify exports overstated, and we are still waiting for workable industrial strategies for preserving desperately threatened automotive, steel and lumber jobs. Just yesterday, we learned that a viable 80-year-old furniture company in Quebec, South Shore, was closing permanently due to U.S. tariffs and a flood of cheap imports from Canada’s free trade partners that the government ignored for too long. 

We need new rapid-response mechanisms, something faster than our trade remedies process, for addressing production-destroying imports and urgent coordination between producers and consumers of Canadian industrial output in this country. Buy Canadian procurement strategies should be urgently sped up to further supplement lost U.S. exports of Canadian goods, services and raw materials. 

Federal and provincial measures to try to increase interprovincial trade, like recent mutual recognition agreements, focus on removing minor, exaggerated differences in permitting and other regulations between jurisdictions that do not demonstrably affect investment decisions. The more important barrier to domestic trade is the cost of moving goods, which demands trade infrastructure spending, including east-west rail and highway improvements, and harmonized high standards for trucks and their drivers.

Finally, Canada’s rush to lock in new trade and investment treaties containing extreme investor protections is quietly exposing the public to billions in future lawsuits related to fossil fuel projects. With Canada already facing over $3 billion in trade lawsuits, targeting the rejection of a polluting coal mine in Alberta and non-viable LNG facility in Quebec, weakening regulations to push projects forward only raises the risk. The government should cancel its new investment treaty with the UAE and reopen the Ecuador and Indonesia agreements to remove investor-state dispute settlement.

—Stuart Trew

Health care: killing pharmacare before it even got off the ground?

The federal government has responsibility for helping fund public health care services with the provinces and territories. The Canada Health Transfer—the largest federal transfer to the provinces and territories—as well as bilateral funding agreements are the main ways that the federal government supports public health care. 

Under the Trudeau Liberal government, the federal government signed four bilateral pharmacare agreements with British Columbia, Manitoba, P.E.I., and the Yukon. However, it appears that there will be no additional funding for additional pharmacare deals. With the bilateral health funding dropping from $4.3 billion in 2025-26 to $3.1 billion in 2027-28, it’s clear that the federal government doesn’t see a future for national pharmacare nor an expansion of Canadian medicare in any other areas like primary health care. 

This is no surprise considering P.E.I.’s health minister revealed that Ottawa will be cutting $29 million in health care funding to the province over the next three years. The federal government appears poised to allow existing bilateral funding agreements to expire without renewal, translating into cuts for existing provincial health care services, including funding for diabetes medications and contraceptives negotiated with the three provinces and one territory.

—Andrew Longhurst

Post-secondary education: No transformative investments for one of Canada’s most important economic drivers

In addition to educating the next generation of workers and citizens, universities and colleges drive economic growth at the municipal, provincial and federal level through research and development, procurement, and the wages they pay (which contribute to the local economies where those employees live and work). But the loss of international tuition fees—which institutions relied on in the absence of sufficient government investment—has created a funding crisis in the sector that has been a long time in the making, and demonstrates the profound failure of the user-pay funding model. 

It’s long past time for the federal government to meaningfully invest in post-secondary education as a sector, and recognize colleges and universities as the important economic drivers that they are—more impactful when compared to oil sands extraction, or when compared to mining, or when compared to transportation manufacturing. Unfortunately, the Spring Economic Update failed to recognize this as an “Elbows Up” moment for innovation or economic resilience, let alone for the labour force of tomorrow. Continuing to download costs onto the next generation—with pre-announced measures that nowhere near offset the rising price of obtaining a degree or diploma—is not only unsustainable, it further entrenches inequality during an affordability crisis that will not be fixed with piecemeal approaches and (often) temporary pocketbook measures. 

 – Erika Shaker

The post Spring economic update wraps up old ideas as new projects appeared first on CCPA.

Back in December, the Alberta government passed most sections of Bill 11 (the Health Statutes Amendment Act), which allows physicians and for-profit facilities to charge patients for medically necessary health care already covered under the Canada Health Act. (The sections related to “dual physician practice” which allow two-tier medicine have not yet been proclaimed.) Legislating two-tier health care is a first in Canada.

The CCPA report The end of medicare? explained that Bill 11 expands the private health insurance market for medically necessary care, which until now, has never existed in the country because it is not permitted under the Canada Health Act. And it is still not: Alberta has passed legislation that contravenes this federal legislation.

There are many risks associated with private health insurance for medically necessary health care, especially from foreign providers, including the U.S. private health insurance industry. Here are five things to know.

The insurance industry has direct involvement in developing Alberta’s two-tier health care legislation

In its January 2026 pre-budget submission to the Alberta government, the Canadian life and health insurance lobby association revealed its involvement in the implementation of Bill 11: 

“Our industry appreciates that the Alberta government considers life and health insurers as a key partner in the healthcare system, as demonstrated through the introduction of Bill 11 “supporting a world-class health care system”. We appreciate the opportunity to help facilitate a smooth transition for Albertans through our inclusion in the technical implementation of certain aspects of the changes.”

The Alberta government has offered no public information about a technical implementation committee and the composition of any committee within government. This key section from the insurance lobby’s submission suggests that the Alberta government has only invited the industry into the very process that will determine its profits. 

In industry publications, the insurance industry has expressed excitement about increased profit-making opportunities. In a November 2025 article, the industry publication stated that “[b]y enabling patients to pay privately for procedures or use supplemental insurance to bypass public wait times, the plan could open the door to new coverage options, higher demand for private benefits, and a fundamental shift in how insurers price and design health plans across the province.”

Provincial governments are responsible for regulating the insurance industry and the products they sell. This apparent regulatory capture by industry should concern not only Albertans, but all Canadians who care about transparency and distance between government and industries that they are supposed to be regulating.

What is the extent of the involvement of private insurers in Alberta’s health care reforms? Did the industry draft the legislation? Has the U.S. private health insurance industry been involved? 

These are all important questions for which Canadians deserve answers.

The Canadian and U.S. health insurance industry is overwhelmingly for-profit

The cozy relationship between the Alberta government and the insurance industry is of significant concern because this industry is overwhelmingly dominated by large for-profit corporations that appear closely involved in the creation of a new private health insurance market for medically necessary care that is already publicly covered. 

For the industry, Bill 11 is—as an industry publication states—an opportunity to “significantly reshape the province’s health insurance market” by selling insurance products for medically necessary care. 

Industry statistics show that the existing Canadian private health insurance market is worth $53 billion. All but eight of the 85 insurers are for-profit. As The Breach has reported, 63 per cent of the total life and health insurance market in Canada is controlled by three corporations: Manulife, Canada Life, and Sun Life.

But the creation of a two-tier health care system in Alberta is fundamentally about the expansion into a previously non-commodified part of the health care system—the public insurance plan. In industry terms, the $34 billion in provincial health care spending is a market opportunity—dollars that could flow through private health insurers, rather than through the public plan. 

In Alberta—like every province—the industry understands publicly insured health care as the largest untapped market. That’s why the interest in Alberta’s two-tier health care reforms are unlikely to remain limited to Canadian insurance companies. 

In a recent CCPA webinar, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, leading scholars on the U.S. health care industry, commented that U.S. private health insurers are looking for new markets and many are already active in South America. They noted that Americans are “tapped out” and increasingly unable to pay rising premiums (more on this below).

There is no doubt that Canada is an untapped market and the U.S. health insurance industry is hungry for new profit-taking opportunities. As global consulting giant McKinsey & Company notes in a recent analysis, profit levels are at “historic lows across [payer] markets”. In other words, insurers are looking for new opportunities to grow profits and are likely to “reallocate resources to growing market segments.”

UnitedHealth Group (16 per cent), Elevance Health (12 per cent), and CVS (Aetna) were the top three U.S. private health insurers by market share. UnitedHealth was found to have used “aggressive tactics to collect payment-boosting diagnoses for its [U.S.] Medicare [members],” a U.S. Senate committee investigating the corporation’s practices said. In his report, Senator Chuck Grassley said that “my investigation has shown UnitedHealth Group appears to be gaming the system and abusing the risk adjustment process to turn a steep profit.”

Indeed, the U.S. private health care industry is one of the most profitable industries in the country. UnitedHealth Group and CVS (Aetna) are in the top five of highest revenue companies. One estimate puts the profits of the top seven publicly traded insurance companies at $71 billion in 2024. This is one of the reasons that the United States far outspends other high-income countries on health care as a share of GDP.

For these corporations, Canada could be that next goldrush if Alberta’s two-tier reforms proceed, and if the federal government fails to intervene and uphold the Canada Health Act. 

The entrance of U.S. private health insurers would upend single-payer health care

Although we often refer to Canada’s public health care system—or “medicare”—it is actually a collection of 10 provincial and three territorial health insurance plans. Across the country, when you access public health care services, you are relying on your public provincial health insurance plan. 

The entrance of Canadian private health insurers—and especially U.S. insurers—would upend public health care as we know it. If the Alberta government is successful in the privatization of health care financing, rather than relying on our single-payer insurance system that has existed for decades—the reason for our much more cost-efficient system compared to the U.S.—we would see the development of a multi-payer system with private health insurers. The involvement of private health insurers means much higher administrative costs and, of course, profit-taking—a requirement that does not currently exist in our public, single-payer model.

The movement of the U.S. private health insurance industry into Canada via Alberta would be devastating for patients—and it would make it very difficult to force these companies out of Canada, once entrenched, due to our international trade agreements. 

Most of us have had little direct experience dealing with private health insurers other than extended health plans, and it’s important to understand what’s at stake.

The U.S. private health insurance industry is the leading cause of America’s cost of living crisis

Recent polling shows that Canadian residents rank the rising cost of living as their top concern. What if we added private health insurance premiums, co-payments, and other out-of-pocket expenses to the mix? The costs to Canadians would be significant and near impossible to contain, if we allow an unrestricted private health insurance market based on Alberta’s reforms.

The U.S. health care statistics are sobering:

• In 2026, just under half of adults say it is difficult to afford health care costs and 30 per cent say a family member had problems affording health care in the past year.
• In 2026, more than one-third of adults skipped or postponed getting necessary care because of the cost. Three in four uninsured adults under age 65 went without needed care due to cost.
• The average American pays more than $17,000 for health care annually, which does not include insurance premiums that they and their employers pay, as well as co-payments, deductibles, and the taxes that fund Medicare, Medicaid, and other public programs.
• The average annual cost for employer-sponsored family insurance premiums was nearly $27,000 in 2025, with workers paying $6,850 from their paycheques. The family premium increased 26 per cent over the last five years.
• Even among those with health insurance, almost four in 10 insured adults under age 65 worry about affording monthly insurance premiums. 
• In 2022, 41 per cent of adults had debt from medical or dental bills, including debts owed to collections agencies, credit cards, family and friends, banks, and other lenders. Black and Hispanic, women, parents, low-income people, and uninsured people were disproportionately affected by medical debt.
• An estimated 100 million Americans owe $220 billion in medical debt.
• As many as two-thirds (66.5 per cent) who file for bankruptcy cite medical bills as the primary cause—a proportion that has remained largely unchanged, despite efforts to overhaul the private health insurance market under the Affordable Care Act.

The federal government needs to intervene before it’s too late

So far, the federal government has not taken a public position on Alberta’s Bill 11 and Bill 29—the latter of which encourages two-tier diagnostic testing. On March 16, the Canadian Health Coalition and provincial health coalitions organized a “Day of Action” to break the silence on Alberta’s two-tier health care and call on the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act. 

Some members of the federal Liberal caucus spoke out against Bill 11 in response to the Day of Action, including Vancouver MP Hedy Fry. She said, “there is no doubt that Alberta’s Bill 11 absolutely contravenes the Canada Health Act.” While it is positive to hear from individual members of the federal Liberal government, so far, the Health Minister Marjorie Michel has not taken a position—nor has the prime minister.

Canadian insurance corporations are already preparing to sell products in this new private health insurance market. How long will it take before U.S. insurers enter the market as well? Once employer plans and individuals begin to purchase products, it will become increasingly difficult to put the brakes on this new insurance market—even if it directly contravenes the Canada Health Act. 

Time is of the essence. The federal government needs to decide if it stands for Canadian medicare or if it believes that private insurers should call the shots.

The post Alberta’s new health legislation brings U.S. style insurance to Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Canada’s post-secondary education system is in crisis, due to provincial and federal government underfunding. If it were any other highly touted industry—like oil and gas, or housing—governments would be rushing to the rescue. This analysis compares the value to the economy that the post-secondary education system contributes compared to those other valued industries. The findings show that post-secondary education should be treated like the vital sector that it is, deserving of more robust support. 

Canada’s post-secondary education system is a major driver of economic growth—more so than oil and gas.

Universities and colleges lead the way on driving economic growth: Universities and colleges’ economic output was worth $61 billion in 2025, which was 2.1 per cent of Canada’s total GDP—just $5 billion behind residential building construction, much more than all oil sands extraction ($49 billion), and almost twice as much as mining or transportation manufacturing (at $33 billion each).

Universities and colleges are important job creators: The ongoing threats to the stability of post-secondary education directly endangers the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people employed in the sector and, ultimately, those enrolled in university or college programs. And this can hurt entire communities. Universities and colleges employ twice more than the transport manufacturing industry, nearly four times more than the oil and gas extraction industry, and almost six times more than in the mining industry. 

University and college workers create economic demand: University and college workers are a large workforce and, as such, create significant economic demand. In 2024, university and college workers’ compensation contributed 2.3 per cent of Canada’s total pay pie. That’s a bigger contribution to the economy than the much-touted oil and gas industry’s workers’ pay, which contributed 1.7 per cent of the total pay pie. The smaller the slice of the pay pie, the less of an impact on economic growth. These wages have a direct impact on economic growth—especially in university and college towns, where workers spend their money locally, supporting small businesses, the local arts and culture. This should give institutions pause when looking at layoffs. And it is another argument for why increased reliance by institutions on precariously employed and lower-paid contract workers as a cost-saving strategy not only exacerbates inequality across the sector, it makes bad local business sense because those workers have less money to spend in their community.  

University and college procurement creates demand in other industries: In 2022, the most recent year of available data, universities and colleges spent $16.5 billion on purchases from other industries, including $1.4 billion on gasoline, $1 billion on repair construction services, $895 million on building services like landscaping, $560 million on electricity, $481 million on IT services, and $388 million on prepared meals. 

Universities and colleges are solid taxpayers: Post-secondary institutions paid $1.1 billion in taxes on products in 2022, which was mostly federal and provincial sales taxes, but also includes items like fuel taxes and import duties. Additionally, they paid $683 million in taxes on production, such as capital, payroll, land or property taxes. This does not include the income taxes paid by employees of post-secondary institutions.

Universities and colleges produce vital knowledge: In addition to educating generations of workers and citizens, universities and colleges themselves produce vital knowledge. In 2023, over $18 billion was spent on research and development activities in Canada’s post-secondary education sector. Despite only making up about two per cent of Canada’s economy, the post-secondary education sector represents over 34 per cent of all research and development, which was much higher than Canada’s peer countries. Any way you look at it, this sector returns to us an outsized bang for the buck.

The post-secondary education industry is an economic powerhouse. Governments can’t let this vital industry atrophy.

Introduction

Since the start of the trade war, there has been considerable, justified concern over the threats posed to Canada’s economy. A small number of industries, such as oil, gas and manufacturing—the ones people tend to think of as the most important to the “real” economy—tend to dominate public discourse and policy agenda.

There is another threat to a strategically vital economic sector on the horizon: the ongoing collapse of Canada’s post-secondary education system. It is rarely framed this way, but post-secondary education is one of the most important sectors in Canada’s economy, and not just for its irreplaceable role in producing—and attracting—an educated and skilled work force.

Decades of federal and provincial government underfunding, punctuated by the sudden federal cutoff of international student enrolment, has created a financial crisis in post-secondary education that we’ve never seen before. Across the country, universities and colleges face massive funding shortfalls as administrators engage in drastic budget cuts, mass layoffs, and eliminate entire programs, even campuses. 

Just like the vital industries threatened by hostile U.S. trade policy, the danger posed to the Canadian economy is severe. Yet the crisis in post-secondary education is self-imposed and completely avoidable. The solution is not complicated: both the federal and provincial governments must provide enough funding for universities and colleges to operate without excessive reliance on student fees.

Universities and colleges are underrated economic engines

How important are universities and colleges to Canada’s economy relative to other high-priority industries? 

Throughout this analysis, we compare universities and public colleges—including CEGEPs (Collèges d’enseignement général et professionnel)—to a common group of high-priority industries, using basic measures of economic importance. Selected industries include:

• Fossil fuels, including oil and gas extraction, refineries, and pipelines;
• Housing construction;
• Mining and quarrying;
• Transportation manufacturing, including manufacturing of automobiles, auto parts, airplanes, ships, trains, and other vehicles. 

These industries were chosen because they are widely considered to be strategically important to Canada’s economy. Governments prioritize them and provide them with generous financial support. Survey research, done mostly on behalf of industry advocacy groups, shows that most Canadians rate these industries very highly in terms of economic importance and that they express high levels of concern for their future, given the dangers of the U.S.-led trade war.

A natural starting point is to ask, “what is each industry’s share of the economy?”  

Figure 1 shows the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each industry, which measures the value added by production of goods and services in each sector. Universities and colleges’ economic output was worth $61 billion in 2025, which was 2.15 per cent of Canada’s total gross domestic product. This was just $5 billion behind residential building construction, much more than all oil sands extraction, and almost twice as much as mining or transportation manufacturing. 

The post-secondary education sector’s very large contribution to Canada’s economy may surprise some readers, as the scale of economic activity happening at universities and colleges is often under-appreciated.

How do universities and colleges make such a big impact? In short, their economic footprint is large because they are major employers that pay competitive wages to produce high-value services, like research, and are the heart and soul of many communities.

It is common to hear of the “total impact” of an industry throughout the entire economy, which is much larger than just the output of the sector, due to inter-industry linkages and the impact of employees’ own spending on demand in other industries. Industry advocates often use these inflated totals to emphasize the importance of their own industry over others. 

A full accounting of the total impact on the economy is beyond the scope here, but post-secondary education performs strongly in this dimension as well. For every $100 in economic growth produced by universities, $117 was generated in other industries across the economy. Among colleges, every $100 in growth generated was associated with an increase of $125 elsewhere in the economy. That compares very favourably to an economy-wide impact of $99 for residential construction and conventional oil and gas extraction, and $93 for oil sands extraction.

Universities and colleges are vital employers

Universities and colleges carry a lot of economic weight because they are very important job creators. Any threat to the stability of post-secondary education directly endangers the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people—and can hurt entire communities.

Figure 2 shows the total number of people employed in each industry, whether they were paid employees or self-employed. In total, universities and colleges employed 488,000 people in 2024, which was about 2.3 per cent of total employment in Canada.

Universities and colleges employed fewer people than housing construction, but twice more than in transport manufacturing, nearly four times more than in oil and gas extraction, and almost six times more than in the mining industry. Why? Those other industries are capital intensive, employing fewer workers relative to capital invested in things like machinery or robots. 

When a new factory or mine is built, it is typically done with the most advanced labour-saving technology available. This means that jobs in these industries are less plentiful, so they have a smaller impact on the economy—especially at the local level.

Post-secondary education paycheques create economic demand

Universities and colleges are local economic drivers because they are labour-intensive. Many of their employees—though certainly not all, as institutions have moved towards heavier reliance on precariously employed and lower-paid contract workers—are paid competitive wages, commensurate with a more highly educated work force. Some labour-intensive industries—like retail or food and accommodations—employ many people, but pay very low wages. That leaves low-wage workers with less money to pour back into the local economy.

When governments spend money to support post-secondary education, it does not disappear from the economy. Much of it ends up in the paycheques of people who work in the sector—who then spend, save, and invest that money throughout the economy. This is important, because labour compensation is an essential foundation for consumer demand—and consumer demand drives more than half of Canada’s economy. 

Figure 3 displays the total amount of compensation paid to people working in each industry in 2024. That year, universities and colleges paid $39 billion to employees, which was about 2.4 per cent of total compensation paid across Canada. That was about 70 per cent as much as housing construction—another labour-intensive, but high-wage sector—yet much more than all other sectors up for comparison. And what about the much-touted oil and gas industry? Their pay only contributes 1.7 per cent of the total pay pie. Post-secondary education workers are a large workforce and contribute more to local economic growth—they’re important drivers of our economy.

While professors may come to mind here, almost half of post-secondary education compensation is paid to non-academic staff. Academic salaries represented only 52 per cent of staff spending by universities and 56 per cent by colleges. Post-secondary education institutions employ workers in a diverse range of occupations, such as administrative and clerical staff, librarians, technicians, IT specialists, food service, caretakers, maintenance jobs, and skilled tradespeople. They all contribute to economic growth.

Universities and colleges are also among the most union-dense workplaces in the country. That means they bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions—and that improves both quality of work and the contribution they make to economic growth.

Procurement links post-secondary to many other industries

Post-secondary education procurement is the next layer of economic importance. Universities and colleges purchase large amounts of goods and services to support their operations, creating demand in other industries throughout the economy. This effect can be especially strong in smaller cities and towns, where universities and colleges play an even larger role in local economic growth.

In Figure 4, it shows the total value of goods and services purchased by the post-secondary education sector in each province in 2022, the most recent year of available data. That year, universities and colleges spent $16.5 billion on purchases from other industries, including $1.4 billion on gasoline, $1 billion on repair construction services, $895 million on building services like landscaping, $560 million on electricity, $481 million on IT services, and $388 million on prepared meals. 

When post-secondary education institutions are forced to cut back on services due to government underfunding, they buy less from other industries, which results in a reduction of demand throughout the economy.

Universities and colleges are taxpayers too

The flow of money between post-secondary education and governments is not one way, because universities and colleges pay taxes to all levels of government. Universities and colleges receive some tax breaks because of their public service orientation. However, because the sector employs so many people and makes such large purchases, they still end up paying a fair amount of taxes.

Figure 5 shows the taxes payable—the actual amount owed after tax breaks—for universities and colleges from 2017 to 2022, using the same data source as Figure 4. 

Post-secondary institutions paid $1.1 billion in taxes on products in 2022, which was mostly federal and provincial sales taxes, but also includes items like fuel taxes and import duties. Additionally, they paid $683 million in taxes on production, such as capital, payroll, land or property taxes. This does not include the income taxes paid by employees of post-secondary institutions.

Ironically, by undercutting economic activity at universities and colleges through chronic government underfunding, both the provincial and federal governments are depriving public coffers of needed tax revenues to pay for vital goods and services.

Canada depends on post-secondary education for innovation

The irreplaceable role of post-secondary education’s contribution to research and development in Canada cannot be overstated. If the long-term viability of the post-secondary education industry is endangered, this will deeply impact Canada’s capacity for research and innovation—and that impacts our ability to compete on the world stage in a knowledge economy.

Most research and development in industrial economies is performed by businesses in the private sector, simply because they make up most of the economy. Compared to peers, Canada’s business sector is well known for underperforming in innovation. As a result, the post-secondary education sector has had to carry more of the load—a role it has excelled in.

Figure 6 displays the share of all research and development done by the post-secondary education sector in each country, comparing Canada to its peers in the G7 in 2023, the most recent year international data is available. That year, over $18 billion was spent on research and development activities in Canada’s post-secondary education sector. Despite only making up about two per cent of Canada’s economy, the post-secondary education sector represented over 34 per cent of all research and development, which was much higher than Canada’s peer countries.

Post-secondary must be treated like the vital sector it is

Measured in basic terms, like GDP or employment, post-secondary education should be considered a strategically important industry. But the sector also produces a highly skilled and educated workforce, without which it is difficult to imagine how Canada’s economy might function at all, let alone grow and maintain advanced, knowledge-based industries. As such, this analysis offers a partial picture of the sector’s irreplaceable role in Canada’s economy. 

Each year, the Canadian government spends billions of dollars on financial support to for-profit companies—big and small—in key sectors of the economy. Such expenditures are often justified in terms of economic growth, jobs, livelihoods, and strategic importance. The federal government plays a very minor role as a funder of post-secondary education, which remains the constitutional responsibility of provincial governments—leaving much room for improvement. 

In 2024, the most current year data on post-secondary finances was available, the federal government provided about $5.2 billion in direct funding for universities and colleges, which consisted almost entirely of grants and contracts to fund research and development.

The federal government also indirectly supports provincial spending on post-secondary education through the Canada Social Transfer, a major transfer to the provinces to support social spending. Roughly 30 per cent of the transfer is intended to support post-secondary education, though there are no formal requirements on how provinces spend it. The post-secondary share of the transfer would have made approximately $5 billion available to support provincial post-secondary spending in 2024.

Direct ($5.2 billion) and indirect ($5 billion) federal support to post-secondary systems in 2024 amounted to $10.2 billion. Relative to the power of the federal government to tax and spend, it is a small amount—representing less than two per cent of total federal spending that year. It also pales in comparison to the very generous support given to large and small businesses, which received a total of over $50 billion in tax credits alone across all industries (the fossil fuel industry received over $6.3 billion in tax credits).

The federal government can afford to and must do better to ensure Canada’s post-secondary education system continues to be an economic driver in a self-sufficient Canada. In recent years, the federal government has flexed its staggering spending power in support of certain industries it has deemed strategically important. It is neglecting the importance of the post-secondary education sector. That’s got to change.

The CCPA would like to thank the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) for supporting this research.

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Usually we’d be waiting for the spring budget at this time of year, but the federal government changed its publication schedule around so the budget is now in the fall with a fiscal statement/mini budget in the spring.

The budget in November 2025 put many of the Liberals’ election promises into motion. It’s time for new ideas and we at the CCPA have got plenty!  Here are three big ideas for the spring update.

An excess profits tax on the oil industry

While high oil prices due to the war in Iran may be bad news for most Canadians, it is a massive windfall for oil and gas companies in Canada. Our oil sector profits model estimates that the oil industry is raking in $170 million more in profits every day than it was before the war started—and that money is adding up fast. 

In the six weeks since the war started, the industry has made an estimated $9 billion in after-tax profits, which is $6 billion more than it would have earned based on pre-war oil prices. At current prices, the industry is on track to make a stunning $90 billion in profits over the next 12 months.

This is profiteering, which is something the federal government has previously stepped in to address. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the government applied a 15 per cent surtax on the excess profits of banks and insurance companies. During the Second World War, the government applied a 75 per cent surtax on all companies earning excess war profits. Reintroducing those models for the oil industry today could generate between $9 billion and $46 billion, respectively, over the next 12 months.

In the absence of an excess profits tax, that potentially $90 billion oil windfall will flow entirely to the industry’s (often American) shareholders, not to the workers and households struggling with increased energy costs. This is money we should use to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, not to entrench it further.

Parental leave for all 

In a recent analysis, we found that while taking parental paid leave through the Employment Insurance (EI) system is common, it is hardly universal. 

There is a clear relationship between income and the likelihood that a parent (usually the mother) took EI-paid parental leave. For those in the top 25 per cent of families, taking EI-paid parental leave is almost universal. But for the lowest income families with young children, it’s only two-thirds of families. In Quebec, which runs a better parental EI system, 79 per cent of the lowest-income families take EI-paid parental leave.

We can do better. In that same analysis, we modelled several options to improve the program so more parents get support.  

First we need to improve the replacement rate to 75 per cent of earnings. At only 55 per cent, a lot of families won’t get enough out of EI to take parental leave, so they just go back to work to make ends meet. This problem is particularly acute for lower-income families, where 55 per cent of not a lot is even less, but it’s also true for many middle-income families.

The second problem is that lower-income families can’t get into the EI system in the first place. They don’t have enough working hours to qualify, even though their expenses for a new child are very real. If we set a threshold of $2,000 in earnings in the previous year, like we did during the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), we make more families at the bottom eligible. The result would be 67,000 more families using EI-paid parental supports.

After years of consultation on EI, this would be a real step forward that the government could take in the spring fiscal statement.

$5 billion primary care infrastructure fund

One in five people in Canada do not have access to primary care. But primary care should serve as the door into the health care system. 

Evidence demonstrates that countries with a strong primary health care orientation have lower health care costs, better health outcomes, and reduced inequities. 

If people don’t have timely access to a regular primary care provider or team, they often end up in emergency departments or delay necessary health care until they’re in a health crisis. This is much more costly to the public system. 

The federal government does not provide direct infrastructure funding in support of non-profit primary care services. The federal government should establish a $5 billion fund, indexed to inflation, that can help provinces finance non-profit primary care infrastructure, including community health centres and non-profit primary care organizations. 

This fund could help establish non-profit primary health care centres in every community, like we do for public schools. 

Similar to federal child care funding, the infrastructure funding would only fund non-profit organizations and would exclude for-profit providers and corporate chains—a growing problem across the country. 

A strong economy means supporting the care economy and the health and wellness of all.

The post Three big ideas for Canada’s federal fiscal update appeared first on CCPA.

Between March and September of 2020, long-term care (LTC) workers in Nova Scotia completed an online survey about their work experience during the early parts of the pandemic. The findings are critical to understanding the state of long-term care now, in 2026. What lessons were learned from the pandemic? What did workers share about their working conditions that should have informed policy and systems change? While this article is not a full analysis of what has happened in long-term care since the pandemic, given the current strike by long-term care workers in Nova Scotia, many challenges clearly remain. The details on the methodology, participants, survey findings and references can be found in the survey backgrounder.

As is summarized here, our findings demonstrate, not surprisingly, that working during the early pandemic increased stress and decreased well-being. Most importantly, our findings show that the reasons were largely attributable to poor working conditions in LTC that preceded and were then compounded by the pandemic. In LTC, the quality of work impacts the quality of care. We concluded that without policy commitment to improving working conditions in LTC, staff and residents would continue to face preventable risks to health and well-being. Deaths in LTC settings drew media attention to flaws in the organization of LTC work and care. However, participants were ambivalent about whether this attention would lead to positive change. They seem to have been proven correct; the long-term care heroes seem to have been forgotten. 

First, it is important to understand what has shaped LTC working conditions in a Canadian context, which we describe as neoliberalism, including, and especially, the negative effects of a privatized model of care that prioritizes cost savings over care and safety, and the undervaluing of care work by its gendered and racialized workforce. 

Long-term care in Canada under Neoliberalism 

While Canada has universally funded public health care, the personal support and nursing services provided in LTC homes are not covered by the Canada Health Act. Funding models and standards for LTC are provincial in jurisdiction (Liu et al., 2020). Canadian provinces began to implement neoliberal models of LTC in the 1990s (Armstrong et al., 2020b). Following El-Bialy et al (2022), we understand neoliberalism “to encompass the interconnected set of beliefs, practices, and policies that promotes free trade, market competition, privatization, and the erosion of government intervention in social welfare.” Advocates of neoliberalism argue that a private, for-profit model improves the efficiency of the provision of public goods and services and empower individuals as citizen-consumers (Tronto, 2013). As scholars of LTC have documented, however, the application of neoliberal governance to this sector of the care economy has negative implications for both staff and patients. This is because LTC facilities are at once a home and a workplace, leading to a situation in which “…the conditions of work are the conditions of care” (Armstrong et al., 2020a). 

Privatization has been an important component of these neoliberal models of LTC (Molinari and Pratt, 2023; Badone, 2021; Armstrong et al., 2020a; Armstrong et al., 2020b). Depending on the province, facilities operate under a mix of public and private funding models, often blending public funding with private ownership (Armstrong et al., 2020b). In their report “Re-imagining Long-term Residential Care in the COVID-19 Crisis”, Armstrong et al. (2020a) find that the trend towards increased privatization of LTC has been detrimental both to the health status of residents and the work lives of staff, which are profoundly entwined. For-profit LTCs, they note, hire just enough staff, pay the lowest possible wages, and rely on part-time and casual workers to save on benefits (see also Daly and Armstrong, 2016). This exploitation of LTC staff has implications for the provision of care. As Armstrong et al.’s report states, “homes run on a for-profit basis tend to have lower staffing levels, more verified complaints, and more transfers to hospitals, as well as higher rates for both ulcers and morbidity” (2020a: 6). The search for finding “efficiencies” in the provision of LTC also leads to contracting out (e.g., privatizing) essential services, such as laundry and food service, which can impact the quality of care and working conditions of LTC residents and staff (see Armstrong and Day (2017)).

The LTC workforce in Canada is highly gendered and increasingly racialized (Lightman, 2021; Syed, 2020; Braedley et al., 2018). The exploitation of LTC staff, including through low pay and casualization, is rooted in the generally gendered and racialized nature of caring labour as well as the forms of neoliberalism described above. The gendered nature of health care stems from the social construction of masculinity and femininity in relation to care. Not only is feminized labour such as carework devalued in capitalist economies that prioritize the accumulation of wealth (Tronto, 2013; Federici, 2012), “unpaid work is endemic to the care sector and is generally expected by employers, who strategically adopt a gendered, naturalistic view of their predominantly female labor force as having a propensity to care endlessly” (Baines and Daly 2021: 391). 

Further, care work is increasingly racialized. One aspect of this racialization relates to the composition of the LTC workforce. For example, Iffath Unissa Syed’s (2020) study of an LTC facility in Toronto demonstrates that racialized women are overrepresented in front-line roles like personal support workers and nurses. A second aspect of racialization relates to “social norms that suggest these people do this work because it is ‘natural’ or ‘culturally appropriate’” (Braedley et al., 2018: 101). Tronto argues (2013: 106) that “care work itself is often demanding and inflexible. People who do such work recognize its intrinsic value.” While the primarily female and racialized LTC workforce may be intrinsically motivated to provide care, this work is not selfless or altruistic. Adequate compensation and material benefits will affect what jobs care workers take, how long they stay in those jobs, and their work outcomes (England, Folbre, and Leana 2012: 22-25). 

Since the 1990s, when neoliberal models began to be implemented in LTC by provincial governments, scholars and activists have identified their deleterious effects on both residents and workers. The need to better support worker wellbeing has been a repeated, but largely unimplemented, call in reports on LTC in Canada (Wong et al., 2021; Estabrooks et al., 2020). While these problems are longstanding, our data from Nova Scotia builds on other Canadian and international cases that demonstrate how the COVID-19 pandemic brought LTC facilities under renewed public scrutiny and exposed the harms inherent in the current model of care, prioritizing cost savings over care and safety.

Nova Scotia context

Given Nova Scotia’s aging population, LTC policy is a critical concern. As of 2024, 22.5 per cent of the provincial population was 65 or older, well above the Canadian national average of 19.5 per cent (Statistics Canada, 2025b). There are approximately 8,000 residents in LTC (Communications Nova Scotia, 2023), with a waitlist of 2,084 people as of December 2025 (Government of Nova Scotia, n.d.).  Among the LTC homes in Nova Scotia, only 14 per cent are public, with the remaining split between private-for-profit (45 per cent) and private-not-for-profit (41 per cent) (Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2024). There are 16,000 continuing care workers in Nova Scotia and 9,000 are CCAs (Campbell, 2025).

Policies by different governments created openings for neoliberal practice in LTC. The Continuing Care Strategy (CCS) implemented by Nova Scotia’s government in 2006 opened the door for greater privatization. According to the Nova Scotia Government (2020b, p. 93), 19 new nursing homes in Nova Scotia were supported through the CCS, of which 13 (68 per cent) were private, including many operated by chain owners. Currently, Nova Scotia Government data show that (as of April 2026) among the 53 replacement and new builds of LTC facilities, 32 (60 per cent) are not-for-profit (including municipal and Build NS projects) and 19 for-profit (36 per cent), with two projects unidentified (Department of Seniors and Long-Term Care, 2026). 

Nova Scotia governments also enacted major changes to the model of senior care. In the 2015 and 2016 budgets, LTC funding was cut, shifting resources to encourage older people to age in place (Gorman, 2016). Regardless of the value of this policy approach, these budget cuts were significant, initially amounting to $8.2 million, and disproportionately affected public, non-profit LTC facilities. Reports by the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union (NSNU) and the Nursing Homes of Nova Scotia Association (NHNSA) have pointed out that the province’s policy shift toward supporting aging at home means that people tend to be frailer and have increasingly complex health needs when they finally enter care (Harrington, 2020; NHNSA, 2020; Curry, 2015). As historian Peter L. Twohig (2021:102) discusses in the Nova Scotia context, among the forces driving health care reorganization is a “drive for efficiency,” an approach that can lead to precarious work. 

Understaffing in LTC facilities is a critical problem in Nova Scotia, as it is elsewhere. It directly impacts the quality of care provided to residents and negatively impacts the health of workers (NHNSA, 2020) by creating “heavy workloads, routinized care, and unsafe conditions” (Lowndes and Struthers, 2016: 372). In 2015, 66 per cent of LTC nurses reported always or often working below necessary staffing levels (Curry, 2015: 41). Staffing shortages persist in Nova Scotia, with 7.3 per cent of LTC positions left unfilled (Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration, 2025). In March 2025, a government official reported that in the previous ten months, 5.8 per cent of long-term care workers had left the field (Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration, 2025).

 Staffing shortages lead to conditions of overwork. A 2018 Minister’s Expert Advisory Panel noted that “It was most profound to hear from staff, and many of the sector representatives about the guilt and shame they feel not being able to provide adequate care” (Keefe et al., 2018: 46). Understaffing is also driven by retention problems linked to poor working conditions and low wages. Nursing staff in LTC often have less generous pay and benefits—and lower levels of unionization—than nurses in acute care settings such as hospitals (Curry, 2015). This has led some nurses to leave LTC for better-paid positions. The Nova Scotia Government Employees Union has argued that (NSGEU, 2020: 3) “government wage restraint measures imposed on low-paid caregivers made it difficult to recruit and retain workers,” exacerbating an existing problem of recruitment and retention in the sector. The NSGEU claimed, further, that wage restraints pushed people to work in more than one facility, which may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19 in 2020 (NSGEU, 2020: 3). 

A throughline across the various assessments of LTC in the province heading into the pandemic is that, despite the difficulty of the work, the skill level of staff, and the importance of providing quality care to residents, LTC policy and resourcing have been underprioritized. Well before the pandemic, the NSNU lamented that although public interest in the LTC sector peaks after a tragedy, there is insufficient “sustained public interest to mount pressure for immediate reform” (Curry, 2015: 9). Although the pandemic primarily amplified the long-standing issues with staff shortages and burnout making it challenging to replace workers who retired or left the sector, there were a few reforms (Murphy, 2021). The government introduced changes to LTC in December 2021 which included a $57 million investment which would go towards more staff and beds. Another improvement was to cover the cost of tuition for more than 2,000 students in CCA programs (Campbell, 2025). Following these changes, 6,700 public-sector CCAs received a 23 per cent wage increase in February 2022 (Renić, 2022). However, this wage increase does not address lower wages for CCAs in the private-sector and other employees such as those working in laundry, the kitchen, and housekeeping. In 2025, 40.6% of “care providers and other support workers” earned less than $20 per hour, 92.1% of which were women (Statistics Canada, 2025a). 

We argue that at the core of these structural problems is an inherent devaluing of the people who live in LTC facilities, rooted in sexism, ageism and ableism, and a devaluing of highly skilled, critical labour of their caregivers. These were the contexts shaping funding and work in the LTC sector when the COVID-19 crisis reached Nova Scotia. Twohig has pointed to “understanding the labour of care, and how it has been experienced by working people in the neoliberal age” (2021: 104-105) as an important area for those researching LTC. There is a paucity of published empirical work on the LTC sector in Nova Scotia. Such an evidence gap can mean that policy makers in Nova Scotia rely on studies from larger and more studied provinces. Nova Scotia has distinct demographic, political, and social contexts that help shape our health care context and local evidence is needed to inform policy solutions.

Summary of Survey Findings

Reports over the last decade have highlighted understaffing and overwork in the LTC sector in Nova Scotia (Keefe et al., 2018; Curry, 2015). Nova Scotia’s government (2013-21) cut funding to the LTC sector, redirecting money to support people aging at home. These changes meant residents entering LTC required higher levels of care (Gorman, 2016). The budget cuts affected public LTC facilities (NSGEU, 2020), where over 70 per cent of our participants worked. Before the pandemic, there were red flags drawn to under-funding, poor infrastructure, over-crowding, and a lack of staff (Communications Nova Scotia, 2020b; Henderson, 2020a; 2020b)—conditions that presented challenges given the large population of older people needing care in Nova Scotia (MacDonald, 2016). 

Inadequate staffing approaches in LTCs, which preceded the pandemic, left the sector vulnerable to pressures during the pandemic (Hsu and Lane, 2020: 10). Most of our participants experienced short staffing, the loss of coworkers, and an inability to take time off during the pandemic. Our quantitative data included Likert scale questions (0 =positive emotion to 10 =negative emotion) relating to feelings before the pandemic and during the pandemic. We found significant increases among staff reporting negative feelings during the pandemic such as  feeling overworked (6.6 to 8.2) and under-supported (6.9 to 7.8), and high stress levels (5.1 to 8.0). 

The report “Re-imagining Long-term Residential Care in the COVID-19 Crisis” identifies staffing levels as “the most obvious condition of work” in LTC and suggests that the evidence showcasing inadequate staffing in Canadian LTC facilities has been largely ignored. The report concludes that higher levels of staffing are a “necessary but not sufficient condition to keep those who live, work and visit in care homes safe” (Armstrong et al., 2020a: 7).

The longstanding problems in LTC were a repeated focus of participants’ written responses to a wide range of questions. We heard frustration that the government describes LTC as a priority, yet has done little to improve problems that have existed for more than 20 years. Despite their frustration at having to keep doing more with less, workers continued to provide quality care to residents to the best of their ability. Our participants’ assessment that the problems in the sector pre-existed COVID was similar to the findings of a qualitative study of LTC workers and resident family members in Ontario, in which “The picture painted by respondents is not one of sudden crisis. Rather, they attest to ‘ordinary’ lapses in institutional care before COVID-19, which were mitigated by family members’ efforts to provide additional care” (Badone, 2021: 399). Rather than attributing the distress we describe herein to the pandemic as such, workers tended to attribute it to longstanding issues at their workplace. These problems can be attributed to failures of regulation and investment: privatization, the lack of minimum staffing levels, and the outsourcing of labour are all examples of how neoliberal policy approaches have limited safety in LTC for workers and residents.

The longstanding nature of problematic staffing and funding structures provides additional context for the pandemic when we consider participants’ survey responses and qualitative reflections on their well-being and practices. Nova Scotia had relatively few cases of COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic: as of October 24^th, 2020, Nova Scotia reported 1,100 COVID-19 cases and 65 deaths (April, 2020). Of these cases, 392 occurred within long-term care facilities (259 among residents and 133 among staff) and resulted in 57 deaths, 53 of which occurred in the Northwood facility in Halifax (Lata and Stevenson, 2020; Rankin, 2020). Most cases were likely introduced by asymptomatic staff (Delorey 2020). However, even with limited cases, there was significant scrutiny of LTC facilities and workers as cases began to escalate in other provinces. LTC workers in our study expressed fear of an outbreak in both closed- and open-ended questions. The potential to transmit disease either to their vulnerable patients or to bring it from a health facility back to their home and family members was a distinct source of concern to our participants. 

Participants’ vigilant hygiene practices at home suggest that a way to allay their fears was to maintain control over those spaces and contacts they could. They had limited control over practices at work, where close contact with other staff and with residents was necessary to the provision of care, and where hygiene practices such as changing a mask were controlled by employer policy and by availability. This lack of control was a focus of participants’ understanding of media coverage, as some felt they were accorded more agency in preventing an outbreak than was realistic. A qualitative study of posts in an online COVID-19 forum for health employees at a Canadian university hospital found similar areas of concern, including “contamination, appropriate personal protective equipment, and worker safety” (Berkhout et al., 2021), noting that institutional responses to the pandemic tended not to align with worker concerns. Worker experiences of stress stemmed from the way their workplace was structured before the pandemic, as well as from the way the pandemic response was rolled out.

Scholarly and public writing on media coverage of health care (and other essential) workers during the early waves of the pandemic suggests that the ambivalence expressed by our participants is warranted. For example, Cox (2020) argues that the rhetoric of heroism increases workers’ stress and promotes the expectation of heroic behaviour as the norm, rather than fostering a dialogue about the duties of healthcare workers and how they should be supported. This is consistent with participants’ concern that workers’ ability to prevent an outbreak was overestimated, given the limitations of infrastructure and staffing. 

Data Limitations

We acknowledge that our study had a few limitations of scope and reach. First, this is a cross-sectional study of LTC workers in one Canadian province. The sample size is small (n=72) and is not a representative sample of all LTC workers in Nova Scotia. See the research backgrounder for more information about the participants. The survey was quite in-depth and took more than 30 minutes to complete, which likely contributed to low completion numbers. Finally, the survey was launched at the same time as a large union-led survey, which may have impacted recruitment. Despite our relatively small sample, we present self-reported data from workers on their work experience before and during the pandemic. Moreover, the data provide us with rich, descriptive, and unique qualitative and quantitative information that allows us to understand what was happening in LTC in Nova Scotia during the early stages of the pandemic. 

Conclusion 

LTC facilities are noteworthy as homes for residents and workplaces for staff, as well as for including family and volunteers in unpaid carework (Daly and Armstrong, 2016). In an illustrative quotation, a CCA vented their frustration: “Working during the pandemic has made all of our existing issues that much worse and has strained an already strained situation. If nothing serious is done in the next few years, I fear that the system will collapse.” A provincial review of LTC facilities during the first wave recognized the problem of understaffing, but resources were concentrated on improving facilities (Delorey, 2020). Understaffing, resulting from “poor wage rates, a lack of full-time work and sparse benefits” (Hirdes et al. 2020: 1) and the related practice of working part-time and multiple sites, is not only bad for worker wellbeing, but was a probable contributing factor to cases and deaths in LTC (Hirdes et al. 2020). 

Across the literature and our findings, a consistent causal chain emerges: policy decisions that prioritize cost containment, particularly through privatization and labour casualization, produce understaffing and instability, which in turn degrade both worker well-being and resident care outcomes.

As in other parts of Canada, LTC workers in Nova Scotia were lauded by the public as heroes for doing essential work during the first wave of the pandemic. Our research demonstrates that without significant reinvestment in the material conditions of LTC work, including workers’ ability to protect their own well-being, such discourses are little more than platitudes. Participants were clear, particularly in their long answer responses, that the major stressors at work, including understaffing and poor pay, were a result of a longstanding lack of investment in the LTC sector, which stems from neoliberal approaches to structuring care provision. This leads to poor conditions for both staff and the residents who depend on them for care. 

The current labour dispute in Nova Scotia’s long-term care sector should not be understood as an isolated conflict over wages or contracts. Rather, it reflects the cumulative effects of longstanding structural issues identified by workers well before and during the pandemic, which have remained insufficiently addressed. It is thus especially concerning that this sector, along with others in the broader public sector, are now facing a three per cent cut each year over the next four years (Gorman, 2026a). While the nursing home staff had a reprieve this year after public outcry (Gorman, 2026b), what will happen next year?

Recommendations

• Enhance wages and benefits: every worker in long-term care facilities must earn enough to maintain a quality of life that enables them to live securely. No worker, whether providing hands-on care, housekeeping, dietary, laundry, clerical, or recreation services, should earn less than a living wage (which in 2025 was $27.60 provincially ($29.40 in Halifax and $24.50 in Cape Breton). Pay equity should be established among long-term care, home care and hospital care settings. All staff should have access to pensions and benefits; At a minimum, all staff need 10 paid sick days and 14 paid sick days during a pandemic. 
• Prioritize stable, full-time, secure, working conditions: establish a minimum percentage of full-time positions (70 per cent), lessen overtime and part-time positions, and invest in staff retention and recruitment to strengthen the quality of care by ensuring adequate resources, support, time, and workforce capacity. 
• Enforce minimum staffing levels and regulations: 4.1 hours of hands-on direct care per day is an outdated standard and is not even being met due to staff shortages. 
• Implement enforceable national standards for long-term care: the province should review the status of LTC with a view to ensuring quality and safe care, from staffing to infrastructure are up to national standards.  
• End the expansion of private for-profit facilities and ensure non-profit or public ownership, and require for-profit facilities to negotiate with the government for purchase before putting them on the market.
• Facilities should meaningfully involve staff, unions, residents, families and volunteers in decisions to improve communication and care.
• All staff should be in-house: stop contracting out food, housekeeping, and most laundry services, and bring those services back in-house.
• Recognize that care work is skilled work: provide paid and free opportunities for ongoing education and training. 
• Establish an office of the Senior’s Advocate to ensure there is a strong voice to monitor seniors’ services and make recommendations for addressing systemic issues, as well as respond to concerns of seniors and their caregivers.  

Acknowledgements

We offer our sincere condolences to the family and friends who lost loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes the preventable deaths that occurred among residents and staff in long term care.

We would like to thank the other members of our research team—Jesse Carlson, Lesley Frank, and Elisabeth Rondinelli–as well as Jenn Munroe, who helped with survey development. Liam Swiss, Christine Saulnier, and Ruby Harrington provided helpful feedback.

Funding Details

This work was supported by an SSHRC Institutional Grant from Acadia University.

The post Long-term care in Nova Scotia: Pandemic lessons and persistent failure appeared first on CCPA.

Former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s 1969 vision was for Canada to contribute 0.7 per cent of its Gross National Income (GNI) to international assistance. This goal, adopted in 1970 by the UN for all developed countries, defined Canada as a “helpful fixer” on the global stage.

This analysis examines how the November 2025 budget cuts dismantle that legacy.

• Setting the clock back six decades: By 2029, Canada’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) relative to the size of our economy (Gross National Income–GNI) is projected to fall to 0.17 per cent—the lowest since 1964, five years before Pearson laid out his challenge.
• The $3.8 billion funding cliff: Total ODA will plummet from $9.9 billion in 2024-25 to $6.1 billion in 2028-29, even as Canada’s economy grows.
• The “Dollar for Dollar” swap to defence: Cuts in ODA and almost every other department are being diverted to fund much higher defence spending. While ODA falls to 0.17 per cent, Canada has already hit the two per cent NATO target and committed to reaching five per cent in the coming decades.
• Loss of key spending items:
  • Climate finance: International Climate Finance Initiative will drop from $846 million in 2025-26 to zero the following year.
  • Program funding for international development: GAC will cut $862 million by 2028-29 from its contributions to international development. Projects will be sunset without renewal or extension.
  • Refugee & asylum assistance: The program helping to house asylum seekers in Canada’s big cities will be eliminated by 2027-28. Settlement assistance spending will also fall.
  • Ukrainian aid: Non-military aid for Ukraine was an important contributor to ODA in 2024-25 but dried up the following year.

The next three years of planned cuts will fundamentally shift Canada’s foreign policy focus away from peacekeeping and development to self-interested trade and defence. It is the end of Pearson’s dream.

Introduction

Canada has a long history as the world’s helpful fixer. As an honest broker in international conflicts, peacekeeper, contributor to lower-income countries—not because it benefits us through trade, but because it’s the right thing to do. This international role was strongly shaped by the 1960s and 1970s under Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.

Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his international role in helping resolve the Suez Canal crisis.

He created the United Nations Emergency Force, a peacekeeping operation.

The 1969 Pearson commission resolved that Canada should be contributing 0.7 per cent of our economy to international assistance.

Pearson’s development goal of targeting Official Development Assistance (ODA) to our Gross National Income (GNI) became not only Canada’s goal but also the UN’s official target for all developed countries in 1970. With this clear objective in sight, the world made immense progress in reducing extreme poverty, improving literacy rates, increasing vaccination, and reducing child mortality, among many other life-changing indicators.

Despite these achievements, the federal government has been taking measures to undo these commitments. Budget documents now allow us to calculate Canada’s projected ODA for 2029, 60 years since Pearson committed Canada’s international aid. Incredibly, in 2029, we’ll be further away from Pearson’s pledge than in 1969. The federal government now plans to cut Canada’s ratio of development assistance to GNI to its lowest level since 1964, setting development goals back by six decades.

Development assistance to plummet

The cuts baked into the last two federal budgets will halve our already low ratio of international aid to the size of our economy from 0.31 per cent in 2024-25 to just 0.17 per cent of GNI in 2028-29. The last time it was this low was in 1964, when it stood at 0.17 per cent of GNI.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of these cuts. This represents a fundamental shift in Canada’s foreign policy and outlook on the world.

By contrast, Canada reached the NATO goal of two per cent of GNI this year (not 0.17 per cent which is what ODA will be in 2028-29) and has committed to increasing it to reach five per cent over the coming decades.

In addition to reversing advances in many areas of development—putting people’s lives and livelihoods at risk—cuts to ODA would greatly weaken Canada’s ability to achieve its goals internationally. Many of Canada’s security priorities cannot be achieved through military means; efforts to diversify trade depend on engagement with non-traditional partners, where ODA supports the building of economic and institutional foundations. And soft power, with corresponding influence in multilateral spaces, would be diminished.

The major reductions in international aid, as well as in refugee support here in Canada, are explicitly getting diverted to much higher defence spending, in a roughly dollar-for-dollar switch. This systemic break will convert Canada from a helpful fixer concerned with the development of lower-income countries to a country where international relations are self-interested, based on trade and the doubling of its defence department (military spending does not count as official development assistance).

Some countries have achieved Pearson’s challenge of hitting 0.7 per cent of GNI, including Norway, Denmark and Sweden, with Germany just a hair away. Canada was closest to hitting the 0.7 per cent target in the 1970s, just after Pearson declared his challenge. In the mid-1970s, Canada bested 0.5 per cent of GNI in 1975, then roughly maintained this level into the 1980s.

Since that period, Canada’s commitment to development assistance has waned, never again breaking through 0.4 per cent of GNI after the mid-1990s. However, we did come close in 2022 and 2023 for several short-term reasons.

The first was major non-military support for Ukraine in 2024-25. While military support does not qualify as development assistance, non-military support for general government functions does qualify and Ukraine is classified as a lower-middle income country by the OECD. Support for it qualifies as official development assistance. The second short-term reason was that Canada embarked on a five-year climate finance initiative that culminated in 2025-26 and then ended. Third, the federal government provided a one-time transfer to Quebec to support asylum seekers in 2025-26. Support for asylum seekers and refugees in their first year in Canada qualifies as ODA.

By 2026-27, all of these ad hoc drivers of development assistance end. These declines will be combined with the billions in cuts from the 2025 federal budget that will mean a historic decline in development assistance. The net result is a plummeting of ODA from $9.9 billion in 2024-25 to a projected $6.1 billion in 2028-29. Compared to the size of our economy, which is predicted to grow over that period, Canada’s ODA to GNI ratio will also plummet to a historically low 0.17 per cent.

Main funding sources for Official Development Assistance

Official Development Assistance (ODA) contains transfers to support development in low- and middle-income countries from GAC.  There are also other categories of expenditures across several key departments that sustained ODA in 2024-25 and will lead to its rapid decline in subsequent years due to budget 2025 CER cuts.

Global Affairs Canada

Despite programs from other departments, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is the largest contributor to Canada’s ODA spending. in 2024-25, it contributed $5.6 billion to our ODA. This is almost entirely due to GAC administering Canada’s International Development Assistance funding and contributions to various international bodies.

However, major declines are coming for this department in the next three years.

ODA-eligible funding from GAC now looks set to decline by $1.9 billion between 2024-25 to 2028-29, when it will fall from $5.6 billion in 2024-25 to $3.7 billion in 2028-29.

GAC was the main department responsible for the international Climate Finance initiative funding from 2021 through 2026, although Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) also received a small portion of it. This funding was worth $846 million in 2025-26 and is set to drop to zero in 2026-27 and beyond. There are indications that some portion of this funding may be renewed later in 2026, but that hasn’t been incorporated into GAC or ECCC 2026-27 departmental plans—to date, concrete funding commitments haven’t been made. The end of the climate finance funding is an important reason for the overall ODA funding drop at GAC and is responsible for basically all of the funding drop at ECCC.

Over and above this, GAC has to cut another $862 million a year by 2028-29 as part of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review (CER) introduced in November 2025. The CER proposes three areas for its cuts: International Financial Institutions (IFI), global health programming and bilateral development.

The IFI payments will fall from $250.4 million in 2025-26 to $207.4 million in 2028-29—a $43 million cut. However, this is a very small part of the $862 million cut from the CER. The remainder is supposed to come from global health programming and bilateral transfers, but these are not well detailed.

To compound the situation, in its latest report on transfers, GAC provides much less detail than it has in previous years. It no longer provides projections on disaggregated transfers separating bilateral, multilateral and partnership with Canadians funding lines.

However, we can use previous years of reporting to attempt to better understand where these cuts will come from. What we can determine from the latest data is that the cuts are coming almost entirely from International Development Assistance “contributions”. In the transfers, technical language “contributions” generally go to NGOs and are for specific time-limited programs, versus “grant” transfers, which are non-conditional funding that are delivered year after year at a pre-determined level.

The “contributions” for “international development assistance” are set to plummet from $1.9 billion in 2025-26 to only $566 million in 2028-29. Roughly half of this decline will be in international climate finance, as discussed above. The other will likely be sunsetting almost all multilateral programming contributions and many of the bilateral ones.

The “contributions” transfers line has always had a steep sunsetting profile. Contributions in federal government parlance represents specific programs funded in a short-term way. In the past, old programs would end and be replaced by new programs or extensions on existing programs. As a result, the predicted declines in government reporting would also be pushed out and never come to pass. However, it now looks like a majority of the program-based “contribution” funding will be allowed to expire and nothing will replace it and no extensions will be offered. This has nothing to do with the merit of these programs; they will simply be the victims of CER cuts.

Last year’s departmental report on transfers had massive reductions of multilateral contributions, from $653 million to $72 million between 2025-26 and 2027-28. A 90 per cent reduction in funding is likely to significantly affect NGOs that are the main recipients of this type of funding. Individual programs would reach their conclusion in a year or two and not be renewed, therefore “saving” GAC money.

As funding levels fall, so does the administration required to support it. In the latest reporting, administrative costs run at 10.2 per cent of the funding itself (and is included in the GAC ODA contributions, see the methodology). Hundreds of jobs will be lost as billions less are spent in these areas.

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the crown corporation that reports to the Minister of International Development, will also face a $23 million cut under the CER as its funding will fall from $192 million in 2025-26 to $170 million by 2028-29. This $23 million loss at IDRC reduces ODA by the same amount and is in addition to the losses described above at GAC.

The Department of Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)

The next largest contributor to ODA is the department of Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). In 2024-25, it contributed $1.96 billion to Official Development Assistance.

The first year of support for refugees in Canada counts towards ODA and IRCC administers those supports. The provinces and territories also contribute to supporting refugees in their first year in Canada through health care costs and, in some cases, income supports.

I’ve discussed the IRCC cuts in much more detail here and here. In this section, we’ll analyze them as they relate to development assistance. ODA from IRCC is set to be cut in half, from $1.96 billion in 2024-25 to $881 million by 2028-29. There are two main reasons for this drop.

The first reason for the decline is simply the elimination of the interim housing assistance program, which provides support to the four cities that house almost all otherwise unhoused refugees and asylum seekers: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Peel. This program reimbursed almost all expenditures these cities incurred to house refugees and asylum seekers. However, it will be eliminated by 2027-28. This phase out had been on the books for several years, but the CER put a more abrupt end to it. At the conclusion of this program, it will be up to those cities to house asylum seekers at their full cost and those municipal costs aren’t included as ODA, even though they probably should be.

The second major reason for the decline was a one-time grant to Quebec worth $581 million to support asylum seekers in 2024-25. It was a one-year transfer, boosting the ODA in that year.

There are several other programs that will experience declines in their transfers between 2024-25 and 2028-29. The Resettlement Assistance Program, which aids refugees, will see its transfers cut from $333 million in 2025-26 to $283 million in 2028-29. A small portion of the settlement program is also ODA eligible— and so the cuts of a third facing this large program will also impact ODA. The Interim Federal Health Program grows somewhat over this period, offsetting some ODA losses.

IRCC is attempting to significantly cut back asylum seekers in future years. It can’t legally cap the number of asylum seekers, but it can make it much harder for people to arrive in Canada who might claim asylum. If this number declines, as projected, that will mean a much lower contribution from the provinces to support refugees in their first year. The imputed value for provincial and territorial contributions to ODA will decline, as outlined in Table 1.

Finance Canada

The third largest contributor to Canada’s ODA is Finance Canada, at just over a billion dollars in 2024-25. Finance Canada is responsible for the Canadian government’s debt repayment on behalf of low-income countries and Canada’s contribution to the International Development Association at the World Bank.

The reason for the drop after 2024-25 was a massive one-time loan to support Ukraine’s government, pushing up the ODA total that year. Canada, through the Department of Finance Canada, provided $2.9 billion in loans to Ukraine, of which $460.5 million counted as ODA in 2024-25, as it was a grant equivalent. This loan was not for military purchases, as these are not ODA eligible. It went to help Ukraine’s government function.

In the following year and afterwards, Finance Canada’s contributions return to the usual debt repayment and World Bank contribution level.

Conclusion

Canada has moved a long way from Pearson’s dream for some time. The ending of ad hoc support for Ukraine and international climate finance, combined with substantial new cuts from the 2025 federal budget, has revealed the naked truth: Canada has vacated the development assistance universe. The next three years of planned cuts will fundamentally shift Canada’s foreign policy focus away from peacekeeping and development to self-interested trade and defence. It is the end of Pearson’s dream.

Methodology

The approach in this analysis starts from the Statistical Report on International Assistance 2024-2025, the most recent version of this report available at the time of writing. It then replicates the methodology for the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) definition of Official Development Assistance contributions by department. It does this by examining each department’s actual transfer payments from Volume III of the 2025 Public Accounts of Canada, which also cover the 2024-25 fiscal years. A set of inclusion rates are determined by transfer program, which are outlined in Table 2 for what proportion of a given transfer program is ODA eligible. If a transfer for GAC, IRCC or Finance Canada does not appear in Table 2, then its ODA inclusion rate is zero. The inclusion rates for most programs are drawn from the DAC list of ODA-eligible international organisations and their coefficients for core contributions in 2026.

Those ODA inclusion rates are then applied to the 2026-27 departmental plan projections for 2025-26 to 2028-29, specifically to the details on transfer payment programs in the supplementary information tables for the departments of GAC, IRCC and Finance Canada. For IDRC, reductions due to the CER simply subtract the CER reduction values from budget 2025 from the Statistical Report on International Assistance values in 2024-25 and match the fiscal years. IDRC does not produce a departmental plan because it’s a crown corporation. The ECCC ODA contributions are changed from their 2024-25 values by removing the International Climate Finance Program that was winding down. It is being wound down in this analysis based on its existing schedule.

GAC also includes some administrative costs on top of its transfers, as part of its ODA contribution, something within the DAC definition for ODA. This is estimated at 10.2 per cent of ODA-eligible transfers in this analysis. This is the ratio from the Statistical Report on International Assistance 2024-2025, Section A for that year. There are three lines in the Statistical Report we’re counting as administration: “International Security and Political Affairs Branch”, “Strategy, Policy and Public Affairs Branch” as well as the “Operations and management”. Adding these three lines up we get (204.3+6.07+310.84) = 521.21 million as the administration costs in 2024-25. GAC’s total ODA was $5,603.47 and so 521.21/(5603.47-521.21) = 10.2 per cent. As development assistance experiences declines in future years, this 10.2 per cent ratio will be maintained, also scaling down the administrative costs.

The line “Cost of refugees in Canada (first year): Provinces and territories” in Table 1 is an imputed value based on estimated first-year costs of refugees and asylum seekers. It is imputed based on the provincial/territorial average health care costs and social assistance rates. In this case, the total spent is adjusted to reflect the difference in projected asylum claimants from the November 2025 plan for 2026-28 levels versus the number accepted in 2024—the year of reference for the Statistical Report on International Assistance.

A major part of IRCC’s ODA contribution is the Interim Federal Health Program, which is not considered a transfer; instead, it exists as professional services on the operations side. To include this program, the Parliamentary Budget Office costing of the program is used, although adjusted for the new co-payments introduced in budget 2025. Each of the three components of the program have different inclusion rates, with the “Asylum Claimants and Others” segment only including 41 per cent of its costs as ODA. The reason why 41 per cent is used is that only the first year of costs for asylum seekers can be claimed as ODA and 41 per cent of asylum claims were under a year old, with the rest being over a year old and therefore ineligible for ODA. Canada’s submission to the OECD on its ODA contributions from IRCC is used for the other ODA inclusion rates.

Table 1 outlines the actual ODA amounts, by department, from the Statistical Report on International Assistance for 2024-25 and then it utilizes the above methodology to project ODA in future years. Only the values for the provinces’ and territories’ refugee cost, GAC, Finance Canada, IRCC, IDRC and ECCC are changed. All other departments are assumed to continue at the same level as they were in 2024-25. For the other departments, their programs are small and won’t to affect the overall conclusions of this analysis. Moreover, their ODA eligible transfers are much more difficult to determine from departmental reporting.

Future GNI is projected forwards to match the projected growth in nominal GDP from budget 2025.

Figures 1 and 2, above, are derivatives of Table 1 below, and the methodology described here.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Darren Seller-Peritz for his comments on an earlier draft of this analysis.

The post The end of Pearson’s dream: The devastating impact of federal cuts on international aid appeared first on CCPA.

New proposals for the construction of these enormous energy-consuming facilities are now met with immediate community concern and even outright opposition. A major reason for so much of this skepticism is the data centre industry’s dismal record of transparency in the communities where they operate. 

The industry is notorious for demanding local governments sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) to prevent local officials from revealing key details about the proposals to construct these facilities. 

Essential information, such as estimated energy or water consumption, tax incentives and subsidies—even the very identity of the company building the facility—are withheld from residents in the name of protecting proprietary business information. Even important information that is made public by the industry—such as job creation estimates—are often inflated or revised over the course of development. 

Add in the industry’s penchant for paying off local officials, and it is little wonder why communities evince so little trust in the promises made by AI data centre developers and their boosters. 

Recognizing the damage this secrecy has done to public trust, Microsoft has even pledged to end its use of nondisclosure agreements with local governments.

Given this reality, it is all the more baffling how little transparency and democratic accountability there has been in regards to the newly proposed “largest AI data centre in the country” here in Saskatchewan. 

Questions have only multiplied since the proposal for the construction of the 300 MW facility in the rural municipality of Sherwood was revealed in February. This sense of confusion over the project has been compounded by the unusual actions of the RM of Sherwood’s municipal government, which has only fed public suspicion. 

People took notice when a majority of the RM of Sherwood’s council resigned in March. No reason has been given to the public for the mass resignations, so we are left to wonder, what—if any—link this may have to the proposed data centre. With the RM’s council bereft of members, it was unable to achieve a quorum to conduct regular business. 

This led to the provincial government stepping in to appoint four new members—none of whom reside in the RM of Sherwood. Major decisions on the AI data centre proposal set for April 20th will now be decided by a council the majority, of which are unelected. 

Moreover, lack of public information regarding the agenda of the April 20th meeting, as well as the process to accept delegations, has meant that many concerned residents who had hoped to speak against the proposal will not be heard. 

City of Regina Councillor Shanon Zachidniak had hoped to speak at the April 20th meeting, only to learn she had missed the seven-day deadline (The City of Regina’s deadline for delegations is 48hrs). Zachidniak wants to encourage Sherwood’s council to table the AI data centre proposal until the RM holds elections in November. 

The lack of public information, coupled with the lack of democratic legitimacy, makes the whole process look rushed, in Zachidniak’s opinion. 

“If this project truly is so beneficial to the community,” Zachidniak said, “there’s nothing to lose by taking the time to slow things down to make sure an appropriate process is followed, including providing opportunities for open and transparent public engagement.”

Any decisions made by this current council will be shrouded in questions of legitimacy, especially as many in the public feel they have been purposely left in the dark throughout this process. 

As Erik Bonds and Viktor Newby write, “local democracy means more than elections. It also requires properly informing the public, nurturing meaningful discussions, and giving community members an opportunity to influence decisions that will directly impact them.” 

Whether intentional or not, the process for deliberating on this important issue looks compromised and any decision that results from this process will look so as well. 

How this decision is perceived will not only affect this project, but future projects as well. Business and government have the choice of building public trust or public opposition. So far, this process is only building the latter. 

The post Regina’s AI data centre has a democracy deficit appeared first on CCPA.

On the first day of the war, as news broke of a U.S. and Israeli attack on a school in the southern Iranian city of Minab that killed more than 150 students, Carney did not condemn the assault. Instead, in an official statement, he said: “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

This position came despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s and his Department of War’s assertion in June 2025 that all of Iran’s nuclear facilities had been destroyed. Moreover, the International Atomic Energy Agency has never confirmed that Iran was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

In the days that followed, while visiting East Asia and Australia, Carney reiterated, “We will stand by our allies.” His criticism of the war, when it came, was muted and limited to concerns about the U.S. lack of consultation with allies and international institutions.

Carney’s support for the U.S.-Israeli colonial war comes at a time when public opinion in Canada is moving in the opposite direction. A Leger poll in March found that nearly six in 10 Canadians (58 per cent) oppose the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran, while only 25 per cent support it.

When a majority of Canadians oppose this war, the question is whether Carney and his government will listen to the people or continue to support a U.S. president who has repeatedly expressed interest in annexing Canada and annihilating Iranian civilization. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, America’s partner in this war, is also wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Carney’s record is not encouraging, as the experience of Gaza and the West Bank suggests that Canada’s political leadership has consistently ignored public demands.

Over two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, human rights groups and anti-war activists repeatedly called on the federal government to halt all direct and indirect military support for Israel.

On March 11, the Arms Embargo Now Coalition condemned the Liberal government after the House of Commons voted down Bill C-233, the No More Loopholes Act, that would have closed a major loophole allowing Canadian military exports to reach Israel if they first transit through the United States.

Calling the vote a “litmus test,” Rachel Small, a spokesperson for the Arms Embargo Now campaign, said the Carney government had an opportunity to align arms exports with international law and human rights, but “instead chose to align itself with Trump … fueling Israel’s wars.”

Now, once again, Carney and his administration are standing with whom they call their “allies” instead of their own people. The “ally” Carney invokes most often is Donald Trump, who launched a tariff war against Canada and repeatedly referred to the Canadian prime ministers as his “governor.”

Given this, Canadians may reasonably ask what Carney’s response would be if Trump’s threats against Canada turn into action.

Carney has, so far, supported U.S. actions in Iran, including the assassination of its political and military leadership. He also called the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro “good news”. And on Cuba, he has remained silent about the U.S. fuel blockade, despite its role in sparking a humanitarian crisis on the island.

What image of Canada is he projecting globally by affirming colonial wars and genocides?

Carney and his team should not forget that history will judge the events unfolding today. Just as we now judge the genocide during World War II and the silence of those who failed to act. Standing on the right side of history is not always easy. But it is what many Canadians expect from their government.

Canada would not be alone. Spain has already demonstrated that it is possible to oppose U.S. colonial policies. France did not allow ​Israel to use ‌its airspace to transport American weapons ​to be used ​in the war against ⁠Iran.

These examples show that, at a time of growing danger in global politics, alternatives exist. The Carney government can choose to take a clear stance, rather than supporting the actions that have brought widespread destruction . Condemning those who started a war that has killed thousands of civilians and devastated infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza should not be too much to ask.

The post Canadians oppose the Middle East war. The federal government doesn’t appeared first on CCPA.

It does so by using the resurrection of the Northlander Passenger Train as a vehicle to launch the Northlander Rideshare Pilot, which introduces gig work to the transportation sector alongside the Northlander train line, from Toronto to Cochrane.  In consultations, Provincial staff invoked the example of Innisfil, where municipally-subsidized Uber rides have until recently replaced dedicated public transit, raising a concern that the Province could expand ride-hail subsidies along the train corridor rather than investing in public transit.

This pilot may become the model for standardized rideshare regulations across the entire province by 2027 announced in the Province’s 2025 Fall Economic Statement.

The Northlander Rideshare Pilot relates closely to previous legislative changes made by the government, most notably the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act (DPWRA), passed in 2022 and in effect since July 2005. The DPWRA allows digital platforms, mostly U.S. corporate giants like Uber, to circumvent Ontario’s minimum hourly wage by paying workers only the minimum wage for so-called “engaged time,” meaning only for the time workers spend performing a service. 

For rideshare drivers, the time waiting for a ride request remains uncompensated, and companies conveniently transfer  risks and operating costs to the worker. Research by University of Toronto scholars analyzing 84 million Uber trips in Toronto over one year found that about 58 per cent of drivers’ gross earnings (before expenses) fall below the minimum wage and that, after paying for expenses, drivers’ median hourly earnings in 2024 were reduced to just $5.97. The DPWRA, in short, represents a backhanded rollback of Ontario’s statutory hourly minimum wage for a growing number of workers in this province who rely on digital platforms to earn a living, and a very profitable law for digital platforms, especially Uber.

Race to the bottom

Northlander Rideshare Pilot officially aims to provide rural residents with transportation options to and from the stops of the Northlander Passenger Train, and to replace a plethora of existing municipal rideshare regulations along the way with a single set of standardized rules starting in the summer of 2026.  

After a one-year pilot, the provincial government intends to roll out a final framework across the entire province. By enabling Private Transportation Companies (PTCs) to provide these services, the government not only exposes prospective rideshare drivers to below minimum wage earnings, but also undermines existing Canadian taxi companies, who will have to continue operating under a much more rigorous set of rules, and risks displacing existing local public transit projects or foreclosing future public transit projects. 

After Ontario’s Fall Economic Statement, we didn’t hear much about the next steps for the province’s ground transportation review until last month.

In March 2026, the Ministry of Transportation (MTO), alongside the Ministries of Municipal Affairs and Housing and Rural Affairs, contacted “key stakeholders” to announce consultations with municipalities and other stakeholders on the provincial standardization of rideshare requirements. These stakeholder consultations consisted of three-hour-long consultations, held remotely over four days and were led by Cabinet Office staff. Immediately following the final consultation, MTO posted the pilot proposal to the Ontario Regulatory Registry, seeking final public input on the Northern Rideshare Pilot, before launching the pilot in the spring/early summer of 2026.

The inclusion of the Northern Rideshare Pilot in the Fall Economic Statement, its fast-paced consultation and implementation, and the fact that this project is led by Cabinet Office staff suggest it is a priority for the minister (and/or the premier). Uber, it is worth mentioning, also hired Rubicon, the government relations firm led by Premier Ford’s three-time campaign manager, just months before the announcement. 

Uber’s regulatory ask was quickly achieved by linking Uber’s interests to an already existing government initiative, in this case via the “inclusion of the vehicle-for-hire sector as a key stakeholder in Enabling Opportunity: Ontario’s Rural Economic Development Strategy,” as Rubicon put its client’s request in Ontario’s lobbyist registry. Exactly how to hitch Uber to this government commitment towards improving economic opportunities in Ontario’s rural communities must have been the question, and hitching Uber to the planned resurrection of the Northlander Passenger Train was the answer. 

Uber’s corporate influence, hidden behind a thin veil of government process, doesn’t stop along the Northlander Train line: the final objective is to roll out Uber’s preferred regulatory model across the province.

Expanding precarious labour practices

The province should not proceed with the Northern Rideshare Pilot without amending and fixing the DPWRA to ensure that large U.S. corporations won’t undercut existing local transportation providers who adhere to Ontario’s hourly minimum wage, Employment Standards Act and existing, more stringent and safer rules for providing essentially the same service, i.e. transporting the travelling public. Other gig economy offerings, such Uber Eats, can follow once a platform has become established in a region; food delivery platforms notoriously pay workers even less than ride-hailing gigs, while reducing the already razor-thin margins of local restaurants. 

Meanwhile, conditions in Ontario’s ride-hailing industry continue to deteriorate.  The aforementioned University of Toronto wage analysis of 84 million Uber trips was analyzing data from before Uber introduced so-called “upfront pricing,” which uses algorithms to determine the lowest pay a driver accepts on the one hand, and the highest fare a customer agrees to on the other. Since the introduction of Uber’s algorithmic pricing in October of 2024, drivers have reported, and data has shown, that drivers earn even less, while consumers pay more, effectively allowing the company to increase its take rate per trip. Spreading algorithmic pricing completely disassociates drivers’ pay from previously common calculations based on time and distance, leading to even less transparency, accountability and oversight in this sector. In the next consultation following our intervention, staff made it clear that “broader discussions on the oversight of gig work” were “parked for now.”

Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation is not following Quebec’s provincial regulatory regime, which has introduced a level of government oversight over PTC companies unrivalled in Canada, but instead is largely following Toronto’s outsourced rideshare regulations. What is perhaps surprising is that Toronto has been “piloting” these regulations for about 10 years and is perhaps the best-understood market in Canada for the impact that Uber has had on congestion, emissions, drivers’ pay, and public transit—all well documented by City of Toronto-initiated research. 

Why do we need  to repeat an experiment whose failures have been clearly documented? 

The province is using Toronto as its model because Uber has shaped Toronto’s regulatory system in a way that benefits the company at the expense of the competition, the incumbent taxi industry and public transit. Heavy lobbying between 2015 and 2016, and a receptive local government under then-mayor John Tory, led to the deregulation of the vehicle-for-hire sector, including the removal of emission controls, driver training, and fare caps, creating an Uber-friendly environment. And despite current mayor Olivia Chow’s attempts to fix the sector, Uber has gone on the offensive. In October 2023 after reports of Uber’s ultra precarious pay became public, Uber threatened to sue the City of Toronto and waged a misleading public relations campaign against the City. The city council rescinded its attempt and has not touched the file again ever since.

Outsourcing regulatory oversight 

What distinguishes Toronto’s rideshare regulations from other attempts to regulate digital platforms is that it places PTC companies like Uber in charge of governing the sector. The city of Toronto issues a business license to a PTC company and delegates licensing and screening, including confirmation of insurance, safety certificates, driver training, and vehicle inspections, to digital platforms that act as intermediaries between drivers and the regulator. 

Rideshare drivers in Toronto often hold multiple ride-hailing licenses, including Uber, Lyft, and HOVR. Each time, a prospective driver will have to pay a license fee, undergo a criminal background check, and jump through the same hoops to work on different digital platforms. This cumbersome and costly process increases the odds that a prospective rideshare driver will work for Uber at the expense of competitors, including Canadian rideshare alternatives like HOVR.Since Uber captured the regulatory process in Toronto, the company has become the dominant player, effectively setting the market’s fare and pay practices. 

Quebec, on the other hand, licenses drivers directly, issuing one single transferrable license per driver that a driver can use to work for any legal PTC in Quebec, Ontario appears to follow Uber’s preferred model, which means that significant oversight, safety and accountability will not lie with the regulator, but with the company. The regulatory moat Uber has created in Toronto might well be scaled up across the entire province before long.

Government comms claim that the provincial government is acting for rural Ontarians, while it is actually paving the way for a U.S. corporation to disrupt rural communities, pay workers below the minimum wage, and undermine existing local alternatives such as Canadian ride-share platforms, local taxi companies, or public transit providers. 

Developing best practices in rideshare regulation

The premier and the minister have not wasted a chance to present Ontario as the first province in Canada to tackle the low-wage problem in the gig economy by demanding that digital platforms pay the minimum wage. But rather than helping the growing number of gig workers in the province, Ford paved the way for legal exploitation, and the below-hourly minimum pay these platforms rely on—and that was before algorithmic pricing changed pay and fare calculations to Uber’s advantage once again.

Provincial regulation of this sector, in theory, could be a real improvement. Not every Ontario municipality or town has the resources to develop regulations, establish a registry, and enforce them. For the province to create a central registry for rideshare drivers and issue a single, transferable license so they can work for any legal PTC would make sense. The same goes for using a system, like in Quebec, that directly collects trip and fare data from electronic meters. Such a system would greatly enhance provincial oversight over passenger, driver and road safety, as well as consumer protection. It may also force PTC companies to treat workers better, or else they will move to a different app.

We have seen some positive developments in several other provinces. In a different digital platform space, the B.C. government passed Bill 35, the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, which came into effect in 2024, and operates a central registry for hosts of short-term rentals such as AirBnBs. If a homeowner or tenant wants to rent their own home on a digital platform, they must apply to the province for a single short-term rental license. Hosts can use this license to advertise their home on any legal short-term rental platform. B.C., in other words, does not delegate oversight of the sector to digital platforms, and hosts don’t have to pay for platform-specific licenses. 

Quebec passed Bill 17, An Act Respecting Remunerated Passenger Transportation By Automobile, in 2019, which requires drivers to be licensed by the government and brings PTCs and rideshare drivers under provincial rule, setting safety, insurance, fare transparency, and accessibility standards. In MB, the province just introduced Bill 49, the Business Practices Amendment Act, which treats “personalized algorithmic pricing” as an unfair business practice. Taken together, there are provincial examples of how to provincially regulate digital platforms and PTCs to protect workers and consumers alike.

Given the Ford government’s track record on gig work and digital platforms, we can say it is either clueless, acts against the interests of Ontario’s workers and Canadian businesses, or both. The Northlander Rideshare Pilot is just the latest reminder of that.

The post Ontario is getting ready to hand Uber a massive gift  appeared first on CCPA.

• Private school spending is increasing faster than public school per-pupil spending in BC, when analyzed on inflation-adjusted per-pupil terms: Between 1999-2000 and 2025-26, B.C. spending on public schools increased by 32 per cent compared to 50 per cent for private schools.
• B.C. public school spending as a share of GDP will decline from 1.96 per cent in 2016-17 to 1.89 per cent in 2025-26. 
• At the same, public spending on private schools will remain stable at 0.14 per cent of GDP from 2016-17 to 2025-26.
• B.C. started subsidizing private schools in 1977 and has continued ever since.
• There is no justifiable reason—financially or ethically—to keep funding private schools at a time when public schools are facing real spending cuts by the provincial government.

There’s little relief in store for B.C.’s public K-12 education system following the B.C. budget. 

In fact, along with other critical parts of the care economy, including health care and social services, B.C.’s K-12 spending plan is a doozy.

Fiscal year 2025-26 will close off with real spending cuts for B.C.’s public schools—with an increase of only 0.6 per cent in nominal terms (or $46 million) (Figure 1). This falls far below the rate of inflation and other cost drivers, including wages.

Budget 2026-27 offers $188 million for public schools, which translates into a 2.6 per cent annual increase over the previous year in absolute terms. Better than the previous year but still a far cry from what is needed to reduce class size and bring more supports into schools. The annual funding increases in 2025-26 and 2026-27 are among the lowest of the last 10 years.

Although the absolute spending on public schools remains much greater than private schools ($8.4 billion versus $604 million in 2026-27), annual funding increases for private schools over the last decade have outpaced public schools. Over the last decade (2016-17 to 2025-26), B.C. has subsidized private schools to the tune of $4.8 billion. 

In six of the last 10 years (2017-18 to 2026-27), the rate of growth in public spending on private schools increased faster than spending on public schools in raw terms (Figure 1).

This is cause for concern.

To put this in perspective, at $604 million annually, B.C. funds private schools at roughly the same level of inclusive education for eight of the largest Metro Vancouver school districts combined (Surrey, Delta, Richmond, Vancouver, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Burnaby, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows). Imagine how far more than half a billion dollars could go supporting smaller classrooms and adding more educational assistants to support students.

Private school real per-pupil spending increasing faster than public school spending

B.C. started subsidizing private schools in 1977 and has continued ever since. If private schools spend the same or less, per student, relative to neighbouring public schools, they receive 50 per cent of the public school per-student funding. If they spend more, they get an allocation of 35 per cent of the public school per-student funding.

As market-oriented policy shifts and cuts to public education in the 2000s encouraged private school enrolment, more and more public dollars went to subsidizing elite private schools—with tuition that only well-off families will be able to afford.

When analyzed on inflation-adjusted per-pupil terms, private school spending is increasing faster than public school per-pupil spending (Table 1). Between 1999-2000 and 2025-26, B.C. spending on public schools increased from $9,638 per pupil to $12,702 per pupil—an increase of 32 per cent. At the same time, private school real per-pupil spending increased from $4,027 to $6,058—or by 50 per cent. Public spending for private schools is increasing faster than public school spending on a real per-pupil basis.

As well, the gap is narrowing between private school real per-pupil spending as a share of public school spending. In 1999-2000, private school spending represented 42 per cent of public school real per-pupil spending. By 2025-26, this had jumped to 48 per cent. 

Public subsidies for private schools are increasing faster than investment in public school students after adjusting for inflation and enrolment. 

Declining investment in public education—while public investment remains stable for private schools

There are additional ways to analyze B.C.’s underinvestment in public education relative to the province’s capacity to invest in critical public services like education.

When measured as a share of B.C.’s economy, investment in the public education system has declined over the past decade. 

In 2016-17, B.C. spent 1.96 per cent of GDP on the public K-12 system (Figure 2). This is expected to drop to 1.89 per cent of GDP in 2025-26. At the same, public spending on private schools held steady at 0.14 per cent of GDP from 2016-17 to 2025-26.

Increasing private school enrolment is a reflection of an under-resourced public system

Since the B.C. government started funding private schools—and as the province continues to underinvest in the public system—private school enrollment continues to climb.

Between 1999-2000 and 2025-26, private school enrolment as a share of the total B.C. K-12 enrolment has increased from nine per cent to 13 per cent. Enrolment in public schools declined from 91 per cent to 87 per cent. One in eight students now attend a private school in 2025—up from one in 11 in 1999.

Stop funding private schools, especially when public schools face austerity

There is no justifiable reason—financially or ethically—to keep funding private schools at a time when public schools are facing real spending cuts by the provincial government. Funding private schools contributes to widening economic inequality. 

Families that can afford annual tuition of $37,300 at elite schools do not need to be subsidized by families who can barely afford housing and basic living expenses—to say nothing of the lack of supports in public school classrooms for students with disabilities.

This is an indefensible education policy at a time when the B.C. government must be investing in the potential of all students—and not diverting public dollars to subsidize the wealthiest in society.

The post Public funding for B.C.’s private schools is indefensible appeared first on CCPA.

So, what is the confusion all about?

Debate over the original Online Harms Act (Bill C-63—a.k.a. the OHA) revealed a recurring fault line in Canadian digital policy. Specifically, the central fear has been that the legislation would enable state surveillance of Canadians. This concern has returned with An Act respecting lawful access (Bill C-22)—notably via Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair who regularly appears before Canadian Parliamentary committees to provide expert testimony on digital policy, copyright, privacy, and online regulation in such capacity.

Geist’s framed his concerns in a blog post

Buried in the second half of Bill C-22 is a provision granting the government the power to require “core providers” to retain categories of metadata, including transmission data, for up to one year. This is mandatory metadata retention that would require telecom and electronic service providers to store information about the communications of all their users, regardless of whether those users are suspected of anything. It is one of the most privacy invasive tools a government can deploy and the international experience suggests that there are major privacy risks.

While well‑intentioned, policy frameworks like these reflect early‑internet ideals (openness, decentralization, minimal regulation) that, in today’s concentrated platform economy, tend to reinforce incumbent power thus aligning his position with major technology firms at the level of policy outcomes. In this particular instance, his criticism overlooks the fact that these companies already retain comparable categories of metadata under PIPEDA.

In addition to this resurgent concern about privacy in relation to the new bill (C-22), there has also been talk about reviving the OHA since at least December 2025, after it died when Parliament was dissolved in early 2025.

These acts are not the primary tools the Canadian government uses to acquire or operationalise online data. They target specific concerns and allow strategic access to defined data. Critics often claim that the federal government is creating a surveillance state. Unfortunately, that state already exists—but it’s not because of these legal mechanisms.

Is the threat real?

The OHA was supposed to help fight online harms like hate, gender-based violence, child exploitation, and non-consensual image sharing. Similarly, Bill C-22 looks to modernize criminal investigation tools and thus help law enforcement and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) protect citizens and respond to threats such as human trafficking, child exploitation, and extortion.

While vigilance about privacy and civil liberties is essential, this argument misidentifies the primary sources of digital surveillance and obscures the structural realities of the online environment.

Arguments of this nature rely on an implicit assumption: that state regulation is the dominant threat to privacy. In reality, the dominant threats arise from unregulated or weakly regulated private data extraction, compounded by foreign jurisdictional reach. This benefits service providers that also function as data brokers, including Meta and Microsoft.

While Microsoft, for example, is not a registered data broker, its December 2025 privacy statement notes that it collects “data from you, through our interactions with you and through [… its] products”, and to “provide,” and “improve and develop” its products, as well as to “advertise and market to you.” It also shares this information with third parties. This tension around terms is clear to people working in the space of digital safety.

Lisa LeVasseur, the Executive Director of Internet Safety Labs, notes that definitional ambiguity allows industry to relabel practices to evade regulation. In her own assessment, she uses the term “data fencers”, as the companies doing this are often operating in a grey area, “one that runs roughshod over privacy.” These data fencers buy, sell, and trade data about everyone using the internet. 

In the best-case, though still rather disheartening, scenarios individuals have granted access to such information by agreeing to the terms of service for any given application. Regardless, and at a constant, “these companies are harvesting data [even] when you are just browsing a site; in general, not [even] logged in. So, the concept of consent or permission is rather illusory.” The invasiveness can be as granular as turning on the microphone on your mobile without notifying you to see what is going on in your environment. Another common issue is location tracking; even “anonymized” location data can be weaponized, as demonstrated by the 2021 case in which app‑derived location data was used to identify and publicly out an American priest.

As costs rise, many Canadians increasingly rely on AI chatbots for advice, including around mental health. While this expands access, it also dramatically increases the sensitivity of data being captured outside any meaningful regulatory framework.

For one, it was recently revealed that Open AI, the company that created and provides various tiers of the most popular Large Language Model (LLM) – ChatGPT, is planning to start including advertising in its free offerings.

To understand why this should be concerning, we need to understand how advertising online works. Online advertising operates through real‑time bidding, where individual ad impressions are auctioned in milliseconds. Advertisers rely on detailed user profiles to determine bids, and the same firms selling ad space often sell or broker the underlying data collapsing any real separation between advertising and surveillance.

The second concern is that the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) prohibits forced data localization—essentially,  The Canadian government cannot require companies to house Canadian data inside Canada. Free flowing data makes for smoother operations, goes the argument, and any limitation would be “arbitrary”.

This concern is compounded by two additional factors: The first is Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act S.C. 2000, c. 5, more commonly referred to as PIPEDA, is out of date. This is unsurprising as it came into effect in the year 2000, an era of wide-eyed faith in the possibilities of the internet. Resultantly, PIPEDA basically allows for data to transit between businesses for any business-related interest and without the knowledge of the individuals using online services and products—these are literally called “legitimate business interests” in the text. The second factor is the Americans.

American extraterritorial surveillance

Most dominant platforms in Canada are U.S.‑based and subject to American law, including the CLOUD Act, which enables U.S. police and security agencies to gain extraterritorial data access. As a result, Canadian user data is already accessible to foreign law enforcement under legal regimes over which Canada has limited, if any, influence. 

This data extraction obviously has commercial value, not only do data-fencers sell it amongst themselves, but governments both local and far flung are purchasing and operationalising it as well. Even so, what good is this doing the average Canadian? None. Just recently, Jim Balsillie, former CEO of Blackberry and Canadian Shield Institute board member, reminded us of the ways in which our laws don’t at all protect us from exploitative data extraction leading to “markets that are neither free nor fair, driving higher costs-of-living and eroding paycheques for most of Canada’s working population.”

As noted first by Yanis Varoufakis in 2023 as a general global concern, and more recently by Vass Bednar in the specifically Canadian context, as the “U.S. state and Big Tech become one, we become digital serfs.”

Another concern is that AI companies that learn about your health, for example, aren’t bound by any traditional regulatory framework related to healthcare. They can, and will, sell your health data.

This dynamic is starkly illustrated in recent reporting by 404 Media, which documents the extent to which surveillance has become embedded in everyday life, from AI‑assisted home security systems like Ring that enable neighbourhood‑wide monitoring, to companies like Palantir that power enforcement tools for agencies like ICE, including systems used to identify and target specific communities. A January 2026 investigation further underscores the scale of this problem, revealing that the firm PenLink provides ICE with access to commercial location data derived from hundreds of millions of phones—data that the agency can query without a warrant. 

Together, these accounts demonstrate how private surveillance infrastructures not only normalize population‑level monitoring, but also actively circumvent traditional legal safeguards.

Beyond this, there are also more drastic and speculative concerns, for example The Economist recently reported in an article entitled “The start of the Iran war was determined by spying success” that advanced signal-intelligence collectors have access to an unprecedented amount of data from phones, smart devices, and modern car apps. Both American and Israeli intelligence use AI to analyze this information, with the U.S. benefiting from its connection to Silicon Valley.

What to make of all this?

At present, it is hard to say what exactly is being done with all of our online data here in Canada, we know, for example, that our government is buying significantly from the ever more controversial Palantir Technologies—in fact, a search of contracts shows 782 853 results as of April 2026 (a figure that constantly changes as contracts are tendered, signed, or expire).

What we do know, however, is that government overreach is something that has happened with detrimental effects. For example, CBC recently revealed “newly declassified RCMP Security Service files [that] confirm Canada’s Cold War-era domestic intelligence agency infiltrated and sought to disrupt legitimate political Indigenous organizations in the 1970s, in an extensive program of covert surveillance, informants and countersubversion.” This problematic behaviour continues today—e.g. with what happened in relation to the Wet’suwet’en land defenders in 2025.

Until recently, the private sector’s capacity for online surveillance far exceeded that of most democratic states, both in scale and granularity. Major social media and content platforms persistently track browsing behavior, location metadata, engagement patterns, social graphs, inferred interests and vulnerabilities. With recent developments, it is increasingly clear that some form of police state is coming into being through Public Private Partnerships). It is also clear that the kinds of acts we started this discussion with are not the problem—the problem is unchecked private surveillance and lack of clear jurisdiction of the data those actors collect.

So, what should we do?

We need to adapt to the times and update our privacy regulations; First, we need to figure out how to silo Canadian data in relation to CUSMA, then we need to acknowledge that PIPEDA is insufficient and fully explore what the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and proposed Digital Omnibus does and doesn’t do to see what we can and should adopt to our own context.

After that trash is taken out and replaced with newer and better tools and rules, we can finally start talking about other pressing matters, like “Scoping AI Chatbots into a revised Online Harms Act”.

The post Canada’s biggest threats to privacy aren’t what you think appeared first on CCPA.

“Action4Canada is pleased to announce A MASSIVE WIN in Alberta against the pornographic books! Most importantly, this is a victory for our precious children. PRAISE GOD!

“Thank you to the Alberta Minister of Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, for meeting with Action4Canada’s team, responding to our concerns and acknowledging the evidence of sexually explicit materials in Alberta schools. It’s a positive step toward restoring morality and common sense in education. Action4Canada’s Calgary team has been working very hard behind the scenes, communicating with government officials over several months…”¹

Holding up four young adult, coming-of-age graphic novels he claimed Alberta parents had brought to his attention, Minister Nicolaides declared he was going to impose new rules to ensure books like these four would no longer be available in any school libraries in the province. In July, he issued Ministerial Order (#030/2025)² banning from Alberta school libraries by September all “materials containing explicit sexual content” except “religious texts or scriptures.” Further, the Order specified that students below Grade 10 must not be permitted “to access school library materials containing non-explicit sexual content.”

The Edmonton Public School Board dutifully complied by identifying all books in its school libraries that had a paragraph or a page or a chapter that could be deemed sexually explicit. The list of these books was leaked to the media, and there was immediate public outrage.

Several hundred titles were removed, including Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Margaret Laurence, The Diviners; Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Judy Blume, Forever; and Isabele Allende, The House of the Spirits.³

In response to this act of censorship, Margaret Atwood drafted a short story for teens that would be deemed “suitable” for Alberta school libraries, adding the work was necessary because the province’s minister of education thought students were “stupid babies.”

Her story was about two 17-year-olds, named John and Mary, who were “very, very good children.”

“They never picked their noses or had bowel movements or zits.”

“They grew up and married each other, and produced five perfect children without ever having sex”…they were ardent Christians who “paid no attention to what Jesus actually said about the poor” and instead “practised selfish rapacious capitalism” in the vein of the conservative literary hero Ayn Rand.

John and Mary lived happily ever after. “But, while they were doing that, The Handmaid’s Tale came true and [Premier] Danielle Smith found herself with a nice new blue dress but no job”—a reference to the high-ranking wives of commanders in her book who wore blue while the handmaids, in red garments, were subjected to produce children for elite couples in a totalitarian and theocratic state.⁴

Her story went viral.⁵

The ensuing public outrage prompted the very embarrassed Minister to tell school boards they should pause any development or distribution of lists of books that are to be removed until further notice.⁶ Less easily embarrassed, Premier Danielle Smith quickly announced the removals “will be paused for a couple of hours while the ministerial order is rewritten.” Despite the fact that the Edmonton Public School Board had done exactly what the Minister’s Order directed, Premier Smith accused it of “clearly doing a little vicious compliance over what the direction is.”⁷

The “couple of hours” stretched into a month before a revised Ministerial Order was released in September which required school boards to remove all “school literary materials containing any explicit visual depiction of a sexual act.”⁸ Apparently, written descriptions of sexual activity were now permissible.

The reality is that the intended target of the Minister’s broad brush first order was young adult (YA) graphic novels, starting with the four he held up at his May 2025 initial press conference. As Danielle McLaughlin writes in a recent Centre for Free Expression blogpost, young adult graphic novels are accessible to teenagers who may have difficulty reading dense text that has no illustrations, and they help them to contend with and understand how others have dealt with such issues as bullying, sexual attraction, uncertainties about their bodies, and family strife.⁹

A closer look at the four YA graphic novels the Minister used to highlight what he wanted to ban tells its own story. All are highly regarded, award-winning young adult graphic novels that address difficult issues that deeply concern many teens.

The first, Scott Thompson’s Blankets, has been translated into more than 20 languages, received many book awards, and has been described by the Guardian Weekly as “One of the best graphic novels of all time” and by Time magazine as “a great American novel.“ Publishers Weekly ‘s review said, “Thompson manages to explore adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste.”¹⁰

The second, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, has received widespread critical acclaim:

• Kirkus Reviews (starred review): “Bechdel’s memoir offers a graphic narrative of uncommon richness, depth, literary resonance and psychological complexity… Though this will likely be stocked with graphic novels, it shares as much in spirit with the work of Mary Karr, Tobias Wolff and other contemporary memoirists of considerable literary accomplishment.”

• Library Journal (starred review): “Bechdel…paints her own story in this stunning graphic memoir… One of the best graphic memoirs to date.”

• Time Magazine: “At once a coming-out story, an examination of the complex relationship we can have with our parents, and the role of art and literature in processing our lives, first-time graphic novelist Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home made for a stunning debut… Smart, darkly funny and a little fearless, Fun Home reads like a true-life modern American Gothic.”

It, too, has been translated into many languages and received numerous book awards.¹¹

The third, Mike Curato’s Flamer, also has received widespread critical acclaim:¹²

• School Library Journal (starred review): “Curato has created a beautiful story of a teen who must decide if he will force himself into the mold of what he thinks a ‘normal’ boy is, or if he can allow himself to live life on his own terms. An essential book that shows readers that they are never alone in their struggles

• Booklist (starred review): “Just as his deft artwork meticulously balances between blazing feelings and quiet contemplation of natural beauty, Curato gives Aiden a poignantly well-rounded character: for all the homophobia and racism inherent in institutions like the Boy Scouts and the Catholic church, Aiden still defiantly finds inspiration and strength there. Masterfully nuanced and stunningly told, this is visual storytelling at its finest.”

• Kirkus Reviews (starred review): “[T]he true star of this book is the writing, which describes a boy who could live in any decade on his journey of self-discovery. This is a story that will be read and reread, and for some, it will be the defining book of their adolescence.”

Finally, Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, one of the most challenged books in the U.S., likewise has received good critical reviews, won literary awards, and been translated in multiple languages:

• School Library Journal (starred review): “It’s also a great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand.”

• Publisher’s Weekly: “This heartfelt graphic memoir relates, with sometimes painful honesty, the experience of growing up non-gender-conforming…. [It’s] sure to spark valuable discussions at home and in classrooms.”

• San Francisco Book Review: “Regardless of who you are or how you identify, this graphic novel will speak to you… Throughout this intensely honest and poignant memoir, Maia struggles with things like fitting in as a homeschooled kid, being terrified of puberty, and struggling to ask people to use their preferred pronouns… Maia Kobabe tells this story with such skill, beauty, and feeling that you won’t be able to put it down or resist its magnetic emotional pull.”

Action4Canada is not alone in trying to ban such books from all libraries in Canada. The number of parental rights groups (religious and secular) in Canada is growing, as is their zeal. They are putting active pressure on other provinces to act as Alberta has. Any success they achieve only inspires them to broaden their demands for what is to be removed.

For example, after praising God for Minister Nicolaides’ book ban order, Action4Canada started a letter writing campaign, urging parents and others to sign a letter calling for a broad ban of what Action4Canada has labeled “SOGI123” materials¹³ which for them consists of a list of 62 books¹⁴ that are LGBTQ+ friendly, and/or discuss gender stereotyping, gender identity, issues of teen angst, family discord, and sexual orientation. In a bold move, they also demanded that, in addition to the 62 specific titles, the library ban “any other titles by the same authors, plus any books of the same genre.”¹⁵

Meanwhile, other parental rights groups are mobilizing. He is a sampling:

• Concerned Citizens Canada [“For the preservation of democracy, dignity and our way of life”]¹⁶ is using social media aggressively to ban books in schools. One of their tools is a series of Instagram reels targeting school divisions across Manitoba, titled “These books aren’t in my kids’ school.” In each, the CCC host provides a link to the school divisions library catalogue, a link to the names and contact information for the school trustees and proceeds, after cautioning the listener to make sure no one under 18 in the room, to read what she considers scurrilous passages from selected books in the school division’s libraries, such as Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, and from young adult graphic novels such as Margaret Atwood, The Hand Maid’s Tale-Graphic Novel.¹⁷

• Parents for Choice in Education, an Alberta-based non-sectarian organization, has strongly supported the Minister’s book banning order. PCE’s Executive Director, John Hilton-O’Brien, sums up their view, “Removing materials from minors’ access isn’t about freedom of expression, but ensures schools are presenting the best possible resources for students to learn from.”¹⁸

• Parents As First Educators are working to rid schools of curriculum and books that deal with sex education, systemic racism, and gender identity.¹⁹

• Parents Voice BC is taking a different approach. It describes itself as a registered “centre-right political party” that aims to take control of all school boards in British Columbia. It claims to have registered in all 60 school districts for the October 2026 election with a goal of winning “a Double-Double majority: the majority of Trustees on a majority of the province’s school boards,” setting the stage for “electing Trustee majorities on all school boards in the province in 2030.” The group’s slogan is “Education, not Indoctrination” and supports the elimination of the same sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) materials in schools, as does Action4Canada. Mark Walla, Parents Voice BC founder and president, sums up their view, “I think a lot of people feel like all the social justice-related stuff in schools has gone too far. Are we doing that at a detriment to all the regular, kind of, what I think of as the basics of education?”²⁰

• Regroupement des Parents Vigilants du Québec focuses much of its attention on “the Quebec Culture and Citizenship (CCQ) program imposed in all primary and secondary schools by the Quebec Ministry of Education” and demanding a complete moratorium on sex education in Quebec schools.²¹

Targeting books on sex education, family diversity, as well as young adult graphic novels is part of the disturbing pattern revealed in the Centre for Free Expression’s annual report of challenges Canadian libraries faced in 2025.²² Public, school, and academic libraries in Canada received 460 challenges in 2025, of which 359 were for young adult books. Of those, 320 (89%) were the result of the Alberta Minister’s Order, and all of those 320 books were removed.

Further, every one of the ten most challenged items in Canadian libraries in 2025 was a young adult graphic novel or graphic novel series. Here is the top ten list:

1. Neil Gaiman, The Sandman (series)

2. Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead (series)

3. Brian K. Vaughan, The Last Man (series)

4. (tied) Kanoko Sakurakoji, Blackbird (series)

4. Brian K. Vaughan, Saga (series)

6. (tied) Craig Thompson, Blankets

6. Alan Moore, The Watchman (Series)

8. (tied) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale—Graphic Novel

8. Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

8. Matyas Namai / George Orwell, 1984: The Graphic Novel²³

Demands by special interest groups for removal of books are assertions that because they do not like something, no one else should have a right to see, read, or hear it. This runs contrary to Canadians’ Charter right to freedom of expression which includes the right not only to express yourself but the right to seek and receive information. It also violates the fundamental value of libraries world-wide—intellectual freedom; namely, as the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions put it, “Libraries shall ensure that the selection and availability of library materials and services is governed by professional considerations and not by political, moral and religious views.”²⁴

For school libraries, judgments about what is appropriate are best made by professional educators and librarians, not by politicians playing to their political base. To the detriment of youth in Alberta, their provincial government has decided otherwise. There is growing pressure elsewhere for governments, school boards, and library boards to do likewise—pressure that must be vigorously resisted.

The post Parental rights and the surging demand for censorship in Canadian schools appeared first on CCPA.

But violence does not emerge in a vacuum. It is produced. It accumulates. And when it becomes routine, it is often a signal that a system itself is under strain.

This is the central finding of a recent research project conducted with elementary educators in Toronto: what shows up in classrooms as “violent incidents” is, in many cases, the manifestation of chronic underfunding, staffing erosion, political neglect, and the offloading of social crises onto schools that are no longer equipped to absorb them.

This article is a report about that report—and a warning to the rest of the country.

A crisis years in the making

Since 2018, and after accounting for inflation, enrolment growth and unmet needs, the Ontario government has quietly removed billions of dollars from public education.

The political framing of education funding continues to rely on symbolic gestures rather than structural solutions. On March 10, Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Paul Calandra announced a $750 annual “classroom supply card” for teachers, a policy framed publicly as support for students and educators. Yet the announcement came after years of cumulative funding erosion in Ontario’s public education system—estimated at more than $6.5 billion since 2018. While the program represents roughly $63 million in new spending, educators across the province immediately pointed out that the same funds could instead support meaningful structural improvements such as hiring additional teachers, educational assistants, child and youth workers, and mental-health professionals. The contrast illustrates a broader pattern: highly visible political announcements that do little to address the systemic conditions producing stress, conflict, and violence inside schools.

In Toronto, where I teach, schools have experienced the steady disappearance of the very adults who make classrooms safe and functional: educational assistants, child and youth workers, social workers, psychologists, and specialist teachers. Supply teacher shortages have become chronic, increasingly filled by non-certified staff asked to manage classrooms without the training, authority, or support required to do so safely.

At the same time, school buildings have deteriorated. Deferred maintenance has left many schools overcrowded, inaccessible, and physically unsafe.

These material conditions matter. They shape how students experience school, how educators respond under pressure, and whether conflict escalates or is de-escalated.

What the data now shows—and what educators have been saying for years—is that violence rises precisely where supports disappear.

What the research found

The violence research project led by Dr. Stephanie Fearon draws on educators’ collective narratives to document how teachers experience, interpret, and respond to violent incidents in schools. What emerges is not a story of “bad kids” or “failing teachers,” but of professionals navigating impossible conditions.

Educators described classrooms where students with significant unmet needs were placed without adequate support. They spoke of repeated violent incidents that were normalized, underreported, or quietly reframed as “part of the job.” Many described the moral injury of caring deeply for students while being denied the resources required to keep anyone safe—including the students themselves.

Crucially, the research documents how violence is experienced not only as physical harm, but as emotional, psychological, and cumulative. Teachers described hypervigilance, exhaustion, and fear—not because they lacked skill or commitment, but because the system had withdrawn its care.

Violence, in this framing, becomes a form of communication: a child’s last resort in a system that no longer responds to need with support.

The political context we cannot ignore

It is impossible to understand what is happening in Ontario schools without situating it within the broader political moment.

Across North America, we are witnessing a resurgence of right-wing populism that thrives on division, scapegoating, and austerity. Teachers, immigrants, trans communities, and public sector workers are increasingly framed as the problem—blamed for affordability crises and social instability that are, in fact, the result of deliberate policy choices.

In Toronto, this climate has been made visible through the repeated presence of far-right groups mobilizing under the banner of “re-immigration” and anti-trans panic. These groups rallied multiple times in public spaces—including Christie Pits Park, where my own child plays, as well as Queen’s Park and City Hall.

Each time, they were met by something just as important to name: a powerful public clap-back. Residents from across the city—parents, educators, neighbours, union members, students—consistently outnumbered them. The response was collective, grounded, and unmistakable: Toronto rejected the politics of hate.

And yet, at each of these mobilizations, the Toronto Police Service protected the far-right demonstrators while directing force toward counter-protesters. In one recent action, a counter-protester who was not resisting or threatening anyone suffered a broken hip during a police intervention. In this case, no meaningful public accountability followed. More broadly, despite repeated documentation of disproportionate police force against Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities in Toronto and across Canada, structural accountability remains limited. Investigations occur; systemic consequences rarely do.

The pattern is not invisible; it is tolerated. Accountability remains absent.

The dynamic extends beyond far-right mobilizations. On March 5, 2026, hundreds of students gathered at Queen’s Park to protest the Ford government’s planned cuts to post-secondary student grant funding and changes to tuition policy. Organizers from the Canadian Federation of Students—Ontario later reported that Toronto police used force while dispersing demonstrators, arresting two students and, according to witnesses and circulating video footage, striking at least one young protester who had been participating peacefully. Police later stated that officers were responding to vandalism and interference with arrests, but the images of officers using force against students protesting education cuts quickly spread online. Whether interpreted as crowd control or excessive force, the incident reinforced a troubling perception among many young people: that political dissent around education funding is met with repression rather than dialogue.

This contradiction matters because it reshapes the conditions in which public institutions operate. When communities see force used disproportionately and accountability diluted, public trust erodes. When educators watch colleagues disciplined for raising equity concerns, morale weakens. And when already marginalized students experience over-surveillance outside school and under-support inside it, systemic inequality deepens. These dynamics are connected, not coincidental.

Recent developments at Queen’s Park illustrate this democratic erosion in real time. The Ontario government has proposed retroactive changes to the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act that the Information and Privacy Commissioner warns would prevent the public from accessing government records held by the Premier, cabinet ministers, and political staff. The move follows a court ruling ordering the release of call logs from Premier Doug Ford’s personal phone used for government business—and signals a troubling willingness to change transparency rules when independent oversight challenges political power.

Schools do not exist outside this climate. They absorb its consequences. When housing is unaffordable, when mental-health services are backlogged, when child and youth workers are cut, when families lose income supports, the crisis does not disappear—it relocates. It arrives in classrooms. And without adequate staffing, psychologists, social workers, or educational assistants, classroom teachers are left to manage failure as if it were an individual shortcoming.

Who benefits from the blame game

Right-wing populism depends on misdirection. Working—and middle-class families—struggling with affordability, housing, and precarity are told that the problem is trans people, immigrants, or teachers. In this narrative, teachers function as a proxy for public sector workers more broadly: visible, unionized, and therefore politically useful as scapegoats.

But the math does not lie.

The real beneficiaries of austerity are Canada’s billionaire class: figures like Galen Weston, the Irving family, and real-estate and grocery conglomerates whose profits have soared while public services have been stripped bare. Violence grows not because communities are too diverse, but because wealth is hoarded while care is defunded.

Violence as a policy outcome

One of the most important contributions of the research on violence is its refusal to treat violence as a behavioural anomaly. Instead, it positions violence as a predictable outcome of policy decisions.

When supports are removed, when class sizes grow, when children’s mental-health needs go unmet, when families are pushed into precarity, schools become the place where all of that pressure surfaces. Teachers are asked to compensate for failures in housing, healthcare, social services, and income support—without training, staffing, or authority.

Violent incident reports, then, are not simply records of harm. They are data points that map the consequences of austerity.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has already documented this reality. In its report Dreams Delayed, the Commission details how chronic underfunding, inadequate staffing levels, oversized classes, and the erosion of student supports contribute to systemic anti-Black racism and unsafe learning environments across Ontario’s public education system.

The report calls for conditions that allow educators to build relationships, respond to student needs, and intervene early—including sufficient staffing, manageable class sizes, and the resources required to create safe, inclusive schools. These recommendations are not optional. They are human rights obligations, and the Ford government has largely failed to act on them.

When governments fail to implement human-rights guidance and then express surprise at rising violence, what we are witnessing is not mismanagement. It is negligence.

Control, fear, and the erosion of democratic schools

The situation in Ontario has been further exacerbated by provincial interventions into school boards, including Toronto’s. Framed as fiscal necessity, these moves function as political control: sidelining local governance, narrowing debate, and creating a culture of fear.

As Vice-President of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, I speak daily with educators across the city. What they describe is consistent and alarming: fear of naming racism, fear of being publicly mischaracterized or privately disciplined. Since the Education Minister appointed Rohit Gupta to the position of Toronto District School Board’s supervisor, that fear has intensified. Reporting violence is encouraged rhetorically, but in recent cases I am directly involved in as a union representative, educators who reported systemic anti-Black racism or raised concerns about unsafe conditions found themselves facing investigations, professional complaints, or administrative retaliation. While formal processes are ongoing and confidentiality must be respected, the chilling effect is unmistakable. When speaking up carries professional risk, silence becomes self-protection.

A culture of fear does not need to be formally declared to be real; it only requires enough examples to reshape behaviour.

Most recently, the Minister reversed trustee decisions and increased class sizes—a move that directly contradicts both research and lived experience, and one that predictably intensifies stress, conflict, and unmet need inside classrooms.

Why I believe this so deeply

I write this not only as a union leader, but as someone shaped by this system.

I was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and immigrated to Toronto as a baby with my parents. I went from Kindergarten through Grade 12 in the Toronto District School Board. Years later, I returned as an elementary school teacher, teaching in the same working-class communities that raised me—including Greenholme Junior Middle School in Rexdale, a neighbourhood shaped by immigrant families doing everything they can to make life work with dignity.

I have seen this system from the inside and the outside: as a student, as an educator, as a parent, and now as an organizer. I am also President of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, an organization that has spent more than 50 years documenting how racism, austerity, and state neglect intersect. That intersection is not theoretical. It is what shows up in classrooms every day.

Through tools like the Building Better Schools funding cuts calculator, we can trace exactly how much funding has been stripped from individual neighbourhood schools—millions of dollars removed from communities that need investment the most, even as provincial rhetoric insists restraint is unavoidable.

The violence documented in this report is not abstract to me. It is personal—and it is political.

A national warning

Ontario is not unique. What is happening here is a preview.

In Alberta, teachers and parents organized around class size, complexity, and safety—only to have their rights curtailed through the use of the notwithstanding clause. Rather than address the substance of educators’ concerns, the government chose coercion.

When governments respond to social crisis by suspending democratic norms instead of funding solutions, we should name that trajectory honestly.

Resistance, organizing, and the way forward

The final—and perhaps most important—finding of the violence research is that educators are not passive. Despite fear, injury, and exhaustion, they continue to organize, document, and advocate—not for punishment, but for care.

The same spirit of resistance is visible beyond classrooms as students, parents, and communities mobilize to defend public education—even when those mobilizations are met with hostility or force.

Teachers are demanding smaller classes, more adults in schools, robust mental-health supports, and systems that respond to harm with repair rather than denial. They are building collective strategies through unions, health-and-safety committees, and community alliances.

This is where hope resides.

Violence in schools will not be reduced through surveillance, discipline, or silence. It will be reduced through investment, solidarity, and democratic accountability.

The violence report offers documentation—but it is also an invitation: to listen to educators, to follow the data, and to refuse the lie that austerity is inevitable.

If we ignore what schools are telling us now, the costs will only grow—not just for teachers, but for children, families, and the democratic institutions that public education is meant to sustain.

The post When violence is the system speaking: What Ontario’s schools are telling us appeared first on CCPA.

Ford was putting his mouth where the money now is. He was responding to student alarm that, at the same time as Ontario is lifting a seven year freeze on domestic tuition, student aid in Ontario is to be radically rebalanced. Previously, a qualifying Ontario student might get up to 85% of their aid in the form of a grant. That proportion has been reduced to 25%, with the rest coming as a loan.

Premier Ford’s logic is clear. The prospect of significant debt on graduation should encourage incoming students to look at labour market demands—or whatever they calculate these will be several years hence—and select their programs accordingly. Only those able to fund their studies independently should be allowed to choose based on such feckless motives as intellectual or craft affinity. Cementing the view that the postsecondary system should be directed to short term market principles, the new student aid framework revealed on February 12th came with an announcement that Ontario will add $6.4 billion and 70,000 new seats in “programs that align with student and labour-market demand.”

Ontario’s public postsecondary education (PSE) system needs additional money, no question. As with PSE institutions right across Canada, Ontario’s public universities and colleges had been using income from international student tuition to offset chronic public underfunding to an extent that became devastatingly clear when that revenue stream was abruptly and significantly reduced by new federal caps on international student visas starting in 2024.

Thousands of jobs have been lost, and scores of programs suspended or cancelled. The Ontario Public Sector Employees Union, OPSEU, reported 10,000 layoffs and 600 program closures in public colleges in 2025. But Ontario is hardly alone. In British Columbia the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators registered hundreds of lost jobs. Saskatchewan Polytechnic has cut 120 positions. The Manitoba government recently announced it will close the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology, while the Nova Scotia Community College expects layoffs of 3% of staff in light of provisions in that province’s 2026 budget.

If the college sector was hit hard and early, public universities have not been spared retrenchment. York University made headlines last year when it announced the suspension of enrolment in 18 programs, most of them in the liberal arts. But others have followed, including the University of Calgary, the University of Winnipeg, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Hiring freezes are now widespread. As always, precariously employed academics are especially vulnerable. Even academic staff who have been rehired repeatedly on an annual basis may find that management has opted to “let contracts come to an end and not renew them… Not to fire people but to allow their contracts to play out.” This too, fits a market model where risk is externalised to workers, who can be readily shed as conditions change.

Privatization and marketization

Ontario’s move to reduce grants in favour of interest-bearing loans raises the question of how much new public funding is really being added to its system. Here, too, we see a wider trend. As Canadian Association of University Teachers Executive Director David Robinson observed, operating funding at Canadian universities comes from two main sources: provincial grants and student tuition. Historically, government transfers made up the lion’s share of funds for the core academic mission. In the last decade, he noted, the balance of funding has shifted such that “total university income from direct government sources was lower than income from tuition fees and nongovernment revenue sources,” If a share of tuition income comes indirectly from government in the form of grants to students, the trend remains clear.

At the same time, even as provincial governments move away from direct support for public postsecondary, they are increasingly ready to intervene more-or-less directly in institutional missions. Increased dependence on tuition and other forms of private funding is one widespread mechanism to encourage reorientation to market principles. These can be reinforced by tying funding to various government-set “performance indicators” or through conditional funding.

Thus Nova Scotia’s Bill 12, An Act Respecting Advanced Education, empowers government to withhold funding from universities that do not align with the social and economic priorities of the government of the day. Passed in 2025, in the words of the Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers, this legislation gives the provincial government “unprecedented authority over university governance, research priorities, and institutional decision-making.” Alberta showed similar ambitions with Bill 18, its Provincial Priorities Act, which had originally proposed to empower government vetting of federal research grants to university researchers for alignment with provincial government priorities. Thanks to hard political work by Alberta’s academic staff unions, the most concerning provisions for university researchers were removed from the legislation as ultimately adopted. But academic staff in the province remain concerned about the Alberta government’s apparent interest in the handling of academic freedom, and its focus on narrow labour market outcomes.

Federally, the Canadian government largely maintained existing commitments to research funding in its 2025 budget, a broad positive in an era of cuts. But new funding was targeted to industry, and Canada earmarked $1.7 billion for international research talent attraction. As I will discuss below, in the absence of an accompanying plan to stabilize the system, the latter program may exacerbate current inequities.

What do we stand to lose?

In short, Canada’s system of public postsecondary education is being hollowed out through chronic underfunding combined with a marketized orientation that values postsecondary education primarily as a pipeline to train students for specific jobs: a service to be delivered according to a mandate of efficiency and accountability to short-term goals.

What do we stand to lose? Even in less extreme situations, layoffs and hiring freezes mean academic staff face intensified workloads, continually being asked to do more with less. But doing more with less always means doing less with less too: fewer and bigger classes mean less time for research, but also less contact time with students and lost chances to nurture and inspire. The consequences of this thinning out of the educational experience will be counted not only in the loss of fulfilling student-teacher relationships, but also in terms that should recognizable even to the most market-driven of premiers, as potential in need of encouragement—maybe even the potential to create a tech giant—is left fallow.

But when institutions lose programs or close campuses, it can leave entire regions and communities with no access to whole fields of study. We saw this scenario play out in an extreme form with the restructuring of Laurentian University a few years ago.

On Premier Ford’s logic, that’s no big loss if the affected programs fall into his basketweaving category, since students wouldn’t likely get a job in philosophy, anthropology, or gender studies on graduation anyway. But these programs offer something different. In conventional labour market terms, they offer enduring capacities that are only going to become more important and that enable people to work well in a wide range of areas.

They also offer the capacity to see the world in a different way. This can matter in unexpected ways. Financial Times editor, Gillian Tett, who wrote a PhD thesis on Muslim marriage practices in Soviet Tajikistan, was among the first to predict the 2008 global financial crisis. She credits her training in anthropology with its holistic and relational orientation for her distinctive approach to economic and financial analysis. As federal health minister in 2020, Patty Hajdu said her BA in anthropology from Lakehead University helped her navigate the challenges of the early pandemic, which required rapid social recalibration and affected every aspect of human interaction. Would Hajdu, returning to university as a single parent living in Thunder Bay, have found her way to her academic passion for anthropology if it was not available at her local campus?

It is not only individual students who lose if such “basketweaving” programs become available only to those with the mobility and financial wherewithal to access a handful of surviving programs. Fields that offer critical perspectives on the world we have, indeed, that let us see that this world could be otherwise, are vital both to democratic health and livable futures.

Historically, a distinguishing strength of Canada’s postsecondary system has been a broad equality of educational opportunity in the sense that wherever in the country you studied, you could rely on getting a widely-recognized high quality education. Underfunding combined with privatization and marketization threaten that in the ways discussed above. Under current circumstances, the federal focus on attracting international talent asks us to welcome new colleagues into a system under severe strain. It also risks new kinds of inequities and divisions, as opportunities go disproportionately to a handful of research-intensive institutions and units, while the rest fight for crumbs.

What’s needed now is a coherent national strategy to stabilize our system, encompassing a commitment to retain and nurture Canadian talent and to welcome international students and scholars for sound educational reasons, not as a compensatory revenue stream. Canadians are rightly proud of our public K-12 system, funded by taxpayers and free at the point of delivery. And while we are not there yet, the multilateral framework that brought a new focus on building out accessible quality Early Childhood Education across Canada is a welcome move in the right direction. It is now time for a federal-provincial strategy on public postsecondary education: essential infrastructure in this nation-building era.

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And it might be eligible for reimbursement by the Alberta government.

What are these newly defined “preventative health testing services” in Alberta’s new legislation? It’s hard to know because the bill provides little clarity.

As Bill 29 (the Medical Statutes Amendment Act, 2026) states, “preventative health testing services” means goods and services or classes of goods and services that are (i) provided by a practitioner, (ii)  made available through a self-referral, and (iii) specified by the Minister by order as preventative health testing services.”

Clear as mud.

The Alberta health minister responsible for the legislation also doesn’t seem to have specifics. In the press conference, when asked by multiple journalists which diagnostic tests the government has in mind, the message was that all will be clarified in the yet-to-be-developed regulations by the fall. 

When asked how the public system can respond to increased demand for private-pay diagnostic testing, the the Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services responded that the private market will meet the new demand: “The capacity is that if there is demand, paying for these tests themselves, there will be a private market that will step in to meet that demand. It would be in addition to what we currently have.” 

Two-tier testing means the wealthiest get their diagnosis and treatment first

What is clear about Bill 29 is that it creates a legal framework that encourages for-profit medical imaging facilities to charge wealthy patients privately for diagnostic testing—and receive a diagnosis—before everyone else on the public wait list. 

These tests—which may include medical imaging modalities (MRI, CT scans, etc.)—are likely to be performed and interpreted by radiologists and the limited pool of technologists who are working in the private-pay and publicly funded system simultaneously. 

Remember that in December, Alberta opened the privatization door through Bill 11 by introducing legislation that allows doctors and surgeons to work in the public and private systems at the same time, no longer having to decide which system they will work in.

Bill 11 also establishes the provincial public insurance plan as the “payer of last resort.” This means that if individuals have other private health insurance that covers medically necessary health services—as Bill 11 does—it creates a large market for private health insurers in what would previously be considered publicly funded services. It’s a boon for private health insurance companies and helps to rapidly increase the private market that the health minister alluded to. Those with access to private health insurance—those who are able to pay thousands of dollars in premiums or able to pay out of pocket—will get their diagnosis and treatment sooner if they receive their diagnostic testing faster.

The Alberta government will reduce the supply of diagnostics for those with urgent need

Bill 29 must be understood in relation to Alberta’s previous Bill 11, which paved the way for physicians and surgeons to work in the public system and private-pay market at the same time. The intent of Bill 29 is to build a burgeoning for-profit diagnostic imaging industry that has access to both private payment—through private insurance or out-of-pocket payments—and the benefit of public funding to make it viable. 

Empirical research shows that increasing private payment for medical imaging and other diagnostic testing will encourage those providers to focus their time in the more lucrative private-pay market. This is what we see with privately financed health care generally. And to add insult to injury, we are already facing shortages of medical imaging technologists in Canada. 

Even without self-referral for diagnostic testing, a 2017 report from Choosing Wisely Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information concluded that up to 30 per cent of imaging tests, procedures, and pharmaceutical therapies across eight priority areas are potentially unnecessary. We can assume that self-referral will contribute to a large amount of unnecessary testing that takes resources away from those who have an urgent referral by a medical provider.

Technological advances have contributed to the growth of diagnostic imaging (e.g., x-ray, MRI, CT). In many cases, diagnostic medical imaging is necessary for diagnosis. However, growing evidence suggests that many imaging tests are not necessary and may create unnecessary and avoidable patient harm. A 2009 U.S. study estimated that 15,000 Americans will die each year from exposure to radiation if current levels of CT scanning continue. Based on a review of eight Canadian studies, the share of inappropriate MRI exams was estimated to range from two to 28.5 per cent (in large measure because methodologies in these studied varied).

Private-pay diagnostic testing contravenes the Canada Health Act

Researchers and clinicians have long called for provinces and the federal government to address the issue of unnecessary and potentially harmful diagnostic testing and procedures. Rather than move in this evidence-based direction, the Alberta government is doubling down on building a two-tier health care system that will benefit private health insurance companies and for-profit providers—and Alberta’s wealthiest. 

Inequitable access to diagnostic imaging became such a problem that the federal government issued the Diagnostic Services Policy in 2019, which clarified that access to medically necessary medical imaging must be based on need and not ability or willingness to pay. The federal government recognized that a two-tier system for diagnostic testing would give some faster access to diagnosis and treatment and leave others waiting much longer. The Alberta government has already lost an estimated $13 million in federal funding due to unlawful patient charges and extra-billing in 2023 and 2024. 

But once again, the Alberta government is pursuing legislative reforms that are fundamentally at odds with the Canada Health Act. Private-pay testing will increase public wait times, making the diagnostic testing bottleneck worse, and continue to unravel the foundational principles of the Canada Health Act. It also embeds income and wealth inequality into the health care system—something Medicare was designed to prevent.

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The massive data centre construction boom fueled by A.I. investment has been characterized as building the material ‘backbone’ of the digital economy. So what would happen to this backbone should the A.I. Bubble burst? 

When the financial media does contemplate the consequences of a major market correction, they usually focus on the impacts to the stock market and the major tech firms funding A.I. But the massive investment in data centre construction entangles far more stakeholders than companies like Google or Meta alone. Regions have staked their economic development on it, politicians have risked their re-election, utilities have bet their growth on it, and some communities have bet their very future. Given the stakes, and the very real possibility that current levels of investment are unsustainable, we should have at least some idea of what is at risk, and what—if anything—we can do to protect ourselves and our communities.

By any measure, the amount of capital pouring into data centre projects is “staggering.” As Wired magazine describes it, “rarely, if ever has a single technology absorbed this much money this quickly.” And while some of the most profitable firms on the planet like Amazon, Google and Meta are driving this investment, the amounts are so large that even major tech firms are financing these investments via debt. 

Morgan Stanley predicts $250 billion to $300 billion of debt issuance in 2026 for the hyperscale tech giants alone. And yet, despite these massive levels of investment, the A.I. industry has yet to demonstrate any real, sustained profitability. Instead, firms are investing billions in building out A.I infrastructure without the revenue streams required to offset their costs, gambling that greater AI mass adoption (and, finally,  profitability) will arrive sooner rather than later.   

It is this mismatch between investments and returns that make the popping of the AI investment bubble a virtual certainty. The only question is when and how far-reaching its impacts will be. An obvious historical analogue is the 2000’s dot com crisis, when exuberant investors so overbuilt the infrastructure of the early internet that it vastly outstripped demand. The result was miles of unused fibreoptic cables and abandoned data centres as the expectations of future internet use far outstripped the reality. 

While a financial crisis in its own right, the damage from the dot com bust primarily affected the tech sector itself. The fear this time is that due to the major tech firms’ use of ‘circular’ accounting practices, coupled with the financialization and securitization of vast amounts of data centre debt, the end of the AI bubble would be more akin to the 2008 financial crisis, with effects much more far-ranging and potentially devastating to the wider economy.  

No matter how it plays out, any significant market correction would directly impact existing and proposed data centre projects. Without sufficient revenues and the end of investment in the sector, the ability of tenants large and small to make continued lease payments to data centre providers would cease, quickly driving many of these facilities into insolvency.  

Due to the special-purpose design of data centres, it is not an asset that can be easily used for other purposes, making them all the more difficult to lease or sell for any other use. The residents of Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec witnessed the abandonment of a $1.3 billion Ericsson-owned data centre a mere ten months after its construction in 2016. As Patrick Brodie and Julia Velkova write of the abandoned site; 

As of 2020, the building remains mostly vacant, sold to a US real estate company and locally administered by a Montréal firm. After active local political mobilisation, government tax breaks, and years of anticipation of local jobs and prosperity, the inert site now employs only a skeleton crew of security and maintenance professionals tasked with not letting the impressive structure fall to ruin while waiting for new buyers. 

One would imagine that a more contemporary hyperscale data centre, given its size, on-site energy generation and cooling systems would be even more difficult to sell or lease in a post-bubble market. Governments would be on the hook for any sunk costs into developing and servicing these sites in addition to the loss in future tax revenues from a now non-operational business. It is this question of who will pay for these stranded assets post-bubble that is motivating citizens groups across the U.S. to demand greater protection from their government. 

Of equal concern would be the costs borne by ratepayers for energy generation, transmission and other electrical upgrades to service a data centre that can no longer pay its bills. Traditionally, these costs would be universalized across all ratepayers over the course of many years. But with utilities spending record amounts to specifically service data centre energy needs, state governments in the U.S. are looking to pre-emptively protect ratepayers from absorbing those costs in the event of a significant market correction. 

Minnesota has enacted a package of laws designed to protect consumers from the adverse economic effects of data centers. This includes a statute that requires that data centres pay their full cost of service, with no costs shifted to other ratepayers. In addition, the statute specifically requires that other customers of the public utility are not placed at risk for paying stranded costs associated with the utility serving a data centre. Wisconsin is also entertaining similar regulations that would require data centres to provide a financial security pledge that the utility can access should the data centre not be able to pay for the infrastructure built to serve it. 

Another strategy that has been proposed would be the public appropriation of stranded assets, like data centers. As data centres entered various states of insolvency, governments could acquire these assets and their computing power at a discount. Such a strategy could be used to construct a fully public AI model. 

As Nathan Sanders and Bruce Schneier argue, an “AI model built and funded by Canada for Canadians, as public infrastructure,”could give Canadians “access to the myriad of benefits from AI without having to depend on the U.S. or other countries. It would mean Canadian universities and public agencies building and operating AI models optimized not for global scale and corporate profit, but for practical use by Canadians.” 

Such a vision is not fanciful, Switzerland has already embarked on a ‘pro-social’ large language model built on public infrastructure that uses the country’s computational resources to solve real-world problems and maximize social benefit. 

Yet, while other countries urgently plan to mitigate the impacts of a volatile AI economy on its citizens, Canada’s leaders seem oddly detached from these concerns. Both federal and provincial governments seem largely indifferent to the obvious harms this investment boom has caused in the U.S, with astoundingly little discussion of how we might ensure we do not emulate the American experience. 

Recognizing that a majority of Canadians are skeptical of the benefits of AI, Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, Evan Solomon, regularly intones how important building trust is to building Canadian’s acceptance of AI. Failing to protect Canadians through proper regulation and allowing us to replicate the U.S. example that has ignited grassroots opposition to AI data centres across that country will only further alienate Canadians from the supposed promises of AI. 

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Oil and gas prices are rising due to the war on Iran. This analysis examines how the Canadian oil industry stands to profit as a result. While every effort should be made to end the war on Iran, Canadian governments should, given the circumstances, tax the current and upcoming corporate windfall and reinvest that money for the greater public good.

Cashing in: If oil prices remain at current levels for the next 12 months, the Canadian oil industry is on track to make $90 billion in profits, which is $60 billion more than it would have earned without the war.

A new recovery dividend: In 2022, the federal government introduced a one-time, 15 per cent tax on excess pandemic profits from the financial sector. Applying that 15 per cent rate on the excess profits of the oil industry could generate $9 billion over the next 12 months.

A more ambitious model: Tax fairness advocates have called for a 33 per cent windfall tax on profits above 120 per cent of pre-crisis profit levels. Applied to the oil industry today, that approach could generate $18 billion over the next 12 months.

Learning from the war effort: In 1940, the Canadian government applied a 75 per cent tax on all profits above a company’s pre-war average profits. Applying that rate to the oil industry in our current price scenario could generate a staggering $46 billion over the next year in public revenues on top of regular royalties and taxes.

For Canada’s oil regions, the current windfall could very well be the industry’s final boom. That makes it all the more important that proceeds be reinvested into economic diversification and industrial planning.

The Canadian oil and gas industry is making an extra $170 million in profits every day due to the U.S. and Israeli war in Iran, which has driven up global oil prices by more than 50 per cent.

In the first month of the war, the Canadian oil industry made after-tax profits in excess of $6 billion dollars, which is $4 billion more than it pocketed the month before. If oil prices stay this high for 12 months, the industry is on track for $90 billion in profits, which is $60 billion more than it would have earned without the war.

These rough estimates, which are based on our own economic modeling of the oil industry, hinge on two big questions: How high will oil prices go? And how long will they stay high?

Despite the periodic assurances of the U.S. administration, there is little indication that the conflict in Iran will resolve either quickly or smoothly. To better understand the potential impacts of different oil prices on industry profits, we have developed one baseline scenario and two forward-looking scenarios.

First is the Pre-War Baseline, which is based on data from the six months leading up to the war, including an average oil price of US$65 per barrel (Brent crude, converted to a West Texas Intermediate price of CAD$84). Second is a Current Price Scenario, which assumes the average oil price over the past two weeks of US$105 (CAD$139) per barrel continues to hold for the next 12 months. Third is an Escalating Crisis Scenario, wherein oil prices rise to US$130 (CAD$171) per barrel—a doubling of pre-war levels, which is a similar trajectory to the 1979 oil shock. For each scenario, we estimate revenues, expenses (including royalties and taxes) and profits for the Canadian oil industry.

The difference between the baseline and current price scenarios represents the trajectory we are on right now. As noted above, it amounts to a potential $60 billion in excess profits for the Canadian oil industry over the next 12 months. The gap between the baseline and escalating crisis scenarios—a potential situation where prices go even higher than they are today—amounts to $100 billion in excess profits for the industry. In either case, those windfalls are piled on top of the $30 billion in profits the Canadian oil industry was already expected to rake in over the next 12 months.

The war on Iran is a humanitarian, environmental and political crisis that is likely to do far more harm than good for Iranians and the international community. Profiteering by the oil industry is just one of the many dark and predictable consequences of American Imperialism.

If there is a silver lining here, it is in rising public revenues due to the royalties and taxes paid by the oil industry in Canada. In the first month of the war, net revenues from the sector jumped from an estimated $4 billion up to $10.6 billion. Although the industry captured 61 per cent of that increase—a rise in estimated after-tax profits from $2.4 billion to $6.4 billion—the other 39 per cent went to the public. We estimate that royalty payments in March 2026 increased from $1 billion to $2.8 billion while corporate income tax payments (federal and provincial) increased from $500 million to $1.4 billion.

Already, the Government of Alberta is raking in an extra $40-60 million per day due to the war-induced oil shock. Just last month, the province projected a $9.4 billion deficit, but it is now on track to balance the budget within months (and post a major surplus by the end of the year).

(Note that the preceding figures are based on an average oil price of CAD$128 during the month of March, but will be higher in each month moving forward due to a higher baseline oil price.)

While the public is receiving a share of the proceeds from the oil shock, it is not automatically a fair share. What the federal and provincial governments need to decide is whether the oil industry should be allowed to profiteer on this crisis or whether a greater share of those profits should be redirected toward the public good.

In our current price scenario, the oil industry is on track for $90 billion in after-tax profits over the next 12 months, which is equivalent to more than three per cent of GDP. That’s a lot of money. But, more importantly, that money is coming from somewhere. The oil industry did not suddenly get more productive. Those profits are the result of a redistribution away from global energy consumers, including Canadian workers and businesses.

Canadian households spend upwards of $5 billion per month on transport fuels, so the consumer price tag of war on Iran due to higher gasoline and diesel prices alone is already closing in on $1 billion. Costs to businesses, supply chains, home heating and more push the actual economic costs even higher, which will almost certainly be reflected in higher inflation for months to come. Indeed, the last oil price shock in 2022 cost the average Canadian household $12,000, and this one is looking to be much worse.

In other words, the Canadian oil industry is getting rich on the back of a global economy struggling with high fuel prices and deep instability. To make matters worse, a large share of those proceeds will go to the majority American shareholders of the biggest oil companies operating in Canada, such as Imperial Oil, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. Oil workers, in contrast, receive nothing but higher gas prices, as increased profits have little bearing on wages or hiring in an industry where jobs have been in structural decline since 2014.

In that context, Canadian governments should be considering options for taxing the excess profits of the oil industry, something that the Alberta Federation of Labour, 350.org and others have recently called for. There are several models to consider for ensuring that the benefits of this crisis, such as they are, offset some of the costs.

In 2022, the federal government introduced the Canada Recovery Dividend, a one-time, 15 per cent tax on excess pandemic profits from the financial sector. Applying that 15 per cent rate on the excess profits of the oil industry—that is, applying it only to profits that exceed the pre-war baseline—would generate around $800 million per month ($9 billion over the next 12 months) in our current price scenario.

A more ambitious model comes from Canadians for Tax Fairness, which proposes a 33 per cent windfall tax on profits above 120 per cent of pre-crisis profit levels. Applied to the oil industry in our current price scenario, that would generate $1.5 billion dollars per month ($18 billion over the next 12 months).

History, however, provides an even more radical model. In 1940, the Canadian government introduced the Excess Profits Tax Act, which applied a 75 per cent tax on all profits above a company’s pre-war average profits (with various nuances). Applying that rate to the oil industry in our current price scenario would generate $4 billion per month (a staggering $46 billion over the next year) in public revenues on top of regular royalties and taxes.

Incredibly, even if the public assumed such a large cut of the industry’s war-driven proceeds with a 75 per cent windfall tax in place, the oil industry would still make $44 billion in after-tax profit in the next year, which is still $14 billion more than it would have made without the war on Iran. In our escalating crisis scenario, where prices go even higher than they are now, a 75 per cent windfall tax would direct $78 billion into public coffers and the oil industry would still enjoy $55 billion in profit.

Consider what the federal government could do with an extra $46 billion.

On the one hand, any money that goes into general revenues could be used to advance any number of public policy priorities. It could address the problem of hallway medicine and doctor shortages, for example, or fund years of public pharmacare and dental care. It could increase the federal government’s affordable housing budget several times over. It could help stabilize a post-secondary education sector in crisis. It could also cover the majority of Canada’s $63 billion in new defence spending.

However, there is a strong case to be made that any windfall revenues should be reinvested in addressing the direct costs and structural causes of the current crisis.

At its core, vulnerability to the oil shock is a function of fossil fuel dependence. The less we need to burn oil, the less the price of oil matters. That has implications for Canada as both a producer and a consumer of fossil fuels.

On the consumption side, we should be aggressively decarbonizing our economy to insulate households from future (or continued) oil price shocks. That $46 billion could pay for five to 10 years of free public transit across the country, for example. It could pay for the purchase and installation of four to five million heat pumps—more than enough to replace most home heating oil systems and gas furnaces in Canada. Or it could pay for a million electric vehicle charging ports, meeting all of Canada’s consumer EV infrastructure needs for the next two decades.

On the production side, we need to recognize that the current windfall will not last forever. Oil demand was already forecast to peak within a decade, and the Iran crisis may have pushed the peak forward by several years. Rather than seeking new sources of oil, which would be to the benefit of the Canadian oil industry, the crisis is encouraging energy-importing countries to double down on renewables and other clean tech. The UK, for example, just required all new homes to be built with heat pumps and rooftop solar panels as a direct response to the war on Iran.

For Canada’s oil regions, the current windfall could very well be the industry’s final boom. That makes it all the more important that proceeds be reinvested into economic diversification and industrial planning, especially in Alberta, where the government may collect tens of billions of dollars in unexpected revenues this year even without a new windfall tax.

We need to skate where the puck is going to be. A windfall tax on the oil industry can help us get there.

The post The oil industry is making billions from the Iran war—it should be taxed appeared first on CCPA.

Every movement needs its thinkers, its doers, its poets. Stephen Lewis encompassed all three. 

He was a champion of human rights and social justice from the beginning, middle, and the end—which came just in time for his son Avi Lewis to follow in both Stephen’s and his own father David’s political footsteps.

Stephen fought for a better world, including speaking up for the rights of the people of Africa when the rest of the world left the AIDS epidemic behind.

Stephen used words, not swords, in his battles. He was a master class orator who could move audiences to laughter, tears, pride, and moral outrage in the sweep of one speech.

He will be greatly missed. Our condolences to Stephen’s family—including the great Canadian journalist and author Michele Landsberg—during this difficult moment.

The post Stephen Lewis, a life well lived appeared first on CCPA.

The goal of the negotiations is to agree (or not) to extend CUSMA for a further 16 years, with or without amendments to the agreement. While Canada and Mexico have signalled their preference to renew the agreement and hopefully reduce U.S. tariffs to zero, the Trump administration will use the opportunity to extract political concessions from its neighbours. 

In addition to the long-standing dairy dispute, the United States has argued that Canada’s Digital Services Tax (paused by Prime Minister Carney last year), Online News Act and Online Streaming Act are discriminatory. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer included the latter two cultural policies on his list of “issues” that must be dealt with in the CUSMA review. 

The Online Streaming Act finally brings online streaming services, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, under meaningful regulation through the Broadcasting Act. The legislation entails a requirement for these firms to invest in, or contribute financially to, the creation, production and distribution of Canadian stories and music programming, and creates obligations for the dissemination and discoverability of Canadian stories and music.

The act and related Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decisions are expected to generate about $200 million per year in new contributions from online streaming services to support Canadian and Indigenous content. 

The policy has received strong support from many Canadian creators and industry groups. Warren P. Sonoda, chair of the Directors Guild of Canada, says it demonstrates the government’s continued commitment to supporting the Canadian film and television industry and will help create a fairer competitive environment between traditional broadcasters and online streaming platforms. 

The policy has also been criticized by international industry groups. Wendy Noss, president of the Motion Picture Association–Canada—which represents Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery—claims the policy could make it more difficult for streaming platforms to collaborate with Canadian creators and invest in globally competitive productions. 

Between 2008 and 2020, the combined revenues of Canada’s broadcasting television, radio, newspapers and magazines declined by nearly $6 billion. Between 2010 and 2016, at least one-third of journalism jobs across the country disappeared. Since 2008, more than 470 news media outlets have closed nationwide. Meanwhile, in 2020, Canada’s online advertising revenue reached $9.7 billion, with more than 80 per cent flowing to Google and Meta.

Disruption from platform-dominated information distribution is also the justification for Canada’s Online News Act. The act requires online platforms, including social media services, to financially compensate news outlets for distribution of news content. While supporters of the act believe it will help protect the local news industry, U.S.-based platforms have fiercely resisted the funding requirements.

In 2023, Meta (formerly Facebook) chose to block news content on its platforms in Canada rather than abide by the new law. The company is in consultations with the federal government related to reversing that decision. Until that happens, small publishers cannot share or access news on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which has significantly limited the reach of local news media.

The two acts expand the definition of cultural industries for the digital age and specify the CRTC’s regulatory authority. Following a series of public consultations, the CRTC announced several regulatory measures to bring each of the new policies into force.

Online Streaming Act

First, to keep track of who’s operating in the streaming industry in Canada, the CRTC requires most streaming service firms to register as such and provide basic information about their business. Smaller players (with revenues under $10 million a year) are exempt, as well as firms focused only on video games or audiobooks.

Second, streaming services that are not exempt can operate in Canada only if they comply with stricter transparency requirements. These include disclosing basic business, user and financial data when requested; avoiding undue preference or disadvantage (e.g., not boosting their own content or preferred partners while quietly sidelining competitors); reporting annual revenues generated in Canada; and not tying content to specific internet or mobile subscriptions (i.e., making access to content conditional on using a particular carrier or service).

Third, non-exempt streaming services must pay broadcasting regulatory fees. Smaller, standalone services get a break: the first $25 million in Canadian revenue is exempt. For larger corporate groups, revenues from services earning more than $2 million a year are pooled, with the group receiving a single $25 million exemption before fees apply.

Fourth, beyond regulatory fees, the CRTC now requires large streaming platforms to pay five per cent of their Canadian broadcasting revenue to support domestic and Indigenous content. Only services earning over $25 million a year (or part of a group above that threshold) must contribute. Revenue from audiobooks, video games, podcasts and user-generated content is excluded. 

Last but not least, the CRTC has updated what counts as Canadian content, introducing stricter certification rules that place greater emphasis on Canadian involvement in production, ownership and the creative process.

Online News Act

The Online News Act requires large search engines and social media platforms (e.g., earning over $1 billion in global revenue or reaching at least 20 million users in Canada) to contribute funds to media outlets whose content is shared over these online services. Platforms can avoid mandatory bargaining with the CRTC if they reach sufficiently fair agreements with eligible Canadian news outlets, including Indigenous media.

The CRTC regulations effectively codify Google’s deal with the federal government. While they do not name Google explicitly, the wording in section 9(2) of the regulations clearly targets the dominant search engine. In practice, that platform can avoid mandatory bargaining if it pays about $100 million a year to Canadian news outlets, with payments rising over time.

Section 10 of the regulations allows platforms to strike deals with groups of news outlets, but the money must be shared fairly. Payments are generally based on the number of journalists producing original news, with limits to prevent broadcasters and the CBC from taking too large a share. Finally, Section 7 of the regulations requires news outlets to spend most of the compensation they receive on producing news content.

What comes next

The USTR has not said that Canada’s Online Streaming Act or Online News Act are non-compliant with CUSMA. If the agency believed they were, at any point the U.S. could have requested consultations with Canada as part of the “New NAFTA” dispute resolution process. 

The agency’s 2025 National Trade Estimate report complained that the Online Streaming Act may effectively exclude Canadian streaming services from the new obligations while preventing U.S. suppliers from accessing the funding mechanisms they would be required to pay into. The report said the USTR would “closely monitor” the act and the bargaining-and-payment regime in the Online News Act. 

Given the Trump administration’s record of imposing tariffs on countries whose digital trade and cultural policies harm Silicon Valley profits, we should expect the USTR’s 2026 National Trade Estimate Report to up the rhetorical ante against Canada.

In its submission to the USTR consultations on the forthcoming report, the Coalition of Services Industries (CSI) says the Online Streaming Act, and potentially the Online News Act, are inconsistent with CUSMA and urges Canada to ensure that implementation does not impose undue burdens on non-Canadian digital services. Other U.S. industry groups and lobbyists have taken a similar position. 

On March 18, House Republicans introduced legislation to investigate Canada’s Online Streaming Act, asking the USTR to determine whether it constitutes an unfair trade practice targeting U.S. businesses. A finding of such under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 would lay the groundwork for higher tariffs on Canada irrespective of whether the policies violate any terms in CUSMA. 

The proposed investigation adds to mounting U.S. pressure on Ottawa to drop the Canadian cultural policies as part of the CUSMA review. The federal government’s Digital Services Tax flip-flop last year provides a worrying precedent. 

In support of Canada, the international Digital Trade Alliance argued the United States should not treat the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act as trade barriers. Rather, the group emphasized the need to preserve policy space for governments to regulate the digital ecosystem in the public interest and cautioned against turning the annual National Trade Estimates report into a vehicle for industry complaints. 

The submission further warned that targeting such regulations could undermine digital rights and make the United States appear inconsistent, given its own efforts to regulate and contain the market power of Big Tech domestically.

While criticizing Canada’s cultural policies as discriminatory local content requirements, President Trump has also complained that foreign incentives, including in Canada, unfairly attract film production away from Hollywood. The president has suggested imposing heavy taxes on films produced outside the United States. These threats, while still only vague Truth Social posts, are not idle.

The Trump administration has used recent “reciprocal” (actually one-sided) trade agreements to lock in broad digital trade disciplines that can constrain future foreign regulation affecting U.S. online platform firms. Articles 3.1 and 3.2 of the U.S.-Argentina agreement, for example, prohibit Argentina from imposing digital services taxes or introducing measures that discriminate against U.S. digital services or digitally distributed products. The U.S.-Ecuador agreement contains similar non-discrimination commitments and goes further by ensuring the free transfer of data across borders, barring discriminatory digital services taxes, prohibiting certain market entry conditions such as forced technology transfer or domestic preference requirements, and banning customs duties on electronic transmissions.

Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged U.S. concerns with the Online News Act in August 2025, suggesting that the government could seek to amend or repeal the law in view of its allegedly disruptive impact on the dissemination of news and information online. Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller stated that Ottawa is willing to be “flexible” on the Online News Act and the Online Streaming Act in light of evolving trade negotiations, but emphasized that the United States cannot dictate terms and that there are lines the government will not cross.

The CUSMA review puts Canada in a very awkward position with respect to these new cultural polices. The Trump administration does not care whether they violate the agreement—only whether they can use the threat of abandoning CUSMA, combined with a possible Section 301 investigation, to score a win for politically powerful U.S. social media and search platforms. 

As with dairy supply management, it may be possible to refine rather than abandon the policies; in this case, to reduce features of the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act that appear discriminatory in law or in effect, ensure more even access to funding mechanisms, and design obligations that are functionally neutral while still advancing public interest goals. 

The question for Canada is: why bother? Why change cultural policies that may comply with CUSMA to save an agreement the Trump administration has itself ignored in favour of unilateral trade coercion against friends and foes alike?

The post Trump’s war on Canadian cultural policy appeared first on CCPA.

I am among those children.

I was born into the kind of financial safety net that most Canadians can only dream of. My access to education, housing, and opportunity was paved by money I did not earn. And now, as this giant wealth transfer accelerates, I stand to inherit a significant windfall simply because of the lottery of my birth.

In almost any other G7 country, a transfer of the magnitude I will be receiving would trigger a mechanism to return a portion of that private fortune to the public good. It would be taxed. But not in Canada. Here, I will receive this wealth tax-free.

From a purely self-serving perspective, this is a triumph of estate planning. But from the perspective of a citizen concerned about the fraying social fabric of this country, it is a disaster.

As a member of Resource Movement—an organization made up of people with wealth and class privilege—I am asking the federal government to do something that might seem counter-intuitive to my self-interest: Tax my inheritance.

Without an inheritance tax, the ongoing wealth transfer acts as an inequality multiplier. It further calcifies a class system in which social mobility has already become difficult to achieve.

Canada: The G7 outlier

Opponents of inheritance taxes often frame them as radical, socialist interventions that would destroy the economy. But this is a peculiarly Canadian delusion.

The United States—the global bastion of free-market capitalism—has an estate tax. The United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy all have inheritance or estate taxes. Among the G7 nations, Canada stands alone as the outlier that allows dynastic wealth to accumulate entirely unchecked at the point of transfer.

We have allowed our tax system to become regressive at the very top. We tax income from labour—the money you wake up and go to work for—at a much higher effective rate than we tax income from wealth. An inheritance is the ultimate form of unearned income. It is the receipt of massive purchasing power without a single hour of labour attached to it.

Why should a nurse or a teacher pay 30 per cent or 40 per cent of their earnings in income tax, while we could receive a million-dollar bequest and pay nothing?

Busting the “family farm” myth

Whenever we raise this issue, the defense is immediate and emotional: “What about the family farm? What about the family cottage?”

This is a straw man argument used to protect the ultra-wealthy.

Those who advocate for an inheritance tax are not interested in coming for your grandmother’s modest bungalow or a working family farm. We are advocating for a high-threshold inheritance tax.

Imagine a tax that only kicks in on assets exceeding $5 million or $10 million. Or a progressive tax that targets the top 10 per cent of estates. There are countless policy mechanisms—exemptions for primary residences up to a certain value, distinct carve-outs for active farmland, and so on—that can protect the middle class while still addressing the accumulation of dynastic wealth.

A tool for repair

An inheritance tax is also about addressing historical wrongs. We have to be honest about where much of our wealth comes from.

In Canada, “old money” is often inextricably linked to the colonial extraction of resources, the displacement of Indigenous Peoples, and systems that favored white, settler families.

Redistribution is a form of repair. It is an acknowledgement that we live in a society, not an economy of isolated individuals.

The revenue from a modest inheritance tax would not transform our society overnight, but it could contribute to us making inroads toward a better future. An inheritance tax could help fund a proper National Housing Strategy. It could underwrite a Green New Deal. It could ensure that long-term care is a public guarantee, not a luxury good.

The choice before us

We often hear that wealthy people will leave Canada if we tax them. But where will they go? To the U.S., where they face an estate tax (and would have to live in the U.S.)? To Europe, where taxes are higher?

I am not leaving. This is my home. And because I love this country, I want to see it thrive. I do not want to live in a gated community surrounded by poverty. I do not want my financial security to come at the expense of my neighbour’s dignity.

The $1 trillion transfer is underway. We can let it deepen the cracks in our foundation, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots until it becomes unbridgeable. Or, we can use this moment to choose a different path.

We can choose to view inheritance not as a private right, but as a lucky windfall that should be shared. We can choose to invest in the living, rather than just protecting the assets of the dead.

I am ready to pay my share. I am asking the government to send me the bill.

The post The $1 trillion question: Why we are asking you to tax our inheritance appeared first on CCPA.

Ontario funds hospitals at the lowest per person rate in the country, at $1,805 per person, below the national average of $1,949 per person (based on 2022 data), and the province had the second lowest per person funding rate for the entire health care sector, at $5,268 per person, below the national average of $5,562 per person. 

This translates into a provincial health care system that is under such strain that it can no longer meet the needs of the population. Overcrowded hospitals and hallway medicine are the norm.

There are two major concerns with this budget: how much is being invested in health care and where that money is going.

The budget delivers service and spending cuts

First, the public health care system is not getting the funding it needs to maintain service levels. The health care sector is projected to get $97.8 billion in 2025-26. While this number sounds big, in inflation-adjusted terms that account for population growth and aging, funding will increase by a paltry 0.5 per cent, then it will be cut by 1.6 per cent in 2026-27.

In raw terms, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) estimates that $6.4 billion in new spending is required in 2026-27 just to maintain 2024-25 service levels (Figure 1). But budget 2026 only adds $3.4 billion in additional spending, which leaves the health care system short by $3 billion in the upcoming fiscal year. 

In 2027-28, the funding gap is expected to widen even further. The FAO estimates that $9.6 billion of new funding is required to maintain service levels in 2027-28. Budget 2026 offers only $2.3 billion—leaving a gap of $7.3 billion.

Funding austerity drives private-pay health care

Provincial funding austerity benefits privately financed—or “private-pay”—health care. When individuals and households are forced to pay out-of-pocket or with private insurance for health care services, this is a form of privatization.

From 2014 to 2023, per person private health care spending increased by 38 per cent—higher than provincial spending, at 35 per cent (Figure 2). Provincial per capita spending should be increasing at a greater pace than private spending, either in the form of out-of-pocket or insurance payments. It’s not.

The trend is worrisome—and budget 2026 is likely to make it worse.

In six of the last 10 years (2014 to 2023), per person health care private spending increased faster than per capita provincial public health care spending. Although provincial spending on health care remains a much larger share of total spending, the fact that private out-of-pocket and insurance spending has outpaced provincial spending is cause for concern. 

In the absence of adequate provincial investment in health care, households pay privately for health care that should be available and adequately funded by the provincial government—that’s the principle behind universal health care in Canada.

Indeed, when the government has the political will to invest in public health care, we see results. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought a 12 per cent increase in per person provincial health spending—and private spending dropped by eight per cent.

When the government steps up, it means public services can be mobilized quickly and people are not forced to pay privately—or go without. We cannot forget how rapidly provincial governments committed resources to increase health care sector capacity. 

The Ontario government needs to treat the current crisis in Ontario’s health system with the same urgency that it did in the early days of the pandemic.

Where is the money going?

The second problem is that a growing share of public health care funds is going into for-profit health care delivery, where public dollars leak into private profits.

This second form of privatization involves the provincial government using public funds to pay private, for-profit companies to deliver services. 

The budget is silent on how much in public spending will be going towards this form of privatization—nor are these expenditures available in publicly available data. However, previous CCPA research has shown it to be a growing share of public health care expenditures.

While the public hospital sector is being downsized through reduced provincial funding, Ontario is expanding outsourcing contracts with for-profit surgical facilities. In December, the Ontario government announced four new private orthopedic surgery facilities as part of a $125 million scheme to increase for-profit involvement. 

This is the largest one-time injection of public dollars into for-profit health care in Ontario—and likely Canadian history, outside of Quebec, despite evidence that Ontario pays private companies much more than public hospitals for the same procedures.

Chronic underfunding has also encouraged Ontario public hospitals to rely on costly for-profit staffing agencies to staff critical services. Ontario hospitals paid out over $9 billion to for-profit agencies over a decade. Between 2013-14 and 2022-23, real per capita private agency costs in Ontario nearly doubled (98 per cent increase) while spending on public hospital staff increased by only six per cent.

Based on public contracts with for-profit surgical and diagnostic companies and staffing agencies alone, Ontario flows at least $1 billion annually to for-profit health care corporations.

Aside from government announcements, the public is at a considerable disadvantage when trying to understand how much public funding is going to for-profit corporations that are contracted to deliver health care services. 

The CCPA relies on Freedom of Information legislation to make sense of how public dollars are subsidizing private profits. This is a growing concern in Ontario and other provinces. 

The Ontario government’s plans to further restrict access to government information and the premier’s communication on this issue signals a disturbing shift away from transparency and accountability. We need only look south of the border to see where this road takes us.

A better way is possible

In sum, there is a deepening public health care funding crisis in Ontario. The new provincial budget encourages greater privatization—both out-of-pocket payments for health care services and outsourcing to investor-owned corporations.

Instead of creating a funding gap of $3 billion that will reduce service levels, the provincial government should invest in the care economy and services Ontarians rely on—so that we’re not forced to increasingly pull out our credit card for needed health care services.

The post Ontario is underfunding public health care—and private health care is the beneficiary appeared first on CCPA.

Flash forward to today, and the industry is fighting for its very survival as communities clamour for moratoriums on new construction and politicians scramble to more tightly regulate an industry that is increasingly seen as imposing far more costs on communities than benefits. 

As Canada begins to experience its own data centre construction boom—along with early signs of backlash—it is instructive to understand how the U.S. industry has organized and responded to widespread community opposition. 

We are already seeing major data centre developers begin to organize themselves politically as an industry here in Canada. The newly minted Canadian Coalition for Digital Infrastructure (CCDI) consists of major U.S. data centre developers like Amazon Web Services, Beacon AI, Cologix and Equinix. We should, therefore, not be surprised to see the same advocacy and lobbying tactics deployed by these firms and their industry associations in the United States here in Canada. 

Examining the advocacy and lobbying responses of the American industry can help us anticipate what kinds of industry-backed campaigns we might expect to encounter as Canadian communities begin to confront the challenge of data centres in their own backyard. 

Controlling the message

As with any industry confronted by a hostile public concerned about the costs associated with AI data centres, the industry in the United States has quickly sought to take back control of the message. 

Indeed, the industry has launched an unprecedented public relations and advocacy campaign, using every tool in the corporate social responsibility tool box it can find to try and convince communities and their politicians that the industry has been woefully misrepresented. 

While the industry’s messaging blitz focuses on the myriad benefits the data centres supposedly deliver, there is no doubt that the industry recognizes that the growing backlash is hindering its ability to grow. It has thereby sought to diffuse some of the more contentious public concerns that have animated so much opposition.

Promises and pledges

The most prominent example of the industry’s campaign was the announcement by the major tech firms, along with President Trump, that efforts would be made to protect consumers from electricity rate hikes due to data centre energy demand. 

Executives from Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and xAI met at the White House in March to announce their non-binding and entirely voluntary pledge to ensure “that households and local businesses should not foot the bill for data center growth.” 

As critics have noted, the pledge is entirely unenforceable, and ignores the fact that the vast majority of utility regulation operates at the state or local level. Nevertheless, for an industry desperate to reverse its eroding public image and eager to continue its unprecedented growth, the pledge at least signals that the industry is aware that it is perceived as imposing costs on residential consumers. 

Microsoft has gone even further in its pledge with its “Community First AI Strategy”, in which it vows to pay higher electricity rates to protect ratepayers, commits to “replenish more of your water than we use,” and states that it will end the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with local governments. 

Meanwhile, Meta has spent $6.4 million on a series of advertisements that expound on the tech giant’s ability to transform the economic future of the small towns where it locates its own data centres.

Beyond the individual major tech firms, the industry is also organizing itself politically at the state and federal level. The Data Center Coalition—the industry’s premier trade association—has actively ramped up its lobbying efforts over the past year. Virginia Connects, an industry-affiliated group that includes Amazon, spent at least $700,000 on digital marketing in that state. It has produced and promoted a slate of digital advertisements arguing that the industry is paying its fair share of electricity costs while also touting job creation, increased internet quality and even national security arguments. 

Words versus deeds

But while the industry has presented itself to the public as a largely misunderstood source of real economic benefits, eager to redress some of the more demonstrable harms it has caused, its lobbying activities betray a much more self-interested and tactical posture. Indeed, the dissonance between the industry’s public words and its private lobbying is jarring. 

Industry lobbyists have been busy trying to prevent public backlash from manifesting itself as concrete legislative change. This has been most evident in Virginia, the industry’s organizational headquarters. 

Last year, the Data Center Coalition made $165,000 in contributions to state legislators through their Political Action Committee (PAC) prior to a push by VA lawmakers to regulate data centres. Of 27 proposed bills to regulate the industry, only one managed to pass both the house and senate. 

In Washington state, industry lobbyists successfully defeated House Bill 2515, which would have “required data centers to pay additional utility charges, comply with clean energy requirements, and shut off power at times of peak demand on the grid.” 

Proposed bills to regulate electricity rates and water consumption for data centres in California have been killed or substantially watered down due to the opposition of industry lobbyists. 

Industry efforts to kill proposed regulations are currently ongoing in Ohio, Maine, and Illinois.

Industry tactics at the local level can be even more brazen. Data centre developers and land owners have showered local politicians with campaign contributions in return for favourable treatment. Local government officials have also been accused of corruption and profiting personally through their relationships with data centre developers. 

The industry also compels local officials to secrecy over proposed deals through strict non-disclosure agreements. These agreements prevent local officials from sharing with residents essential information about proposed data centre projects, like energy use, water consumption, land development or waste disposal plans. Some of these agreements even compel local governments to give the developer advance notice of public records requests so the company can intervene with its own legal team. 

Residents are often left fighting their own elected governments for access to basic information about these projects that can have long-term negative impacts. Moreover, the use of these agreements not only fuel suspicion of the motives of local governments, but also of the developers themselves—further fuelling the backlash against the industry.

In private, it appears the industry lobbies against everything it publicly states it supports. While we shouldn’t be surprised by this kind of corporate hypocrisy, it is important to identify how this strategy can serve the interests of the industry as it comes under much more public scrutiny. 

The industry recognizes that the days of flying under the radar are over.It has to address some of the harms that it is responsible for. But the industry doesn’t want to be compelled by state-enforced regulations to always and everywhere address those harms. That could get expensive. 

A much better outcome is for the industry to promise to self-regulate and then negotiate individual case-by-case deals with the towns and counties where they develop. This allows the industry to maintain and exploit the tremendous power imbalance they enjoy versus local and even state governments. 

This is an industry that includes some of the most profitable and powerful multinational corporations in history. Almost any government—and particularly local government—will be ill-equipped to negotiate with this industry as equals. The industry’s strategy is based on outwardly conceding some relatively trivial costs over taxes or electricity rates, but maintaining the ability to use its substantial economic and political leverage to allow for its continued expansion. 

This makes it all the more incumbent on Canadians to ensure that there is a robust regulatory apparatus in place to manage the industry and its harms as it grows in this country. Our federal government has been far too reticent to regulate the tech sector for fear of stifling investment. Indeed, the federal government has already shown itself susceptible to lobbying by the industry, rescinding clean electricity requirements specifically for behind-the-meter natural gas powered data centres. 

We need to regulate this industry before it approaches the level of economic and political power we have seen in the U.S. Attempting to tame such a powerful industry after the fact, as Americans are learning, is a difficult task. If we decide to invite this industry into our communities, it needs to be on our terms and under rules of our making. 

The post AI data centres: From boom to backlash appeared first on CCPA.

For the U.S. and many attending governments, the impetus for the ministerial was China’s dominant position across all aspects of the critical mineral market. Outcomes included the U.S. signing numerous bilateral critical minerals frameworks and memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with attending countries. Minister Anand held back, stating that whether or not to cooperate with the U.S. on critical minerals will be tied to the review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

The Trump administration also announced two new pillars of its critical minerals strategy: Project Vault and the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE). 

Project Vault is a strategic critical mineral reserve backed by $12 billion in funding from both public and private sources. The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) will finance the purchase of raw materials for storage at critical minerals at facilities across the country, with the aim of strengthening industrial resilience for U.S.-based manufacturers in defence, automotives, AI, and tech. FORGE is made up of 17 allied nations that have agreed to a mandate for collaboration at the policy and project levels to secure critical mineral supply chains. 

Within these initiatives, the U.S. government is considering setting a price floor for certain critical minerals. A price floor mechanism will counter the low prices of Chinese competitors, resulting from lower labour costs, less stringent environmental regulation, and subsidies from the Chinese state. A multilateral pricing mechanism will also open like-minded countries to increased U.S. investment in their critical minerals sectors. 

The USTR’s 2026 Trade Policy Agenda highlights critical minerals as a key priority. A critical minerals preferential free trade zone with allied partners will include a range of mechanisms to create a new supply for critical minerals for Project Vault that will have to be extracted outside of the U.S. 

A copy of the U.S. critical minerals framework for agreements with allied nations highlights cooperation in securing a supply of strategic reserves, facilitating public and private investment into mining and processing, price mechanisms (as discussed above), alongside other regulatory tools. 

Why China dominates the market 

This U.S. strategy to transform the critical minerals market is an appendage of the U.S.-China power struggle. The future (and current) profitability of critical minerals makes control of the market an important marker of future global dominance. Currently, China is comfortably leading this race. 

The Chinese market advantage is clear: while critical minerals are found all over the world, their processing is heavily concentrated within Chinese companies. This is no fluke. China’s 2015 “Made In China 2025” plan outlined critical mineral system dominance as a key goal, and was followed by strategic investments across all levels of the critical mineral supply chain. 

As it stands, China is the dominant refiner of most key minerals. In an IEA assessment of 20 critical minerals, China was the leading refiner for 19, with an average market share of around 70 per cent. 

Consolidating not just raw product extraction but also the value-added production of critical mineral refinery and tech products has made China a major player at each stage of the mineral value chain. China’s export control regime has been key to China’s mineral policy, limiting global access to important minerals for manufacturing. 

It is this significant bottleneck in the supply of critical minerals and subsidiary products, such as magnets, that the new Trump administration’s strategy aims to mitigate. Limited access to Chinese technologies for processing and refining critical minerals makes it difficult for the U.S. or any other government to establish productive capacity. 

Subsequent attempts by the U.S. and Europe to disrupt China’s market advantage have had very limited, if any, impact on China’s market position. Since 2020, growth in refined material production has continued to concentrate among market leaders. Cobalt, for example, saw supply growth driven nearly solely by China. 

Ultimately, early responses from Western countries could not compete with the production costs, market prices, access to technologies, and the presence of cheap Chinese products in their markets. Under these market conditions, it is no surprise that the Trump administration and previous U.S. governments have sought to radically change the outlook for critical minerals for U.S.-based firms reliant on the materials. 

Early warning signs of U.S. “collaboration”

Early signs of U.S. investment following the announcement of Project Vault have raised major concerns for human rights groups. While plenty of countries have a mutual interest in challenging Chinese dominance of the mineral supply chain, wariness about joining the U.S. venture into critical minerals is well warranted. 

The Trump approach to the critical minerals-driven crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is extremely problematic. The U.S.-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) commits the U.S. to promoting peace and responsible mining in the mineral-rich nation, but first and foremost, it proposes a shift in control of Congolese minerals from China to the U.S. The SPA’s stabilization requirement focuses on supporting productive areas to secure mining operations, rather than minimizing civilian victimization. 

The SPA is clear: the Congolese government must establish a strategic critical mineral asset reserve, including exploration projects, to be reserved for U.S. companies. This is to be overseen by a joint steering committee, with half of its members appointed by and from the U.S. government. As if the U.S. isn’t already keen on investing, the DRC must also establish regulatory incentives for U.S. persons doing business in the nation as part of a “tax stabilization” period. 

While benefits for the U.S. are clear, the same cannot be said for the Congolese people. The SPA would see the suspension of artisanal processing centres without any consultation with or compensation for local communities that rely on the practice for their livelihoods. Groups in the U.S. and the DRC have condemned the SPA for locking the DRC further into foreign control, thereby ceding its right to a sovereign future. 

The DRC’s unique political conditions make the SPA particularly worrisome. But even in more stable regulatory conditions and traditional trading partners, such as Mexico, alignment with Trump’s critical mineral strategies has communities worried. 

The U.S.-Mexico Critical Minerals Action Plan, one of the many deals announced in early February, gives both countries 60 days to contemplate how to coordinate on critical minerals. Many Mexicans have made their worries clear: Mexican mining policy could increasingly be shaped by the U.S. critical minerals strategy, rather than by the social forces that brought President Claudia Sheinbaum to power. 

The Mexican government has sent mixed signals in this regard. Minister of Economy Marcelo Ebrard has made glowing remarks about the mining industry, announcing plans to accelerate mining concessions and facilitate additional investment. Meanwhile, following the announcement of the action plan, President Sheinbaum made clear that the Mexican state would not revert to an extractive focus or hand over national natural resources, stressing that any agreement must respect Mexican sovereignty. 

Indigenous and environmental groups point out the absence of language on the collective rights of communities or on the protection of the environment in the agreement, leading many to consider the action plan a betrayal of the campaign promises made to communities affected by mining projects. 

A critical moment for Canada 

Like the U.S., China, and just about every other player in the mineral supply chain, Canada has put critical minerals at the forefront of federal and provincial policy. The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy (CCMS) has provided $3.8 billion in funding to increase the supply of critical minerals and established a new Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund (CMSF) to make federal investments in the critical mineral value chain. 

Earlier this month, Minister Hodgson announced the second round of 30 partnerships and investments under the Critical Minerals Production Alliance, which was launched by the Carney government during the 2025 G7 meetings. Altogether, the Alliance announced $18.5 billion in Canadian critical mineral projects. 

Critical mineral projects have been fast-tracked by the Canadian government due to their strategic importance. While these minerals are valuable as industrial inputs, the impacts of extracting and refining them on the local environment, communities, and Indigenous nations need to be considered more deeply moving forward. Mining projects need to be more carefully assessed and regulated, not deregulated and fast-tracked.

Critical minerals development should not undermine the government’s obligations and the self-determination rights of Indigenous Peoples. Deeper deregulation of the mining industry will not position Canada well amid an immense period of precarity in the global market and the transition away from fossil fuels. 

Critical minerals have also made their way into Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trade agenda, including MOUs, alliances, and partnerships with a range of countries he has recently visited. 

As Muneeb Javaid put it, the centrepiece of the Canada-UAE trade and investment treaty discussions is a $70 billion investment pledge by the Gulf nation into national building projects, including liquified natural gas and critical minerals. The signing of the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) marked a further distressing approach to critical minerals. 

In particular, the inclusion of an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system in that agreement poses a threat to human rights in favour of mining interests. The Canadian summary of consultations on the CEPA noted that Canadian mining firms suggested that protection of investment through ISDS would be a beneficial tool for the sector. 

The trajectory of Canada’s impact on the critical minerals supply chain in Indonesia is now clear: Canadian mining companies will reap massive benefits while local communities and government will be limited in their ability to resist, as a result of investment tools such as ISDS. It is equally worrying that Emirati, Indonesian and other foreign investors in Canadian fossil fuel and mining projects will gain the same rights to sue Canada for any regulatory hurdles—including environmental regulations—that impede their profitability.

As the critical minerals strategies of Canada and the U.S. take shape, the upcoming CUSMA review will be central to understanding how both governments view partnership in the sector. 

Hodgson, in a recent presentation, stated his belief that critical minerals were central to Canada’s sovereignty and the security of allies. Additionally, he stated that, “In trade negotiations … our critical minerals are cards in our hands.” For the CUSMA review, this could mean that critical minerals are a key lever for Canada and a potential element of any deal reached with Trump, as discussed in the CCPA’s Countdown to the CUSMA review. 

It could also mean that control over Canadian critical minerals, from mining and processing to end uses, whether in energy technologies or weapons, is just tossed away to sweeten the pot for negotiations that turn out to be fruitless. There’s already a precedent: Mark Carney has done just that with the digital services tax.

Great care is needed in engaging with Trump’s critical mineral strategy. U.S. and other foreign investment should not come at the expense of Canadian autonomy or control over the mineral value chain.

Given the inefficiency and lack of circularity in Canada’s economy, some “critical minerals” need to be mined, but it needs to be done under more—not less—robust environmental regulation. And it must be done in coordination with a strategy to respond to the climate crisis, addressing energy and materials demands and phasing out fossil fuels. 

We cannot afford to waste valuable resources building weapons, or A.I data centres for billionaires. Critical mineral strategies that were initially sold to the public as “green” are going down a cynical road, and need to take a sharp turn towards sustainability and peace. 

The post “Critical minerals” strategy is going down a cynical road appeared first on CCPA.

While Budget 2026 makes important investments in childcare, adult education, transit, and health, a broader focus on balancing the budget this term is slowing investment in rebuilding public services and action on climate change. At the same time, while this budget provides broad tax cuts, there is not enough targeted relief for low-income Manitobans who have experienced the worst impacts of the affordability crisis.

Heavy focus on balancing the budget

Budget 2026 projects a deficit of $498 million in 2026/27, down $1.2 billion from the $1.66 billion deficit projected for 2025/26. This dramatic reduction to the projected deficit is built upon a range of factors, including spending restraint across much of government (more on this below), continued growth in federal transfers (+8.1 percent), and strong income tax growth (+5 percent). Income tax growth projections are driven in part by a 17.4 percent increase in corporate income tax in 2026/27.  

While Budget 2026 projects a major reduction to the deficit (and even forecasts a small surplus for 2027/28), this should very much be considered a projection. As written, the Budget projects a profitable year for Manitoba Hydro, restoring income from government businesses to $941 million. Last year’s budget projected net income from government businesses was $1 billion, however a loss for Manitoba Hydro due to drought conditions brought this figure down to $255 million. The Province’s flood forecast released last week does not project a major increase in water flows heading towards the Churchill and Nelson Rivers, raising concerns about a return to profitability for Hydro. 

As the Budget outlines, if all goes to plan Manitoba’s deficit as a ratio of GDP will be the lowest among Canadian provinces in 2026/27. This raises the question whether further investments in areas such as Housing, Addictions and Homelessness, Families, or Environment and Climate Change could have been made in this budget. There is no question that more needs to be done to address social crises across the province and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and that delaying these investments only raises their cost in the future. With that said, now that departments have gone through the process of reigning in spending, Budget 2027/28 must be viewed as an opportunity to shift the balance back towards investments in public programming and infrastructure. 

Public service rebuild 

As referenced above, reigning in spending across government departments is a significant factor in the provincial treasury’s projected deficit reduction for 2026/27. Seven out of eighteen departments will experience budget freezes or reductions in 2026/27, including Agriculture; Housing, Addictions and Homelessness; and Labour and Immigration. This is likely to slow the public service rebuild across many areas, and leave many workers across the public service, who are in many cases doing the work of more than one position, exhausted. As reported by MGEU in January, many departments across government are still struggling with high vacancy rates created by cuts under the previous government. 

While some departments are taking a haircut, there are large investments being made into other public services. Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care will receive a 10.3 percent funding increase in 2026/27. This increase will bring inflation-adjusted, per-capita spending in the provincial public system back above 2016/17 levels, providing further resources for system repair and expansion. Investment in Education and Early Childhood Learning is also set to increase by 6.3 percent. Advanced Education and Training will receive a 3.2 percent increase, grants to public universities and colleges are only increasing by 2.5 percent, which is status quo when inflation is factored in. 

Affordability, Poverty, and Income Inequality

The budget delivers on a long-standing ask of the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba to eliminate the $2-a-day fee that the lowest-income, highest-subsidized parents pay on child care, making child care free for parents under the poverty line who are able to secure a licensed space. The budget also includes a commitment to 2,000 new child care spaces, a 2.9% wage increase for Early Childhood Educators, and a 1% increase in operating funding for child care. These are good steps forward in the commitment to creating 23,000 new licensed child care spaces in Manitoba. 

Importantly, Budget 2026 increases funding for adult learning and literacy by $2.5 million, including $1 million dedicated to First Nations and northern communities. This will bring total funding for adult learning and literacy to $24.9 million. As previous CCPA reports have made clear, adult learning and literacy is a highly effective poverty reduction strategy, providing hundreds of Manitobans with life changing education every year. This investment is an important step in expanding this program.  

Funding for housing, addictions, and homelessness is frozen, and the budget commits to building 215 affordable and social housing units, down from last year’s commitment of over 600. This is a far cry from the Right to Housing Coalition’s recommendation to build 1,000 net new units of social, deeply affordable housing per year. 

While these are some important steps forward on poverty reduction, the budget does little to bring down poverty rates. It does not match the urgency and need to address the problems of poverty, which drive costs in other departments such as health care. 

A central plank in this budget is the removal of PST from prepared foods, which account for approximately 10% of the food the average family buys at the grocery store. A family that has more disposable income will save more on this measure. This repeats the mistake of the gas tax “holiday”, which benefited those who owned cars and drove more often, but those who cannot afford a car, or in this case, cannot afford prepared foods, do not benefit from this affordability measure. 

Budget 2026 also increases the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit to $1700 (+$100). The cost of increasing the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit is partially offset by a new measure which reduces the credit for owners of homes valued between $1 million and $1.5 million, and eliminates the credit for owners of homes valued above $1.5 million. While this is an important step, this claw back only recovers $1.7 million, making this more of a symbolic measure than a true revenue generator. Together the Homeowners Tax Credit increase and PST exemption for groceries will reduce provincial revenue by approximately $60 million over the full year. 

This is in the context of the freeze on Employment and Income Assistance rates, which has been in place for four years, as food costs have risen by 20% appears particularly egregious. When budgets are about choices, the $32 million the province is losing in PST revenue from the PST cut could have instead gone to increasing the basic needs budget of the 30,000 households in Manitoba that rely on provincially funded social assistance. 

Rent Assist, which was cut by the previous provincial government, remains untouched in this budget. It is indexed to median market rent, but, as Jesse Hajer documents, cuts by the previous provincial government eroded this benefit by $142/ month and have not yet been reversed. The Renters Tax Credit, meanwhile, will be raised from $625 to $675.

Conclusion

Overall, this budget signals the provincial government’s priorities on rebuilding health care, affordability for the middle class, and child care. However, progress on the social deficit, including homelessness and poverty rates, will remain slow as the government pushes to balance the budget by 2027. Inaction in these areas will be far more costly than short-term measures, as the long-term costs of poverty and inequality are borne across government departments including health, child welfare, and emergency response. 

The post Manitoba Budget 2026 appeared first on CCPA.

Introduction

Manitoba’s health care system is in a precarious stage of renewal. Government efforts to increase capacity and repair relationships with staff have made significant progress, but due to the harsh austerity imposed prior to and immediately following the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, further provincial resources will be required to repair the system.

To critically evaluate the levels of public investment required to rebuild Manitoba’s public health care system, it is crucial to contextualize current spending and assess where gaps remain in spending, staffing, and service provision. As a collaboration between the Manitoba Health Coalition and the Manitoba office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, this project aims to provide a clear set of benchmarks to assess provincial government spending in Manitoba’s public health care system.

This is the first of two reports analyzing Manitoba’s provincial public health care. In this first report, we provide historical context to Manitoba’s provincial health spending by analyzing annual per capita health care expenditure relative to inflation, provincial population aging and provincial population growth from 2010/11 to 2025/26. These figures help assess how relative spending power within Manitoba’s provincial healthcare system has changed over time. Furthermore, we track Manitoba’s real per-capita health spending relative to the Canadian provincial average going back to 1975 to further contextualize the austerity of the last decade.

In the second (forthcoming) report, we analyze staffing levels, spending on private health care delivery, and other key outcomes in the public health system. These outcomes include access to a family doctor, emergency medical response wait times, wait times for surgeries and diagnostics, and wait times for home and long-term care.

It is our goal that the data and analysis in these two reports will help evaluate the need for public health care investment and support an expanded and improved health care system for all Manitobans.

Manitoba health care spending is still in recovery

Across Canada, public healthcare is under increasing strain due to a variety of factors. Inadequate funding, particularly for staffing, is regularly cited as a top factor affecting provincial healthcare systems. Assessing Manitoba’s provincial health spending relative to economy-wide price increases, population growth, and population aging over the last 15 years provides a view into medium-term trends in Manitoba healthcare funding.

Figure 1 below compares nominal and inflation-adjusted increases in Manitoba’s annual provincial healthcare spending between 2011/12 and 2025/26. With the exception of 2020/21 (the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic), Manitoba health spending was at or below the inflation rate between 2017/18 and 2022/23. Although annual increases were not broken down for this analysis, the sole funding increase in 2020/21 was due to exceptional COVID-19-related measures. After six years of effective cuts, real healthcare spending (adjusted for inflation) increases were restored in 2023–24 and 2024–25 at 5.2 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively. In 2025–26, Manitoba is on track for a 1.5 percent real increase in healthcare spending, well below the pace set in the previous two years.

When adjusting provincial health spending to account for population growth and aging, the effect of austerity between 2017/18 and 2019/20, and between 2021/22 and 2022/23, comes into sharper relief. Figure 2 presents Manitoba’s real per-capita public health system spending from 2010/11 to 2025/26, accounting for population aging (see Appendix for methodology). Age-adjusted, per-capita health spending climbed between 2010 and 2016 despite a major decline in federal transfers during that period. From 2016/17 to 2019/20 real, age-adjusted spending declined from $6,219 per person to $5,590, or by nearly 10 percent.

Between 2017/18 and 2019/20, the province implemented a series of cuts under the “Manitoba’s Health System Transformation” plan, including eliminating 500 nursing positions, 700 hospital support staff positions, closing three emergency rooms, and consolidating various health services (Burley, Chernomas, and Hudson 2025). Since the low-point of 2019/20 spending has increased to $6,020 per person, progressively increasing since 2022/23.¹ Despite significant spending over the last three budget cycles, relative spending power in Manitoba’s provincial health system remains roughly three percent below where it was a decade ago, indicating that additional spending increases well above inflation are still required to backfill the cuts implemented between 2017/18 and 2019/20.

Focusing on health personnel spending² (see Figure 3), a similar pattern of a sharp spending decline followed by a stop-start recovery is visible. From 2016/17 to 2019/20, age-adjusted, real per-capita spending on staffing fell by seven percent from $3,500 to $3,255. Staffing expenditures increased in 2020/21 and 2021/22 due to COVID-19-related spending, including wage top-ups, but fell back to $3,256 in 2022/23. Over the last two years, staffing expenditure has increased to $3,500, almost exactly where it was a decade ago.

Historically, Manitoba’s public health care expenditure has, on a real per-capita basis, been above the average expenditure for Canadian provinces (see Figure 4). This is due to Manitoba’s relatively small population size and geographic disbursement, reducing economies of scale across the health system. Between 1975 (the earliest available data) and 2023, Manitoba’s real per-capita public health expenditure fell below the Canadian average only between 2020, 2021, and 2022. This highlights the acute stress Manitoba’s health-care system experienced under the dual pressures of COVID-19 and provincial austerity.

From the late 1990s to 2016–17, Manitoba’s real per-capita expenditure was around 10 to 15 percent higher than the Canadian provincial average. On an age-adjusted, real per-capita basis, this amounted to a difference of between $300 and $500 per person (see Figure 5). Increases to Manitoba’s provincial health care spending in 2023,³ when the new government launched its workforce recruitment and retention drive and settled new contracts with various sectors of the workforce, appear to have pushed Manitoba’s age-adjusted, real-per capita expenditure above the Canadian provincial average once again. However, as the analysis above outlines, overall spending power within Manitoba’s provincially funded health system has not been restored to levels seen prior to the health system transformation implemented by the previous provincial government.

Rebuilding Manitoba’s provincial health care system was a central plank of the NDP’s successful 2023 election campaign. While analyzing aggregate provincial health care spending provides only a partial view of the healthcare system rebuild, failing to address the content of spending or to connect spending to issues such as surgical wait times or bed capacity, these findings can help health care advocates critically assess Manitoba health care funding commitments over the next few years.

Since taking office in 2023, there is no question that Manitoba’s government has made progress in reversing the health spending shortfall created between 2016/17 and 2019/20, and has maintained it between 2021/22 and 2022/23, following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, further spending increases are still needed to return funding to its 2016/17 level.

What the data tell us: More action is needed to rebuild Manitoba’s health care system

Health care spending has increased substantially since 2023, but significant increases are still required to recover from years of underfunding and to expand the system to improve care and reduce wait times. A decade of chronic underfunding has led to burnout among health care workers and contributed to an ongoing retention crisis in public health care in Manitoba, which was significantly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the double whammy of historically unprecedented austerity and a global pandemic, the public health care system lost many of its workers through burnout, early retirement, and other forms of attrition (Harney 2023). Burnout remains a serious problem among health care workers in Manitoba and across the country. In a new, first-of-its-kind national survey of over 6,000 health care workers, more than half (61 percent) reported heavy workloads and burnout (National Union of Public and General Employees 2025). Here in Manitoba, nurses and other health care professionals continue to cite workload and burnout as key issues facing their workforces (Manitoba Nurses Union 2024; Manitoba Government and Employees Union 2024).

Without safe and supportive working conditions, safe and reasonable staff-to-patient ratios, and competitive benefits and wages, Manitoba risks losing more public health care workers to the private, for-profit system. The last two years of public health care investment have made notable progress on wages and benefits: new contracts have been agreed with healthcare workers across the system, providing wage increases and moving healthcare aides onto an improved benefits program. However, there is still progress to be made on staff-to-patient ratios, bed capacity, and supportive working conditions, among other areas. Legislation proposed in 2026 to limit mandatory overtime and legislate nurse-to-patient ratios provide some hope on improving working conditions (Hoye 2026).

Alongside the necessary funding increases, the allocation of public dollars is crucial to consider. In Manitoba, privatization has taken hold in many areas of health care delivery over the last decade, particularly through private agency staffing that fills vacancies in the public system at high cost to the public. Efforts by the provincial government to reduce the number of private agencies working in Manitoba is an important step in controlling these costs (Froese 2026). Private, for-profit diagnostics and surgical options also threaten the public system by taking public resources and drawing workers away from public facilities.

Spending public dollars to support private, for-profit provision of health care is inefficient and undermines the principles of universality and accessibility entrenched in the Canada Health Act. Other provinces like Alberta have expanded privatization of health care into surgical delivery, but thus far, these efforts have not reduced wait times (Longhurst 2025a). In Ontario, costly reliance on private, for-profit agencies has weakened the public hospital system while not expanding access to care (Longhurst 2025b). For-profit health care leaves many—especially those living outside of major centres like Winnipeg—behind, as it is not profitable to deliver health care in rural and remote communities.

The Canada Health Act is intended to ensure that all Canadians, regardless of province, can access publicly administered, universal, comprehensive, accessible, and portable care. Adequate, ongoing funding for public health care is essential to ensure that Manitoba can meet the minimum standards set by the Act in the future. If Manitoba does not comply with the principles and conditions of the Canada Health Act, much-needed health care funding transferred from the federal government will be lost. This is something Manitoba cannot afford.

Importantly, investments in public health care are just that—investments. They are commitments to the lives and futures of individual Manitobans. Investing in primary and preventive care will make for a healthier Manitoba and ultimately reduce costs for the system overall by keeping people out of emergency care, catching illnesses before they become too serious, and enhancing people’s capacity to meet their full potential.

Manitobans deserve better. The project to rebuild Manitoba’s public health care system is underway, but without increased investment and collaboration with patients and providers, it will stall. Increased funding is needed to rebuild a truly universal, accessible, and equitable public health care system in Manitoba that supports patients and workers equally.

Appendix

Real per-capita provincial public health care spending was taken directly from Manitoba’s Annual Report and Public Accounts (summary financial statements, consolidated statement of operations). The consolidated spending reported for the Department of Health, Seniors and Long-term care is used here to capture provincial government spending on Manitoba’s health system.

Provincial government health spending was adjusted for population aging using a population aging index. The population aging index was calculated using data on per-capita provincial health expenditures by age group sourced from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (Table E.1.26.2.a) and data on Manitoba’s population by age group sourced from Statistics Canada (Table 17-10-0005-01). Both datasets are grouped into five-year age groups. Per-capita spending by age group was multiplied by the corresponding share of Manitoba’s population in each age group, then summed to produce an index of population aging. This index was divided by the base year of 2010/11 for each year to assess annual population aging.

Works cited

Burley, Katherine, Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson. 2025. “Critical Condition: Healthcare in Manitoba.” In Public Service in Tough Times: Working Under Austerity in Manitoba. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Froese, Ian. “Manitoba cuts ties with dozens of private nursing agencies to curb reliance on the firms”. CBC News. January 6, 2026. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-cutting-ties-dozens-private-nursing-agencies-9.7025848.

Hoye, Bryce. “NDP bills would limit mandatory OT for Manitoba nurses, allow nurse-to-patient ratios”. CBC News. March 11, 2026. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-legislature-nurse-overtime-patient-ratios-9.7121746.

Harney, Niall. 2023. “Revitalizing the conditions of care in Manitoba: Supporting long-term care and home care workers in the recovery from COVID-19.” Winnipeg: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/revitalizing-the-conditions-of-care-in-manitoba/.

Longhurst, Andrew. 2025a. “Operation Profit: Private Surgical Contracts Deliver Higher Costs and Longer Waits.” Parkland Institute. https://assets.nationbuilder.com/parklandinstitute/pages/2521/attachments/original/1742564390/Operation_Profit_Report.pdf?1742564390.

Longhurst, Andrew. 2025b. “Hollowed Out: Ontario public hospitals and the rise of private agency staffing.” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/hollowed-out/.

Manitoba Government and General Employees Union. 2024. From Crisis to Stability: Fixing the Staffing Crisis in Manitoba’s Health Care System. https://www.mgeu.ca/uploads/public/documents/Reports/2024-07-18-health-care-report-final1.pdf.

Manitoba Nurses Union. 2024. Healthcare in Manitoba is in Crisis: Recommendations to Support Nursing Staff from the Manitoba Nurses Union. https://wfpquantum.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/2025/44517_MNU_White_Paper_Report.pdf.

National Union of Public and General Employees. 2025. NUPGE Health Care Member Survey. https://nupge.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Final-Public-Version-NUPGE-Detailed-Report-February-3-2025-2.pdf.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the peer reviewers of this report.

The post Vitals check: Restoring provincial health spending in Manitoba appeared first on CCPA.

“Canada’s medicare system is at odds with the principles of so-called free trade treaties,” they wrote. “By establishing a public sector health insurance monopoly, and by regulating who can provide health care services and on what terms, the Canada Health Act and the medicare system cut against the grain of trade and investment liberalization. 

While governments routinely assure Canadians that the health care system is safe under these powerful trade treaties, in fact, it is “only partially shielded from their force.

These concerns are more relevant today than ever—and they take on greater urgency in light of Alberta’s recent introduction of two-tier health care legislation.

Alberta’s new legislation opens the door for doctors and private facilities to charge patients directly for health services covered under the Canada Health Act. It also paves the way for a private health insurance market for basic health services, no longer leaving the private health insurance market in Canada to employer-sponsored extended health plans.

In December, the Alberta government passed Bill 11, which introduces dual physician practice whereby physicians can bill the public insurance plan while also requiring patients to pay privately. Physicians no longer must decide between working in the publicly funded system or the private-pay market; they can work in both simultaneously. 

Dual physician practice is the method to achieve a two-tier health care system where the wealthiest can pay for preferential access—and a for-profit health care industry can flourish.

Trade agreements put public health care at risk

Canada is a signatory to over 100 trade and investment treaties. These agreements guarantee foreign private services firms broad market access and national treatment (i.e., the same treatment as Canadian firms) in the Canadian market, except where Canada has taken exceptions to the rules. 

For example, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO) excludes services provided in the “exercise of governmental authority.” The agreement clarifies that this means “any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers.” 

Alberta’s two-tier reforms erase the line between the public and private health sectors. As provinces encourage the growth of for-profit medical insurance, it will not be possible to control the spread of U.S. or other foreign firms, which will be entitled to the same subsidies and advantages the government provides to public, not-for-profit entities.  

Although GATS and other Canadian free trade deals, including CUSMA, partially exempt public provincial health systems from trade liberalization and foreign investment, Canadian health care is not fully protected if these corporations gain a foothold in the health care market. This could happen in several ways. 

First, foreign for-profit health care providers, such as U.S. hospital chains, could seek entry into provincial health systems by successfully bidding on contracts for publicly funded and privately delivered (outsourced) surgeries and diagnostic procedures. Provinces could also directly award contracts, should they wish. 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has already stated at a private United Conservative Party event that she envisions the government leasing health facilities to third-party operators. These could very likely be U.S. or foreign corporations looking to expand into both the publicly funded and private-pay delivery markets.

These threats are real. The 2023 CCPA report At What Cost? documented U.S. investment interest in provincial outsourcing markets. U.S. and foreign investors in publicly funded and private-pay health care delivery would likely look to investment opportunities in Alberta under the province’s new plan for two-tier health care. 

Already, two U.S. corporations own the majority of community blood clinics and laboratories in Canada, including New Jersey-based Quest, which owns LifeLabs, and Dynacare, owned by North Carolina-based Labcorp of America. Another multinational player, Grifols, is a Spain-based corporation that has an agreement with Canadian Blood Services to operate paid-plasma clinics across the country. Recently, two people died after giving plasma in their clinics.

A second avenue for foreign and U.S. interests to enter the Canadian market is by offering private health insurance products for medically necessary physician (and physician-equivalent) services and hospital services insured under the Canada Health Act and provincial legislation. 

Based on developments in Alberta, it is no longer unthinkable that U.S. private health insurers—looking to expand into new markets—would begin to offer new insurance products to Canadians in order to obtain queue-jumping insurance. 

In a recent CCPA webinar, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, leading scholars on the U.S. health care industry, commented that U.S. private health insurers are looking for new markets and many are already active in South America. 

These insurance companies would likely first target their products at large employers and unions, to add private coverage for workers to obtain faster access to elective surgeries and diagnostic procedures. Expansion by offering queue-jumping insurance products for individuals would likely follow, but would represent a much smaller market, at least initially.

Canada is situated next to the largest for-profit health care industry in the world. Increasingly, it is a vertically integrated industry with corporations involved in both private health insurance and health care service delivery. This means that allowing any U.S. investment into the country risks inviting both private health insurers and for-profit providers to become a permanent fixture in Canada’s provincial health systems. 

Once invested in Canada—likely via Alberta—these corporations would have access to strong trade and investment treaty protections, including potential legal recourse, should provincial governments try to regulate them in an attempt to protect patients against poor quality care and also maintain Canadian control over public medicare.

The threat of investor lawsuits

On top of the trade-based risks from opening Canada to further health privatization, Canada is party to dozens of bilateral investment treaties (and investment chapters within free trade treaties) granting foreign investors the power to sue the government for actions that may affect their private investments. 

Canada was routinely sued by U.S. firms under the expired investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system in NAFTA, with cases frequently challenging non-discriminatory environmental and public interest decisions. There have been a number of international ISDS cases involving health services and public health.

Newer Canadian investment treaties include a weak “right to regulate” clause that does not block investment tribunals from scrutinizing regulatory measures for their effect on investor profits. Importantly, it is not possible in any of these treaties to shield public policies or actions against investor allegations that they breach the so-called minimum standard of treatment or wrongly expropriate their investment.

Examples of health-related ISDS cases include a series of lawsuits against Slovakia following legislation, in the late 2000s, requiring health insurance firms to operate on a not-for-profit basis and a 2024 case against Colombia from a Spanish health insurer challenging the government’s decision to put the firm under administration due to concerns over its financial viability. 

Indeed, the Canada Health Act was put on notice in a 2009 ISDS claim against Canada under NAFTA related to a U.S. investor’s inability to set up private fee-for-service health clinics in Vancouver and Calgary. The case was dropped but only because the investor failed to make a deposit, as required. 

While Canada and the United States smartly removed ISDS from the renegotiated CUSMA, similar investor protections exist in dozens of agreements, including the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which involves the United Kingdom and Australia. 

The first, and so far only, established ISDS case under the CPTPP is from an Australian coal magnate, who is demanding $2 billion from Canada in a dispute related to the establishment of a national park overlapping their mining licences in Alberta. Previously, a Quebec pension fund threatened Mexico with a CPTPP investor-state lawsuit for energy reforms prioritizing public electricity delivery in that country.

What can be done to protect medicare? 

The health care landscape has fundamentally shifted since the WTO-GATS and NAFTA were negotiated in the 1990s. The introduction of two-tier health care and associated investment opportunities invite significant new threats to the not-for-profit character of Canada’s health care system.

Therefore, it is very important that CUSMA retain the partial health care and public services exemption and continue to exclude investor-state dispute settlement. There are no signs yet that the Trump administration will pressure Canada about the health exception, but business groups are lobbying to reintroduce ISDS. We can’t afford to let that happen.

Though it does not pertain to health care privatization, the Trump administration, backed by U.S. pharmaceutical companies, may also use the CUSMA review to force Canada to change or abandon drug pricing rules aimed at controlling public health costs from prescription medicines. 

The lobby group PhRMA’s submission to the United States Trade Representative’s Special 301 Consultations—related to alleged intellectual property rights barriers in trading partner countries—is 17 pages long. Recent U.S. trade agreements with Ecuador and Argentina commit those countries to address every U.S. complaint in the 2025 USTR Special 301 report. Canada and Mexico will almost certainly come under similar coercion related to pharmaceutical patents and drug pricing policy.

To summarize, the introduction of a parallel, private-pay system in Alberta based on private health insurance and out-of-pocket payment represents a fundamental change to Canada’s public health care system. Alberta would have a difficult time restricting the newly created market to Canadian firms, even if the government wanted to, and once foreign investors become entrenched, they will benefit from the full force of Canada’s international trade obligations. This will make it very difficult for Canada and the provinces to reverse course.

The trade and investment treaty risks related to Alberta’s health system privatization are yet another reason why this decision cannot be the province’s alone to make. 

The post Do trade deals put public health care up for sale? appeared first on CCPA.

S’appuyant sur les meilleures données disponibles, les tableaux ci-dessous présentent un portrait ventilé des tailles des classes à l’échelle de la province, des conseils scolaires et des écoles de la première à la quatrième année.

Durant l’année scolaire 2024-2025, seulement 52 pour cent des classes de la quatrième à la huitième année comptaient moins de 25 élèves, 45 pour cent en comptaient de 25 à 29 et quatre pour cent comptaient plus de 30 élèves.

Quatre pour cent peut paraître peu, mais dans le grand système d’éducation de l’Ontario, ce pourcentage signifie que près de 1 100 classes de la quatrième à la huitième année dans la province comptent plus de 30 élèves.

Certains conseils scolaires sont plus touchés que d’autres.

Dans le conseil scolaire du district de Toronto, 42 pour cent des classes de la quatrième à la huitième année (1 420 classes) comptaient de 25 à 29 élèves et 9 pour cent (313 classes), 30 élèves ou plus.

D’autre part, le conseil scolaire catholique du district de Nipissing-Parry Sound affichait le pourcentage le plus élevé de classes dans la province avec plus de 30 élèves: soit 21 pour cent même si au total, il ne représentait qu’un petit nombre de classes, soit dix.

Comment se fait-il qu’un si grand nombre de classes excèdent les limites connues?

Les parents se font dire que la taille des classes est limitée à 20 élèves de la première à la troisième année, à 24,5 élèves de la quatrième à la huitième année et à 23 élèves de la neuvième à la douzième année. Or, leurs enfants sont dans des classes qui excèdent de beaucoup ces limites, tout comme la moitié des enfants de la province. Comment est-ce possible?

La réponse courte: ce sont les plafonds des classes.

Seules les classes de la première à la troisième année ont des plafonds fermes. Dans tous les conseils scolaires de l’Ontario, 90 pour cent des classes doivent avoir 20 élèves ou moins et les dix pour cent qui restent peuvent en avoir jusqu’à 23.

Pour les classes de la neuvième à la douzième année, le ministère subventionne la taille des classes à raison de 23 élèves en moyenne et les conseils scolaires sont tenus de respecter cette moyenne générale. Dans la plupart des matières, les tailles des classes ont des limites maximums, traditionnellement négociées à l’échelle locale entre les syndicats d’enseignant-e-s et les conseils scolaires.

Dans le cas des classes de la quatrième à la huitième année, la taille des classes est stipulée en tant que moyenne à l’échelle du conseil scolaire. Ce qui veut dire que si certaines classes sont plus petites que la moyenne ciblée, d’autres classes peuvent être plus grandes. Grande jusqu’à quel point? Il n’existe pas de plafonds. Et c’est cette absence de plafond qui ouvre la porte à un nombre aussi élevé de classes nombreuses.

La complexité de la composition des classes est une autre pièce importante du casse-tête, selon Nichole Grant, directrice de la recherche à la Fédération canadienne des enseignantes et des enseignants (FCE). De son point de vue, la taille des classes doit prendre en compte les besoins en éducation spécialisée. Dans le cadre d’une analyse pondérée, il faudrait attribuer aux élèves qui n’ont pas besoin d’éducation spécialisée un poids de 1 et aux autres élèves un poids supérieur (p. ex. 1,2 ou 1,5). Si le ministère de l’Éducation fournissait les données requises pour faire ce type d’évaluation, les chiffres dans les tableaux ci-dessus seraient beaucoup plus élevés et correspondraient de plus près à l’expérience vécue en classe.

La réduction de la taille des classes en imposant des plafonds aurait un effet immédiat et positif sur l’expérience en classe en Ontario et sur la réussite des élèves. Nous le savons déjà. Nous n’avons pas besoin d’autres examens de l’OQRE ni de consultations interminables. Nous avons besoin plutôt que le gouvernement de l’Ontario cesse de trouver des excuses et investisse dans les écoles.

The post Les élèves de l’Ontario ont besoin de classes plus petites et non pas d’un autre examen de l’OQRE appeared first on CCPA.

Introduction

Housing researchers have shown that for more than 40 years, housing policy in Canada has increasingly relied on the private for-profit sector to provide rental housing (Bernas et al., 2023; Suttor, 2016; Whitzman 2024). The growing shortage of rental housing affordable to low-income households during this period confirms that this strategy has failed low-income renter households. Governments are now desperately trying to correct the problem, but as evidenced by evaluations of the National Housing Strategy, Canada continues to return to failed policies while uncritically hoping for better results (Blueprint, 2022; MacKinnon, 2024). The failure of the market to provide housing for those in greatest need is evidenced by an explosion of homelessness and housing precarity across the country that is no longer possible to ignore (Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, 2025). Housing encampments are a reality in most major cities, and waitlists for social housing are long (Statistics Canada, 2024a). More than 22 percent of renters live in housing that is not affordable, inadequate in size and/or poorly maintained because that is all that is available (Statistics Canada, 2024b).

The increasing number of unhoused people is not surprising when looking at the historical trajectory of investments in social protections. Housing inequity grew in the 1980s when governments began to step away from interventionist approaches characteristic of what is often referred to as the post-war welfare state era. The term welfare state refers to government systems of social protections including for example healthcare, income supports, pensions and housing. Western democracies, to various degrees, expanded social protections in the 1940s through the early 1970s. A global economic crisis in the 1970s led to high inflation and high unemployment. This opened the door to a powerful resistance against Keynesian policies including state interventions and social protections, and a new political and economic ideology—neoliberalism—took hold. The attack on the postwar consensus that governments must intervene to mitigate the worst effects of capitalism is well documented (Harvey, 2005; Peck, 2010; Schönig, 2020). Central to the new approach that emerged was a downsizing of social protections, replaced by greater reliance on the private market. This ongoing phase is often referred to as the post-welfare phase. Throughout this post-welfare phase, governments across Western nations, albeit to varying degrees, have scaled back investment in social housing (Jacobs, 2019).

Social housing is arguably the most tenuous component of the welfare state, described by Torgersen (1987) as the “wobbly pillar”. Although housing stability is a fundamental indicator of a healthy and flourishing society, post-welfare housing policy is often overlooked as a prime example of where neoliberal policies have failed.

Schönig (2020) describes a society’s social housing policy not only as the most important, but also as the most “visible instrument of Western welfare-state housing policy” (p. 1023). Social housing expansion was an integral part of European and Canadian welfare states post WWII. This began to change in the 1980s with the ascendancy of neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005; Jacobs, 2019) and continues to evolve through a continued process of neoliberalization (Howells & Oleson, 2025) with governments forging relationships with the private sector to provide social protections, including housing (Howells & Oleson, 2025).

With a focus on Scandinavian countries, Howells and Oleson (2020) describe the core elements of neoliberalism as an “ideology-producing process of neoliberalization that can help explain the evolution of social housing policies in Western nations” (p.3).

Neoliberalization is the process of implementing neoliberal policies, including disinvestment in social protections, privatization and deregulation. Understanding how neoliberalization is shaping post-welfare housing policies can help us move beyond neoliberal prescriptions, rather than doubling down with more market solutions and the commodification of an important pillar of the social safety net. The process of neoliberalization has severely eroded the post-war intent of social housing as a social protection. However, alignment with neoliberalism and its impact has been less severe in northern social democratic countries and some European jurisdictions.

Methodology and purpose

This report aims to compare the social housing systems of a sample of jurisdictions representing social democratic, corporatist and liberal welfare state regimes (Esping-Andersen,1990) to examine the evolution of housing policy and societal impact. It does this through an examination of secondary sources, including academic literature, OECD data, government reports and civil society critique. The report is by no means exhaustive. It emphasizes Finland as an example of a well-designed social democratic model that employs a comprehensive approach. The focus turns to Finland because it is often cited as having successfully integrated Housing First principles with a robust foundation of social housing to ensure that all in Finnish society has safe and adequate housing. The intent of this report is to better understand how the state of housing has come to be, how different welfare states have responded, and what features of the Finnish approach have led to its success. Finally, the aim is to examine how the Finnish model might be adapted in the Canadian context, using Manitoba as a regional example.

Social housing systems in comparison

Although neoliberalization continues to shape housing policy, the 40-year trajectory has varied considerably across the global north. Social housing has fared better in some countries (Mundt & Amann, 2010; Schönig, 2020), while in others it has declined significantly. Liberal welfare states (Esping-Andersen,1990) tend to take a more residual approach, narrowly limiting investment in social housing for the most destitute. Conservative and social democratic regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990) have more broadly, albeit to different degrees, provided social housing for a broad range of the population (Kemeny,1995; Schönig, 2020). Public perception of social housing and other social protections broadly aligns with the generosity of state welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990). This is evident when we look at perceptions of social housing in jurisdictions with a large accessible supply. For example, Vienna Austria and Helsinki Finland have long traditions of social housing provision (Kadi and Lilius, 2022). Social housing is seen as an acceptable housing option. In jurisdictions where social housing is in short supply and identified as housing for the most destitute, there is far less enthusiasm for its expansion and maintenance (Juvenius, 2024; Scanlon et al., 2015).

Although there isn’t a universal definition of social housing, it is generally understood as rental housing outside of the market, public or non-profit, with rents below market rate, subsidized sufficiently to be sustainably affordable to low-income households (Nielsen, R.; Nordberg, L. & Andersen; L., 2023). In Canada, social housing is typically described as rental housing owned and operated outside of the market, targeted to low-income households with rents that don’t exceed 30 percent of gross household income (CMHC). Approximately four percent of Canada’s housing supply is said to be social housing, including public or non-profit owned housing (Segel-Brown, 2025). In comparison, approximately 21 percent of housing in Denmark is social housing and 13 percent of Finnish housing is social housing (Allen et al, 2020). Twenty-one percent of housing in the capital city of Helsinki is social housing. Social housing makes up approximately 40 percent of the housing stock in Vienna, Austria (Kadi & Lilius, 2022).

Social housing in each of these jurisdictions has unique characteristics. Although the supply is much more extensive than in Canada, social housing in Finland has also become increasingly residual. Social housing in Denmark and Vienna remains universally accessible—theoretically available to all citizens—although the implementation of neoliberal policies, and the erosion of supply has, in effect, had the greatest implications for those in most need as housing options become more limited to “special groups” and potentially more stigmatizing (Hyötyläinen, 2020; Juvenius, 2024).

The erosion of social housing in Canada means that it is increasingly available only to those in the most dire need. According to the Parliamentary Office of Canada, Canada has roughly 600,000 to 700,000 units of social housing, which has been relatively stable over the last 30 years, yet the need for more social housing remains significant. In 2021, 20 percent (5 million) of renter households were in core housing need (CMHC, n.d.). A household is considered to be in core housing need if they are living in unacceptable housing conditions and are paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent. (CMHC, n.d). In 2021, 245,900 households reported being on waitlists for social housing with two-thirds of these waiting for two years or longer.

The social democratic Nordic countries and some other European countries have been far slower to succumb to market pressures than has Canada. For example, the city of Vienna in Austria continues to maintain a strong supply of social housing. Vienna has a much stronger culture of rent versus homeownership than most jurisdictions, with 80 percent of residents being renters and 60 percent of renters residing in social housing or subsidized co-op housing (Oltermann, 2024). Social housing in Vienna is defined as “housing that is not priced by the market and primarily targeted at low and middle-income households” (Kadi & Lillius, 2024). Social housing includes housing owned by the municipality as well as housing owned by “limited profit” providers (Kadi & Lillius, 2024). Rents in limited-profit housing are set at rates that cover costs without profit (Housing Europe, 2024). Rents in municipal-owned housing are set in line with federal rent regulations and approximately 77 percent of private rentals are subject to federal rent regulations. Regulations were further strengthened in 2025, including stronger rent protections and limits on unregulated rents in the private market (TheBetter.News, 2025). Average rents in private-sector housing are typically 30 percent higher than in limited-profit housing and 60 percent higher than in municipally owned housing. Both municipal and limited-profit housing have income limits for new tenants to ensure a mix of low and middle-income tenants, however limited-profit developments are less accessible to low-income households.

Despite a robust supply and public support for social housing, Vienna too is not keeping up with the need. Wait times for social housing can be long, and there has been an increase in private rents (Kadi & Lilius, 2022). Further, only those who have resided permanently in Vienna for two years are eligible for social housing. Like so many cities, Vienna is grappling with an increase in homelessness and is now following the lead of countries like Finland and Denmark to institute a Housing First approach. Still, during the period when other jurisdictions withdrew support for social housing, Vienna established a land procurement and urban renewal fund, reserving land for social housing. This provides an opportunity to further expand the supply and ensure access to those currently excluded. An additional reform in 2025 has removed discretion on state allocation of federal housing funds. States can no longer divert funds to non-housing projects. Federal funding must now be used to build affordable housing (TheBetter.News, 2025).

Denmark established its national public social housing system in 1919. Social housing in Denmark is subsidized by the state, owned and operated by nonprofit housing organizations (Blackwell & Bengston, 2023). The system is built on the premise that a broad cross-section of incomes is desirable to achieve social mixing. Applicants are not means-tested but municipalities can set aside units for low-income households. Social housing is governed through a system of tenant democracy with elected boards. Although a less straightforward process than in other countries, Denmark has also reduced support for social housing. It has shifted subsidization from supply (capital for construction) to demand (income supports). Social housing in Denmark has always been envisioned as a social protection accessible to all, but the decline in development has, in effect, made it more residual, targeting those in greatest need (Blackwell & Bengston, 2023). Before 1958 around 75 percent of social rental housing construction was supported through state loans, down to 17 percent by the mid-1970s (Blackwell & Bengston, 2023). Still, non-profit housing development remains integral to Danish society, and it remains highly regulated. Municipalities can reserve up to 25 percent of their social housing stock for low-income households. In return the municipalities cover 10 percent of construction and land purchase costs (Neilsen et al, 2023). Social housing accounts for about 20 percent of the housing stock in Copenhagen (Statistics Denmark, n.d.). Market-rate rentals and homes make up 43 percent, and private co-ops, represent another significant portion. Unlike jurisdictions including the UK and Sweden, Denmark has managed to resist pressures to privatize supply due to resistance from tenants and housing associations (Nielsen et al, 2023).

Denmark operates under what they call a “balancing principle”. Rents must cover all operating and maintenance costs with no surplus. The Danish social housing model is supported by a ‘match funding principle”, which provides non-profit social rental housing organizations with secure long-term financing, limiting risk, and maintaining rents 37 percent lower than those in the private market (Blackwell & Bengtsson, 2023). Social housing is especially in demand in larger cities where costs for private-sector housing have risen. However, policy changes are putting increasing pressure on Denmark’s system, described by Neilson et al as a “threat to the very raison d’être of the Danish social housing sector” (Nielsen et al, 2023, p.141). Despite some challenges, it is notable that strong regulations and societal support for social housing have curtailed the global problem of financialization of rental housing in Denmark (Scanlon, 2024).

Social housing in Canada

Social housing has been part of the housing landscape in Canada since the 1950s. Federal funding for publicly owned housing increased during the 1960s with a shift toward non-profit housing in the 1970s (Suttor, 2016). The federal government began the process of devolving responsibility for social housing to provincial and municipal governments in the 1980s (Suttor, 2016). The disinvestment in social housing aligned with a general shift to neoliberalism in the 1980s guided by the belief that the market should be left to its own devices (Suttor, 2016). The rise in homelessness can be traced back to this neoliberal turn. New initiatives to support low-income renter households focused on demand-side policies (rent allowances for tenants and supplements for landlords) primarily incentivizing private sector landlords. During this period the supply of low-cost private rental units declined. Increasingly limited government social investments shifted to a narrower focus on short-term housing to meet the emergency needs of the most destitute. Although government support for social housing continues, it has steadily eroded. We now have a system that has been “fundamentally altered” and is “slowly but steadily declining” (Suttor, 2016, p.133).

As investment in social housing declined, the movement to deinstitutionalize people living in psychiatric facilities gained strength. Psychiatric institutions began to discharge inpatients into the community. Although applauded by advocates, deinstitutionalization has been criticized for its failure to ensure that Canadians with mental illness are provided with good housing and supports (Frankel, 2003). What was intended as a “humane and progressive” (Frankel, 2003, p.1) policy shift has left many people with mental illness vulnerable and unhoused because of insufficient investment in community support. Point in time counts reveal upwards of 60% of homeless people surveyed report having mental health issues, with 47% of those also reporting substance use issues (Housing and Infrastructure Canada, n.d.)

An international snapshot of homelessness

Although it is difficult to compare across nations due to different definitions and data collection methods, between 2017 and 2020 homelessness increased in liberal democracies, including Canada, the United States, England, and Ireland, while it decreased in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Korea, Latvia, and Slovenia (OECD, 2024). Post-pandemic data shows that since 2022, most countries with available data reported an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness. In Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England), and the United States (U.S.), the number of people experiencing homelessness increased by over 10 index points between 2022 and 2023 (OECD, 2024). Point-in-time (PiT) counts in Canada show a doubling of homelessness between 2018 and 2024 (Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, 2025). Comparatively, in Finland the number of reported experiences of homelessness decreased by almost 50 index points between 2017 and 2023 (OECD, 2024). The OECD Toolkit to Ending Homelessness (2024) describes Finland as “one of the few OECD countries to have recorded a consistent and significant decline in homelessness over recent decades” (P. 23). The Toolkit notes in particular Finland’s Housing First (HF) approach as central to its success. The OECD describes social housing as an important component of housing policy and points to Scandinavian countries, including Finland, as examples of jurisdictions with strong social housing foundations. It notes a very limited supply of social housing in the U.S. as a major factor contributing to severe homelessness in that country (P. 36).

Finland: A comprehensive, integrated approach to housing and homelessness

Finland is looked upon as the country that has been most successful in reducing homelessness. Finland has developed a Housing First approach that integrates social housing as its foundation. It has arguably developed the most comprehensive, coordinated and streamlined approach to reducing homelessness since first recognizing the problem in the 1980s. Other European jurisdictions are now adopting approaches similar to Finland. These approaches are particularly informative for liberal welfare states like Canada as the implications of relying on the private sector is revealed.

Although the Finnish context is different in many ways, Finland’s commitment to the expansion of social housing, along with the remarkable success of its Housing First approach, can inform all levels of government in Canada seeking solutions to the growing crisis of homelessness across the nation. Finland and other European countries show us that despite the global impact of neoliberalization, jurisdictions with stronger social housing systems continue to exist, and they are doing a far better job tackling homelessness (OECD, 2024).

Finland has a long history of public investment in social housing, dating back to the 1940s (Hyötyläinen, 2020). However, its integration with a Housing First approach emerged in 2008 with the implementation of PAAVO I, the national government’s strategy to end homelessness (Kaakinen & Turunen, 2021). Social housing in Finland is subsidized by the federal government to ensure affordability for low- and middle-income households. Public corporations are the largest owners of social housing in Finland. Approximately 60 percent of social housing is publicly owned; 40 percent of the supply is owned by non-profits. Priority is given to applicants in the greatest need as determined by multiple indicators such as income, risk of homelessness, and current living conditions.

A major difference in Finnish cities is the high level of public ownership of land and municipal governments committed to producing social housing on this land. For example, the municipality of Helsinki owns 70 percent of the land and has set the goal that 25 percent of all new rental housing development be social housing (Housing 2030, n.d.) In Canada, governments own much smaller parcels of land. Very recently, the government of Canada announced it will allocate some of its land for the development of “affordable” housing through the new Build Canada Homes program. However, who this will be affordable to remains unclear. There is no certainty that any of this housing will be social housing accessible to low-income households.

Although government ownership of land makes it far easier for governments to expand social housing, there are other possibilities. For example, social housing advocates have been calling on governments to more quickly expand the supply through the acquisition of private stock. Governments across Canada have yet to take full advantage of this option. All too often the opposite is happening, with non-market housing being sold to for-profit entities (August & St. Hilaire, 2025; Funk & Dunsmore, 2024). New legislation in Manitoba¹ will regulate the sale of non-profits to some extent, but it is yet to be seen how effective the legislation will be.

Finland’s Housing First approach is rooted in a core belief in housing for all. Y-Säätiö (Y-Foundation), Finland’s largest non-profit housing provider states what would seem to be obvious, but is all too often ignored: “You can’t have Housing First without having housing first” (Y-Säätiö, 2022). Section 19 of the Constitution of Finland outlines the “right to social security” and notes:

“Those who cannot obtain the means necessary for a life of dignity have the right to receive indispensable subsistence and care… The public authorities shall promote the right of everyone to housing and the opportunity to arrange their own housing.”²

Finland has developed a social housing system that adheres to a cost-recovery principle, allowing for the expansion and sustainability of its robust supply of social housing. Strong state support through low-interest loans and grants reduces development costs for social housing providers, including municipalities and non-profit corporations. Housing providers set rental rates based on the cost of operating and maintaining properties. This allows providers to set rents far lower than market rates. Importantly, rents can still be unaffordable to low-income households; however federal rent subsidies fill the gap.

As a result of a large social housing supply supplemented by state rent benefits, housing costs in Finland are relatively lower compared with other European countries. EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions shows that 24 percent of households in Finland with incomes below 60 percent of the median, compared with 45.3 in the Eurozone,³ said they experience a “heavy” financial burden related to housing costs (Housing Europe, 2023). Although social housing is not only available to low-income households, priority is given to those in most urgent need. Both income and wealth are taken into consideration but until recently there were no explicit caps on income. Wealth limits are defined by municipalities. Tenants are not required to report income and wealth after they are accepted as tenants. This policy has been important for Finland’s goals of social mixing, neighbourhood stability, and the principle that social housing should be broadly available. However, it also means that the supply must remain strong if it is to be broadly accessible. Like Denmark and Vienna, retrenchment is changing the universal impact of social housing. In the case of Finland, social housing is increasingly targeted toward accommodating certain groups determined to be in greatest need. This is consistent with a general policy shift since the 1980s, and what Hyötyläinen (2020) describes as “piecemeal retrenchment from the welfare state from the housing sector and prioritizing private sector housing production” (p. 545). Through various changes in public policy, the current right-wing coalition government has reduced investment in social housing (Amnesty International, 2025). This policy direction is putting stress on Finland’s cost-based approach. Additionally, recent cuts to rent benefits will make it more difficult for low-income renters. Social housing providers do not receive operating subsidies to maintain low rents. The various government subsidies and protections described above are essential to rent affordability. This shines a light on the critical importance that ideology plays. Politics matter. Finland’s approach has worked because of broad political consensus of the Housing First approach that includes strong social housing supply, demand-side (rent) supports and other social protections. If the state continues to scale these back, providers will be under pressure to increase rents, and low-income renters not able to access rent benefits may find themselves unable to afford increases. To date, the impact of the current government shift has been limited. Housing First advocates are hopeful that Finnish support for government investment in social protections will bring the return of a more progressive political landscape in the next general election (Geraghty, 2025; Henley 2024; Personal communication, various Finnish HF providers, October 2025).

Housing First in Finland: Beyond bricks and mortar

A review of Housing First models shows that they are not all equal in their design, implementation and impact. Finland’s Housing First approach recognizes social housing as a foundation. First and foremost, social housing is preventative. It embraces the importance of housing as a basic human right. But it also recognizes that some people need more than bricks and mortar to be sustainably housed. Finland has developed a clear trajectory towards harm reduction, choice-based approaches and independent living in “ordinary” housing with a move away from traditional emergency accommodation (Y-Säätiö, 2022).

A review of the academic literature assessing public policy approaches and effectiveness in addressing homelessness reveals a consensus that the Housing First approach taken by Finland has had the greatest long-term success. Between 2008 and 2022, the number of individuals experiencing long-term homelessness in Finland decreased by 68 percent (Juhila et al., 2022, p.495). Allen et al. (2020) conducted a comparative analysis of Finland, Ireland and Denmark and found that while all three countries have invested heavily in their homelessness strategies, they have had mixed results. A major difference between these three jurisdictions, also compared with the U.S., is that the “Finnish policy was a well-thought-through ‘Housing First’ strategy, which is better viewed as a long-term housing-led/housing focused strategic programme, rather than ‘Housing First’ in the North American sense” (p.163). They concluded that the best of strategies will fail if not adequately and appropriately resourced and if hastily developed to align with “short-term political and media demands” (p.164). Finland avoided the temptation to address homelessness by building more emergency shelters, using temporary accommodations and the private sector. Finland remains focused and disciplined on long-term solutions that align with Housing First principles.

Although American psychiatrist Sam Tsemberis is often referenced as the founder of the Housing First model that was initially launched in 1992 through the Pathways to Housing program in New York, the Finnish approach developed separately, dating back to the 1980s (Allen et al.). Unlike the U.S. program, Finland has enshrined housing as a human right in its constitution, and it integrates five essential components that together contribute to Finland’s success in significantly decreasing homelessness and virtually eliminating the most egregious and visible chronic homelessness. These components include:

• Housing First in Finland is a philosophy, not a program, that is “housing-led” and fully integrates a range of services.
• Related to the above, Housing First in Finland fully integrates harm reduction and is part of a broader housing strategy.
• Social housing is an integral part of the broader housing strategy, including both congregate and scattered housing to meet the various needs and desires of people in need of housing.
• Importantly, it builds on a broader extensive system of social protections.
• The Finnish government collaborates with non-government organizations and municipalities while also investing in housing supply.

Finland has developed an integrated, housing-led strategy developed from the philosophy that housing is the first step. Being housed is not conditional on participation in treatment. The Finnish model is built from the fundamental belief in prevention that begins with housing security.

A significant difference in the Finnish approach compared to other jurisdictions is that it includes ‘congregate’ housing—similar to what we call ‘permanent supportive housing’ in Canada—in addition to ‘scattered’ housing. For example, large buildings and temporary shelters have been acquired and turned into Housing First apartments that include shared spaces and on-site staffing delivered by Housing First providers. Finland has been criticized by some for its use of congregate housing (Allen et al., 2020); however, research shows that many people choose this form of housing where 24-hour supports are provided, including the support that comes from being part of a community of people with shared experience (Dietz, 2024). What is most important is having a choice and support. Collaboration between governments and the community sector has been critical to Finland’s success in ensuring choices are available.

In addition to providing long-term housing, Housing First providers offer what is often referred to in Canada as wrap-around supports. These include a continuum of services to support tenants in a variety of permanent housing options. Y-Säätiö has long subscribed to the belief that conventional shelters are not adequate responses to homelessness. They create permanent housing through acquisition, new development and the conversion of shelters and transitional housing into long-term housing with a range of supports, including 24-hour supports in the case of congregate housing.

The Finnish model is guided by a human rights framework (United Nations, n.d.), generally subscribing to the following principles:

• Immediate access to permanent housing with no housing readiness requirements and no requirements for abstinence
• Choice and self-determination, including both independent housing with access to individual and client-driven supports and congregate housing with 24-hour on-site supports
• Integration into the community, with a recognition that this can include building community in congregate settings as well as in the broader community
• A recovery orientation that emphasizes empowerment and individually determined rehabilitation (Y-Säätiö, 2022).

Although there are waitlists for social housing in Finland, they are far shorter than what we typically see in Canada where it is not uncommon for people to wait for several years to access social housing (Statistics Canada, 2024a). The lowest-income tenants in Finland are prioritized, and when needed, support is in place when tenancy begins. The Finnish government supports 21 wellbeing services counties in Finland that are responsible for “organizing health, social and rescue services” (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, n.d.). Helsinki is considered the wellbeing service county providing social and clinical supports in that city. Support services are purchased from housing providers who set their fees depending on services provided. This enables them to employ credentialed social workers and practical nurses (comparable to what we call Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) in Canada). Notably, the level of funding for services allows organizations with high-acuity tenants to have staff-tenant ratios of 1 instructor to as low as 3-5 tenants with a contingent of staff on site 24 hours. This level of support is unheard of in Canadian cities, where ratios are high, training is minimal and clinical supports are rare.

Tenants are given voluntary opportunities to participate in basic building maintenance for which they are provided a nominal wage. This gives participants a greater sense of ownership and belonging, in addition to supplementing their income. Most Housing First tenants receive a nationally administered basic social assistance allowance, comparable to Canada’s provincially administered social assistance benefits. Some Housing First providers make a concerted effort to engage in neighbourhood activities, coordinating staff, tenants and other volunteers for weekly neighbourhood cleanups. Housing First properties are now fully integrated into neighbourhoods with minimal resistance.

As an additional measure of prevention, Varke, the Centre for State Subsidized Housing Construction (previously the Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland), a government agency within the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, provides funding for housing advisors to support people facing housing challenges. In 2023, the Centre provided funding to municipalities and social housing providers for 75 advisors across Finland. These advisors, typically trained social service workers with a university degree, provide a range of housing-related supports to help maintain tenancies.

Housing First providers in Helsinki describe a relatively streamlined process from intake to permanent housing, and a mutually respectful relationship between providers and municipal workers with whom they work closely. Short-term shelters are a thing of the past, except for one city-run service centre where people experiencing homelessness seek initial support. Here, they are assessed by city social and healthcare professionals to determine the level of support needed. Staff identify suitable permanent housing providers with which they have established formal service agreements. Applicants are typically sent to a transitional unit immediately after assessment while they wait for their permanent shelter to be available. In both environments, tenants are provided with comprehensive support as needed and are expected to comply with tenancy rules. Abstinence from substances is not typically required, but violence and disruption are not tolerated. Agreements can be immediately terminated for non-compliance, sending tenants back to the city service centre to be emergency housed and re-assessed.

Finland acknowledges that successfully housing high-acuity tenants requires a robust support system. In 2025, Y-Säätio developed training guidelines to share with other jurisdictions interested in learning from Finland’s Housing First approach (Y-Säätio, 2025).

Canadian government policy to address housing and homelessness post 1990

A variation of the Housing First approach was implemented in Canada in the 1970s with a focus on housing people discharged from a Toronto psychiatric facility (Waegemakers-Schiff & Rook, 2012), but an insufficient supply of housing and community supports led to an increase in homelessness in the 1980s. In 1987, the UN declaration of “the International year of shelter for the homeless”, increased the profile of the growing problem; however, governments continued to rely on private-sector housing solutions with insufficient supports. Despite research showing that a comprehensive approach is required to successfully and sustainably house and support people vulnerable to homelessness, the primary response has been the expansion of emergency shelters and short-term transitional housing.

The first government recognition that homelessness was a growing problem in Canada emerged in the late 1990s. In 1999, the federal government introduced its National Housing Initiative (NHI). A centerpiece of the NHI was the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI also referred to as “skippy”) to invest in “homelessness projects”. The NHI was administered through the National Secretariat on Homelessness.

Although a step forward, the NHI nowhere near restored the capacity, scale of activity, and political priority that the decisions of the 1980s and 90s dismantled (Suttor, 2016). The emphasis on incentivizing the private sector continued to be prioritized with no new funding for social housing expansion. Emphasis on private sector solutions continued through the Government of Canada’s Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI), which established partnership agreements with provincial and municipal governments in the early 2000s. Manitoba and Canada signed a 5-year Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI) agreement in 2002. The agreement included a variety of programs; however, new investment in social housing was excluded. The AHI was later extended for 3-years to 2010 and this time included social housing as a potential target.

Also at this time, the Manitoba government introduced its HOMEWorks! Strategy (2009). In the 2011/12 annual report of the department of Manitoba Housing and Community Development, the Minister described the department’s priority to “lin(k) housing with related social, economic and community development programs and policies (…)”, and its long-term priority to provide Manitobans “with safe, healthy and suitable housing” (2012, p.7). In addition to increasing the number of rent-geared to income units, the province made significant commitments to the repair and renovation of existing social housing. It was hoped that this investment, if sustained, would begin to address the deterioration of existing social housing and expand the supply as a first line of defense to provide low-income households with housing, prevent people from falling into homelessness, and expand options for those currently unhoused. A change in government in 2016 shifted direction back toward disinvestment and privatization.

In 2007, the NHI was renamed the Homelessness Partnering Strategy and changed orientations to focus on a Housing First approach. The federal government invested $110 million for a five-year research demonstration project (2009-2013) called At Home/Chez Soi. The project integrated a Housing First philosophy, implementing pilot projects in cities across Canada focused on housing “people experiencing serious mental illness and homelessness…” (MHCC, 2014). A final evaluation of the program showed findings consistent to what Finland has learned. The MHCC concluded that:

• Housing First can be effectively implemented in Canadian cities of different size and different ethno-racial and cultural compositions.
• Housing First rapidly ends homelessness.
• Housing First is a sound investment.
• Housing First but not Housing Only. The support and treatment services offered by the Housing First programs contributed to appropriate shifts away from many types of crisis, acute, and institutional services towards more consistent community and outreach-based services.
• Having a place to live and the right supports can lead to other positive outcomes above and beyond those provided by existing services.
• There are many ways in which Housing First can change lives, and getting Housing First right is essential to optimizing outcomes.

The authors concluded with several policy recommendations that echo the approach taken in Finland, including collaboration across and within governments, and with community stakeholders. Most notably, they emphasized that the dire shortage of affordable housing supply must be addressed if ending homelessness is to be achieved in Canada. Evaluations showed that participants “retained their housing at a much higher rate” than those who did not participate in the program (MHCC, p.5). However, eligibility for At Home/Chez Soi was limited. It excluded individuals experiencing homelessness if they did not have a diagnosed mental illness. At Home/Chez Soi relied heavily on private sector housing. The federal program provided significant rent supplements to landlords. These did not continue when the pilot ended, transferring responsibility for sustained funding to other levels of government. This, and the failure to expand the supply of social housing, was a major flaw that has yet to be addressed (MHCC, 2014). The number of unhoused people has grown significantly since the pilot ended.

Since 2016, the federal government has coordinated Point-in-Time (PiT) homelessness counts in participating communities across the country. Every two years, counts are taken to determine the number of individuals experiencing homelessness on a given day. Methodological challenges aside, counts have shown an increase in homelessness across the country, from approximately 5,954 individuals counted across 32 communities in 2016, to 40,713 individuals counted across 67 communities in 2020-2022 (Hunter, 2017; Quayum et al.).

Reaching Home, was launched in 2019 to replace the HPS as the program to prevent and reduce homelessness. Reaching Home provides funding to designated Community Entities across the country. These Community Entities flow funding to the homeless-serving sector, which typically subscribes to a Housing First approach. The shortage of housing, which Reaching Home has limited ability to provide, remains a fundamental problem. This is because Canada has failed to adopt a robust social housing strategy alongside its initiatives to address homelessness.

In 2017, the Federal government announced its National Housing Strategy (NHS) and in 2018 provinces and territories endorsed a multilateral housing partnership framework (Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, 2018). The federal government signed bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories in 2018. Agreements required provincial and territorial governments to develop action plans including targets and outcomes. Notably, it included requirements related to funding for “community housing”, including social housing. It also included matching funding requirements related to the Canada Housing Benefit, which is a national cash benefit provided to qualifying low-income renters. Addendums to bilateral agreements were signed in 2020 and the agreements were revised in October 2023, outlining priorities and financial commitments to 2024-25 (CMHC, 2020; CMHC, 2023c).

Analysis of the NHS shows that the program has primarily focused on private sector housing development with only a small amount allocated to the Rapid Housing Initiative; the smallest of the NHS programs and the only one specifically focused on the creation and maintenance of social housing (MacKinnon, 2024). In 2023, the federal government entered into agreements with municipalities under the national Housing Accelerator Fund, but here too, only a small percentage of social housing units are being created to address homelessness and housing precarity for low-income households.

Your Way Home: Manitoba’s Plan to End Chronic Homelessness

Manitoba’s NDP government launched its homelessness strategy in 2025. The strategy followed the NDP’s election promise in 2023 to eliminate chronic homelessness during two terms in government. Your Way Home: Manitoba’s Plan to End Chronic Homelessness outlines a potentially promising approach; however, it lacks detail on funding and implementation. The government was criticized for developing its plan without meaningful consultation with the homeless-serving organizations it said it would partner with (Sanders, 2025a). Notably, community organizations serving the homeless population had similar criticism when in 2000 the federal government’s Human Resources Development Canada released “A community plan for the homeless in Winnipeg” (HRDC, 2000). That report claimed to have been developed through “the collaboration of many stakeholders” however it was rejected by a coalition of those stakeholders (SPCW, 2001, p.3). The 36 groups involved in the community coalition said that the plan did not include grassroots groups. These community groups responded by developing their own plan “a community plan on homelessness and housing”, that better reflected what they believed was needed (SPC, 2001 as cited in Leo & August, 2006).

Your Way Home outlines a long-term vision to end chronic homelessness by 2031. It prioritizes moving people who live in encampments into housing within a 30-day timeline per encampment, working with the City of Winnipeg and community outreach teams. The plan omits any reference to a human-rights based approach to encampments, as recommended by Canada’s Office of the Federal Housing Advocate and as outlined in the National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada (Farha & Schwan, 2020). This omission raises questions about how encampment residents will be engaged in decisions that impact them, whether their rights will be protected, and whether they will continue to be provided with supports and services. In particular, the lack of clarity on what happens to encampment residents who are not housed within the timeline has left many community organizations concerned about the potential for involuntary removal. The City of Winnipeg recently passed a by-law limiting encampments (City of Winnipeg, n.d.), which has raised concerns about potential violation of human rights.

The provincial plan has also been criticized for lacking a gendered lens in its approach to encampments, and for prioritizing the safety of individuals in encampments over those experiencing homelessness but not living in encampments, or at risk of becoming homeless. Community organizations that serve youth and women note that the demographics they serve are less likely to live in encampments. They are concerned that the plan’s approach will arbitrarily push youth and women down the list of those waiting to be housed.

In addition to taking immediate action to house people living in encampments, the plan says that it “will ensure that, by 2031, any Manitoban who becomes unsheltered will be rehoused within weeks of becoming homeless” (Government of Manitoba, 2025, p.9). A major concern raised by housing advocates is that the plan itself includes no detailed commitments or long-term targets that would address the shortage of housing that is affordable to people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Manitoba Budget 2025 said the province would add 400 units of social and affordable housing and repair 270 vacant Manitoba Housing units so people experiencing homelessness can move into them. The plan recognizes the need to provide housing for other people “currently experiencing homelessness, but also those at risk of becoming homeless in the future” (MHAH, p.10). However, higher targets must be set to meet those needs. The Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association identified a target of 10,000 social housing units to meet the needs of very low- and low-income households across Manitoba who are in core housing need and therefore at heightened risk of homelessness (Bernas et al., 2024). Notably, the provincial plan is specific to Winnipeg, and will need to expand its focus more broadly to address homelessness in other Manitoba communities.

Social housing takes time to develop which means people experiencing chronic homelessness will remain unhoused until new social housing units with supports are brought online, unless housing can be secured in the private rental market. However, the plan includes no budget for rent subsidies that would help make private market rentals affordable to people experiencing chronic homelessness. Rent Assist, the shelter benefit provided by Manitoba’s Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) program are set at 77 percent of median market rent, however this program has eroded in recent years (Hajer, 2025). The Canada Manitoba Housing Benefit helped close the gap between EIA’s shelter benefits and market rents but ran out of funding as of March 2025 (Sanders, 2025b). Community-based organizations report that Manitoba’s Rent Assist program cannot take the place of social housing expansion. Rent Assist has not solved the problem of finding reputable private landlords willing to house those experiencing homelessness. (personal communication, as cited in Bernas et al, 2025).

With both social housing and affordable private rentals in short supply or inaccessible, community organizations that help people experiencing homelessness say they expect an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness if the Canada-Manitoba Housing Benefit is not replaced.

Housing advocates are also concerned about the part of the plan that attempts to address the shortage of social housing by identifying “ (…) tenants who are best positioned to succeed outside of Manitoba Housing and then connect(ing) them with rent supports and subsidies to move them to private rental suites as the next level on the housing spectrum” (MHAH, 2025, p.7). The idea is to free up space in existing units for people leaving encampments. While this may be a relatively quick way to make units available, there is a risk that this approach will move some households into private market housing, leaving them precariously housed and at risk of homelessness. This approach also neglects to consider that many people living in Manitoba Housing have established communities of support and they don’t want to leave their homes.

Overall, the plan presents as overly focused on moving people out of encampments without adequately investing in key structural factors contributing to homelessness and the rise of encampments. Namely, the plan fails to ensure that there will be a sufficient supply of housing for current and future encampment residents as well as all others experiencing or at risk of homelessness. This is seen in the lack of long-term commitments to expand the social housing supply and the exclusion of rental subsidies to help people afford private market rentals. Without these critical policy interventions, we can expect new encampments to emerge to replace those that are “decommissioned”. Additionally, the strategy is not resourced adequately in terms of funding to support those residing in encampments, to ensure their basic needs are met and human rights protected.

Training for front-line workers

As noted, a critical component of Finland’s approach is a commitment to providing Housing First providers with adequate funding to recruit and retain highly-trained staff. Although Manitoba’s Your Way Home plan says the province will invest in training, noting that the “success of the plan depends on having a multidisciplinary workforce with the experience, knowledge and skills needed to help people exiting homelessness stabilize and maintain their housing” (Government of Manitoba, 2025, p.11), details of what this training entails are yet to be seen. This is a critical omission and a stark difference from Finnish policy. Despite the complex needs of many people living unhoused, Manitoba does not have an intensive training program to ensure that people hired as front-line workers are sufficiently prepared for their jobs. Although recruiters typically say they “prefer” applicants with a social work degree or related field, no specific training is required. In Finland, frontline supportive housing workers (including Housing First workers) typically have one of two core qualifications: Practical nurse (“lähihoitaja”) vocational qualification entails training comparable to Manitoba’s Licensed Practical Nurse. Workers with this certification have taken 2-3 years full-time study, including both classroom learning and substantial practical experience through work placements. In addition to training in basic care, client/patient safety, and working with people in different life situations as part of a multi-professional team, students can develop stronger competence in specific areas (e.g., mental health and substance use). Bachelor of Social Services is a University of Applied Sciences degree that typically entails 3.5 years of education. Training focuses on counselling and social support and working across disciplines and with other services. In addition to formal qualifications, service providers routinely provide additional in-house training. In Finland, the National Housing First Development Network provides ongoing professional development for frontline supportive housing workers and works to strengthen cooperation across the field. The Network, coordinated by Y-Säätio, also runs regular national trainings on homelessness and Housing First, which it offers free of charge.

Without proper training, Housing First providers and the people they are hired to serve are left vulnerable. Credentials comparable to Finland could be offered in Manitoba, for example through a 2-year Housing First focused LPN program, and a 4-year University Bachelor of Social Work with a specialization in community mental health and homelessness. Adaptations could be made to existing curriculum to ensure students have a combination of theoretical and clinical training as well as multiple hours of practical training through supervised work placements in the field. Provincial funding for non-profits providing these front-line services will need to be sufficient to recruit and retain professional staff who envision Housing First work as a career rather than an entry-level job. They will also require sufficient funding to ensure reasonable caseloads and ongoing professional development to ensure the best support is provided, and burnout and turnover minimized.

You can’t have Housing First without having Housing First — but you need a whole lot more

This brings us full circle to the philosophy guiding Finland’s Y-Säätio as articulated in its Home For All Guide (2022). Learning from other jurisdictions, especially Finland, Canada and Manitoba would be wise to address homelessness and housing precarity by taking a human rights-based approach that integrates a Housing First philosophy within a broader social housing strategy that exists alongside other social protections. The OECD identifies what it describes as “one fundamental — and as yet, largely under-resourced and underutilized — way to address homelessness” that is, “to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place” (OECD 2024, p.62). The report further notes that “Most homelessness policies are not sufficiently preventive in focus”, and countries have implemented limited, if any, prevention policies on a broad scale (Baptista & Malier, as cited in OECD 2024, p.62).

The evidence is very clear. There is a strong correlation between the strength of the social safety net and the extent and severity of homelessness (Benjaminsen & Andrade, 2015; Allen et al, 2020). Although Housing First approaches are being implemented in many jurisdictions, Finland stands out for its comprehensive and fully integrated approach. The low levels of homelessness suggest that they are doing a better job with prevention. Allen et al (2020) describe the making and implementation of Finland’s homelessness plan as a “highly orchestrated political strategy”. The plan began with a clear and simple goal — to halve long-term homelessness in 3 years. Unlike Manitoba’s Your Way Home strategy, Finland employed its Housing First strategy, with a strong foundation of social housing and supports and “a strong degree of confidence about what to do” (Allen et al, 2020). Its strategy continues to focus on housing-led approaches, integrating Finnish Housing First services into a comprehensive and coordinated strategy.

In their analysis of homelessness across welfare regimes, Benjaminsen and Andrade (2015) found that countries with more extensive welfare systems and lower levels of poverty have lower levels of homelessness. Allen et al. conclude that to succeed, strategies must include Housing First as an integral part of a broader housing strategy built on the belief in the human right to housing and supported by a high level of investment, coordination, and cooperation. They attribute sustained political will, as well as the stability of skilled, influential public servants committed to a comprehensive, interconnected approach to homelessness prevention and alleviation to Finland’s success. Importantly, Allen et al. (2020) found that “no amount of political will can make a badly conceived or limited idea work” (p.169). Finland has been successful because it developed a comprehensive, sufficiently resourced plan that includes a robust supply of social housing. It developed a “well thought through Housing First strategy, which is better viewed as a long-term housing-led/housing-focused strategic programme, rather than Housing First in the North American sense” (Allen et al., p.163).

The scale of investment must meet both immediate and long-term needs. People are homeless for many reasons but first and foremost, it is because they cannot find housing appropriate to meet their needs. Allen et al. also point to Finland’s comparatively robust social protections, including social housing supply as well as income and other supports. This has been essential to its success. There are more recent concerns that Finland’s success could be eroded with the election of the current far-right government in 2023. However, many remain hopeful that Finland’s success in significantly reducing, if not entirely eliminating, homelessness protects its Housing First approach.

A central reason for Finland’s success, and the broad political consensus for its approach, is that it has strategically included not only those who are homeless but also those who are vulnerable to homelessness in its housing plan. Allen et al. (2020) caution against approaches that ration existing social housing to prioritize homeless people over others in need of social housing. This is a particular concern with the approach described in Your Way Home: Manitoba’s Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. With a continued shortage of social housing, there are simply not enough homes to meet the need.

Policy action to achieve the right to housing

The Canadian context that has led to a crisis in housing precarity and homelessness is different from that of Finland in many ways. As described in this report, Finland has for many years developed its comprehensive Housing First Approach building on a strong foundation of government investment in social housing. Although it isn’t realistic to expect a quick solution to housing and homelessness in Canada after decades of disinvestment, there is much more that we can do if we are to achieve the level of success in Finland.

The federal government needs to move away from its current approach of incentivizing the private sector because this will not create housing that is sustainably affordable to low-income households. Build Canada Homes should place greater emphasis on expanding the supply of social housing. As the government begins the process of renewing its National Housing Strategy, there is an opportunity to emphasize the expansion of social housing by establishing a comprehensive approach with clear targets and timelines, and programs that encourage and support public and non-profit social housing development and operations.

The Manitoba government must advocate for a renewed National Housing Strategy that prioritizes social housing. Manitoba too must develop a comprehensive plan that addresses not only the needs of all people who are currently homeless but also ensures that everyone in Manitoba has access to safe and suitable housing, and adequate supports when needed. The current approach is insufficient, and it is putting vulnerable people at risk.

To get Manitoba on the right track, the Manitoba government should take seriously the calls to action outlined in The Right to Housing Coalition’s Social Housing Action Plan (2023) including:

1. Expand the social housing supply by 10,000 units by 2034. This is the minimum amount of housing that the Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association has determined is needed to ensure the right to housing for low-income Manitobans.
2. Protect the existing supply of social housing. Manitoba must invest $1.5 billion by 2034 to a capital maintenance fund to bring existing buildings up to standard. The province must protect the existing supply by ensuring non-profit housing and public housing cannot be sold to for-profit entities. It must also ensure that sufficient subsidies are provided to ensure affordability to low-income tenants, with rents not to exceed 30% of income.
3. Ensure all social housing tenants have access to comprehensive supports. Not all people living in social housing require supports, but many do. And when sufficient supports are not provided, they and others are made vulnerable. Here we can learn a lot from Finland by ensuring that social housing providers that are accommodating people with challenges that might cause harm to themselves, and other tenants have sufficient funding to hire well-trained staff and pay them wages and benefits commensurate with their skills and responsibilities.

As described in this report, Finland has shown us that if there is political will, and if governments make a long-term commitment to invest in social housing and supports, the right to housing is an achievable goal.

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OECD. (2024). Toolkit to Ending Homelessness. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2024/12/oecd-toolkit-to-combat-homelessness_ac743295/0fec780e-en.pdf

Oltermann, P. (2024). The social housing secret: How Vienna became the world’s most livable city. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city

Peck, J. (2010). Construction of neoliberal reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quayum, S., Love, C. & Hunter, P. (2023). Everyone counts 2020–2022 – Results from the third nationally coordinated Point-in-Time counts of homelessness in Canada. Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada (HICC), Government of Canada. https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/homelessness-sans-abri/reports-rapports/pit-counts-dp-2020-2022-results-resultats-eng.html

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Acknowledgements 

Many thanks to Kirsten Bernas and Leah Landry for their contributions to the research for this report. Thanks to the Right to Housing Coalition for its unrelenting 20-year commitment to advocating for the expansion of social housing in Manitoba. 

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“We do not know whether the tariffs are going to last for three days, three months or three years, nor do we know at what rate these tariffs will be levied over time.”

This year it seems the government has gotten the memo that people are justifiably concerned over the uncertainty and instability that has only seemed to grow since last year’s budget. Hence this year’s budget title, “Protecting Saskatchewan.”

But while the government’s budget repeats its promise of protecting the people of this province, there is very little in the budget that would constitute real protection from the economic insecurity, unaffordability and deterioration of public health care that has so many in this province anxious about their future. 

Public health care remains unprotected

While Saskatchewan’s public health care system remains in critical condition, the government geared most of any new health spending to its Patient First plan. That means more public money to for-profit diagnostic and surgical providers. And while there is $637 million for new and expanded health facilities, one wonders who will staff these facilities as our existing hospitals and care centres remain chronically understaffed. 

On affordability, many of the measures announced today were just the continuation of policies the government had already announced in its Affordability Act. The government did announce a new $1,000 one-time per household utility arrears recoverable benefit to Social Assistance (SIS) recipients to prevent evictions. While this will no doubt be welcome to SIS recipients, it will only constitute a stop-gap measure if recipients remain in crushing poverty. While the government did raise social assistance rates by two per cent in this budget, that will not even cover the cost of inflation—particularly if world events continue to drive food and fuel costs higher. 

Real protection for Saskatchewan’s economy

As a vulnerable resource economy, were the government serious about protecting Saskatchewan from the volatility and shocks of resource commodity prices, it would entertain the idea of creating a Saskatchewan Resource Fund. 

A resource fund is where a government commits to bank a certain percentage of non-renewable resource revenues every year. Norway commits 100 per cent of its oil and gas revenue to its resource fund, while Alaska commits 25 per cent of its oil wealth every year. The purpose of the fund can be determined by voters—to deliver a yearly dividend, to fund economic development or to provide steady investment returns year-over-year. Saving a portion of resource revenues each year can also help smooth out expenditures because governments can bank revenues when they are high and draw down these funds when revenues decline in order to prevent these “boom-bust” spending cycles that we as a province have been so prone to. Saskatchewan’s short-lived Fiscal Stabilization or “rainy day” fund was supposed to operate in just such a fashion. 

With the U.S. war on Iran expected to drastically increase oil prices into the near future, it would be an opportune moment to create such a resource fund. While we certainly cannot predict the future, we do know that global oil demand will soon reach its nadir. This may come even more quickly than expected, particularly if high oil and gas prices further incentivize countries to seek out greater electrification of their heating and transport. We may have a limited window with which to accumulate enough revenue to ensure a Saskatchewan resource fund could continue to deliver economic benefits after the world transitions away from fossil fuels. As former Premier Brad Wall remarked when asked about the need for a resource revenue saving fund, “I just don’t see how we would want to delay any longer.”

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OSAP is the primary source of financial aid for post-secondary students, along with a similar federal program. Currently, students receive up to 85 per cent of their OSAP aid in the form of grants, depending on their financial situation, and the rest as loans. Under the new rules, grants will make up a maximum of 25 per cent of the aid.

The impact of this change is that students on OSAP will accumulate significantly more debt.

Can students carry more debt? What will they have to sacrifice to do so? Will it really pay off, or would it be better to give up on post-secondary education?

In Ontario, anyone who doesn’t come from a wealthy family now faces these tough questions. The available data can’t help us estimate what students will decide, as these are very personal choices. But the data allow us to paint a portrait of the people most affected and illustrate the current burden of student debt. 

Who has student debt?  

According to the 2023 Survey of Financial Security (SFS), 13.9 per cent of households in Ontario have student debt, which is nearly 887,000 households.

Households with student debt include unattached individuals (17 per cent); couples without children (17 per cent); couples with children and single-parent households where the major income earner is 34 years old or younger and the children are likely too young to have student debt (7 per cent); families with older income earners and children (22 per cent), where the debt may originate from the parents, the children, or both; and other family types (36 per cent). 

Households where the major income earner belongs to a racialized group are more than twice as likely to have student debt (22.4 per cent) than households where the major income earner is not racialized (10.2 per cent). As a result, racialized households are overrepresented among households with student debt. While they represent less than a third (31.6 per cent) of households in Ontario, they make up slightly more than half (50.4 per cent) of households with student debt.

Households with student debt face greater financial challenges

Student debt is commonly thought of as an investment that yields returns in the future. Yet a large share of households carrying student debt face considerable financial insecurity, making that investment seem more like a heavy burden rather than an opportunity. That debt burden is evident across households of all ages, not only among young people starting their careers.

Not all debt is the same

Some debt is outright bad, like a missed credit card payment that accrues high interest. Some debt promises positive financial returns, like a mortgage on a house in Canada’s speculative housing market. Student debt is not as bad as a negative credit card balance, as it constitutes an investment, but it is not a straightforward wealth-building strategy either. In our society, it is a necessary evil, and the least wealthy households carry a much larger share of it.

Like elementary and secondary schooling, post-secondary training helps people develop a range of skills and abilities. They then contribute to our society in several ways. And whatever they do, they are part of what makes Ontario one of the richest places on earth, past and present. It should be common sense that a part of the province’s wealth be reinvested in everyone’s training.

But, to the current provincial government, it’s not. In Ontario, students pay some of the highest post-secondary fees in the country, in a system where public funding is much lower than it once was. Unable to pay, some students must apply for a mix of loans and grants to pay for their studies. Although the loans help get access to desired training, they have a lasting negative financial impact, as seen above. 

Now, the Ontario government is drastically reducing the amount of grants students can receive and increasing the amount of loans they must take.

Targeted financial aid is not the end game; tax-funded free post-secondary education is. Still, OSAP served as a ladder for students trying to catch up economically with peers who started much further ahead. The Ontario government has just kicked away that ladder.

The post Kicking away the ladder: The true cost of changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program appeared first on CCPA.

Canadian Blood Services (CBS) is a non-profit organization tasked with collecting plasma—the protein-rich liquid in blood—to meet the national demand for blood plasma.

In 2022, CBS signed a 15-year agreement with Grifols as a commercial partner to establish paid-plasma collection centres across the country. At the time, CBS argued that they were unable to meet Canada’s plasma needs through its voluntary collection system. 

Public health care and blood safety advocates warned that a move to a for-profit, paid-plasma collection model—like that in the U.S.—would put patients and the national blood supply at risk.

In the 1980s, thousands of Canadians were exposed to hepatitis C and HIV through contaminated blood products. Over 30,000 Canadians were infected with hepatitis C and about 2,000 were infected with HIV between 1980 and 1985. The contaminated blood entered the national blood supply through transfusions as a result of inadequate blood screening from high-risk populations. 

It has been recognized as the largest preventable public health crisis in Canada’s history, although the preventable toxic drug poisoning crisis now likely takes its place.

Following Canada’s tainted blood scandal, the Krever Commission led to the creation of Canadian Blood Services as the non-profit organization to oversee Canada’s system of voluntary blood collection. The commission also established five principles for Canada’s blood system:

• Blood is a public resource;
• Blood and blood product collection should be voluntary and not-for-profit;
• Canada should be self-sufficient in collection of blood and blood products;
• Citizens should have free and universal access to blood products; and,
• The safety of the blood supply is paramount.

In 2022, blood supply advocates warned that the CBS’s deal with Grifols violated the key principles established by the Krever Commission, violated the mandate of CBS itself (to steward the voluntary blood donation system), and violated the global consensus established by the European Union, WHO, and Red Cross that blood and blood products should be collected on an unpaid, voluntary basis. 

Following news of the undisclosed agreement between CBS and Grifols, advocates called on the agreement between CBS and Grifols to be revoked, for a commitment by Health Canada and CBS to invest in public infrastructure by updating blood donation centres to include plasma collection, and for the resignation of CBS’s CEO and board chair. Concerns had been raised for a number of years that CBS was not fulfilling its mandate of expanding its voluntary blood collection system in order to meet the country’s needs.

For-profit collection centres have expanded nationwide

Before the Grifols deal, there were a few for-profit paid plasma centres in Canada that were not part of Canada’s national blood supply.

Today there are 17 for-profit Grifols paid-plasma collection centres across the country, established through the deal with CBS. Like in the U.S., these for-profit centres tend to locate in lower-income neighbourhoods, where they have easy access to people who are most likely to need income from selling plasma. 

As CBC first reported, two people—including a 22-year-old international student—died after giving paid plasma at Grifols collection centres in Winnipeg. Grifols operates two locations in Winnipeg. 

As of March 13, four of the eight blood collection facilities in Canada—deemed by the Government of Canada to be non-compliant with the Blood Regulations of the Food and Drugs Act—are Grifols centres. Based on the Health Canada reporting website, non-compliance issues ranged from not accurately assessing the donor’s suitability to not thoroughly investigating errors and accidents and determining corrective and preventive actions. These non-compliant Grifols centres are in Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, and Saint John. 

A full judicial inquiry is needed—and a ban on paid plasma

Health Canada is currently investigating the two deaths, which occurred in October 2025 and on January 30, 2026. This investigation is important, but will not address the circumstances surrounding the deaths, which will require a full judicial inquiry under Manitoba’s Fatality Inquiries Act.

Due to the precarious economic and immigration status in Canada of one of the deceased—an international student—it will be important for a judicial inquiry to probe the social and economic circumstances as to why the individuals were selling plasma. For example, Manitoba has committed in 2023 to providing public health insurance to Manitoba international students, but has not yet done so. Was the student selling plasma in order to pay for basic health care services or rent?

An inquiry would help us understand whether the paid-plasma model puts those who are socio-economically precarious at potentially greater risk of injury or death. These questions will only be answered through a juridical inquiry that has the full weight of the law behind it. 

Manitoba also has the power, through legislation, to ban the practice of selling plasma, as British Columbia and Quebec have done. There is every reason to follow their lead.

In addition, Health Canada and CBS also need to be held accountable for these deaths. This is an urgent call for Health Canada to work with CBS and build an entirely voluntary blood donation system. Even as the investigation and potential future inquiry are underway, we know from the abundance of evidence that a voluntary system is best. Efforts should be undertaken by Health Canada to begin this work, including re-thinking the CBS-Grifols contract.

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However, in 2026 at least, Trump has been rather silent about the CUSMA review, which he has left in the hands of United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer. And though the U.S. holds a lot of leverage in trade talks with Canada and Mexico starting this month, the fate of the agreement ultimately lies with all three countries. 

The CCPA has commented on what Greer seems to want out of the review elsewhere. This article considers what we recently learned about the Mexican government’s objectives. 

For Mexico, CUSMA review negotiations with the USTR will begin March 16. While Canada’s Minister of Internal Trade Dominic LeBlanc introduced Greer to Canada’s new ambassador, Mark Wiseman, and lead negotiator Janice Charette recently, it’s not clear when Canada-U.S. bilateral talks will begin.

On March 9, the Mexican Secretariat of the Economy Marcelo Ebrard presented “The Results of the Consultation Tables”, detailing what the Mexican government heard from thousands of businesses, industry associations, academics, unions and social groups. Ebrard heralded the consultations, which lasted 60 days, as a feat of transparent governance—an example of how diverse his “Team Mexico” was going into the review. 

The process heard from 30 different sectors across all of Mexico’s federal states on a range of key issues related to the agreement. Additionally, Ebrard held consultations with labour unions jointly with the Secretariat of Labour and Social Welfare. While the resulting document is not a legally binding list of the Mexican government’s key priorities, it demonstrates what Mexican stakeholders are saying about CUSMA and which comments the Mexican government emphasizes as relevant to its strategic reflection going into the review. 

The message from the consultation summary is clear: Mexico seeks to maintain CUSMA, avoiding any substantial reopening or renegotiating of chapters. Changes that could be made to the agreement lie not within the “substantive commitments of CUSMA, but rather on improving its implementation, strengthening existing mechanisms and reducing the frictions that affect the day-to-day functioning of productive integration.” 

Mexican stakeholders made it clear to the Mexican government that CUSMA is an important tool that ought to be preserved, even if there are clear limitations or issues with the trilateral agreement. President Claudia Sheinbaum, seemingly, has taken this view as a centrepiece for Mexico’s goals leading into the review, saying in February, “it will remain in place because it is beneficial for the three countries.” 

During the consultation summary, participants identified a few key items as central to improving or maintaining a well-functioning regional economy. 

Firstly, CUSMA’s rules-of-origin (ROO) were an important piece of discussion, with a range of diverging opinions, depending on the sector consulted. These rules define, based on regional content or value, what goods or products can be said to be wholly obtained or produced in North America and therefore qualify for tariff-free access from one North American country to another. 

In Mexico’s automotive, electronics, aerospace and medical device industries, the core concern is to maintain the current rules of origin without any additional tightening (i.e., raising of the minimum regional value or content quota). Meanwhile, in the chemical, plastic, agribusiness and steel-aluminum industries, there is an insistence on strengthening the rules of origin. 

Stronger rules would seek to limit the circulation of cheap products from Asian countries that enter North American supply chains (often as industrial inputs to subsequent manufacturing) without meeting CUSMA’s content requirements. For the automotive industry, which already has stricter content requirements than other sectors in CUSMA, stricter rules of origin could create production bottlenecks, increase the cost of inputs and affect regional supply chains, especially in an industry that uses ‘just in time’ production models, the report highlights. 

Rules of origin debates were closely tied to another major concern in the consultations: unfair competition from Asian countries. Mexican stakeholders called on the government to address imports from Asia with a coordinated regional position (perhaps including mirroring U.S. tariffs) and domestic capacity building to address undervaluation and the technical smuggling of inputs into North American supply chains. 

Unsurprisingly, tariffs were a key issue for business participants in the consultations. The results highlight roundtable discussions in the steel, aluminum, metalworking and electronics industries, where U.S. tariffs were acknowledged as creating uncertainty for the regional supply chain, raising costs and distorting intraregional trade. Removing those tariffs, however, may prove difficult, as Trump and USTR Greer seem insistent on maintaining tariffs for all products that are not CUSMA compliant. 

These industry roundtables in Mexico were accompanied by two union dialogues, which focused primarily on the operation of CUSMA’s Chapter 23 (Labour). The report highlights union agreement to continue advances in Mexican labour conditions, resulting from increases in the minimum wage and the ongoing transition to a 40-hour work week. 

CUSMA’s novel Rapid Response Labour Mechanism (RRLM), which sought to provide an international legal instrument for investigating labour rights violations and enforcing remedies, is seen as important for detecting employers’ anti-union actions. However, the summary emphasizes consensus around sharp criticism of the RRLM as well. Asymmetries in its application only in Mexico and the perceived lack of exhaustion of all national remedies by those using the RRLM were highlighted as priorities in the report. 

Some labour participants in the Mexican consultation suggested expanding the scope of the RRLM to strategic sectors such as tourism and agro-industry. Overall, though, labour dialogue findings centred on the need to preserve Mexico’s labour sovereignty by strengthening an understanding of the nation’s labour reform efforts and ensuring that the RRLM and CUSMA do not put pressure on or weaken internal institutional capacity.  

The desire to address asymmetry aligns closely with the recommendations of a range of U.S. and Canadian unions, who’ve suggested expanding the RRLM to Canada and the U.S. This sentiment, though, could be a worry for some allies of independent labour groups in Mexico, which may see Mexico’s negotiation team hold firm on not expanding or improving commitments to the RRLM if reciprocity of its application is not on the table. 

While the labour consultation findings were limited in scope, the Mexican consultation process certainly engaged labour unions more robustly than the Canadian consultation. In addition to the formal consultation, Mexican independent unions, in solidarity with Indigenous, farmer, feminist and other civil society groups, have made clear their own priorities for the CUSMA review. This alternative vision reflects a human rights-centred approach rather than the privileging of corporate voices.

For Indigenous and rural communities in Mexico, the consultation added little value, as the minimal discussion of the integration of these communities was identified as “Beyond the scope of CUSMA.” While the impacts of CUSMA will certainly find their way to Indigenous and rural communities, concern for their collective rights does not seem to be a particularly important issue for Mexico’s engagement with the 2026 review. 

This neglect seems to be a pattern for all three countries, from the expansion of extractive projects to more straightforward attacks on Indigenous rights, such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) recent harassment of Indigenous cross-border travellers from Canada. 

The Mexican Secretariat of Economy also detailed some future-oriented points of discussion from the roundtables. Some of these emerging issues include sustainable tourism and climate resilience, labour mobility, the integration of the care and solidarity economy into regional chains, environmental cooperation, traceability and green standards, and digital trade issues. Mexico identified these issues not only as possible drivers of the CUSMA review and future regional negotiations, but also as strategically advantageous for Mexico to lead the construction of trilateral positions and frameworks to address them. 

Another interesting reflection on the consultation process is the lack of pointed critique of Canadian policy. Discussion of Canada (independently of the U.S.) in general was absent from the document, while the U.S. was singled out for criticism on numerous occasions. Not just for tariffs, but also for a range of anti-dumping measures against Mexican agricultural products and a lack of compliance with dispute panels. 

Mexico’s consultation process proved fruitful, perhaps a natural conclusion given its immense scope, engaging all states and relevant sectors. As the CUSMA review for Mexico and the U.S. is only a few days away, it is clear from the consultation process that Mexico strongly believes the trade agreement is central to its future economic growth plans. 

For Mexico, CUSMA is not perceived as a restriction on economic policy; it is a platform that will facilitate increases in the scale, quality, and competitiveness of production oriented toward the North American and third-party markets. To achieve this, Mexico will seek to make “tweaks” to the agreement without jeopardizing the possibility of its fracture. 

Close economic integration with the U.S. and Canada is here to stay for President Sheinbaum and her “Team Mexico.” What comes next is dealing with what is undoubtedly going to be a review process full of typical Trump insults and threats to tear up the agreement. 

The Mexican government’s summary of key findings from its consultation was similar to the short report Canada issued earlier this year. The parallels, though, diverge strongly when considering the substantive methodological approach of both consultations, with Mexico having a more thorough and engaging consultation. 

Going into the CUSMA review, a potential source of optimism for those seeking to maintain the agreement could be the aligned positions of the Canadian and Mexican governments. Notably, both President Sheinbaum and Prime Minister Mark Carney hope to retain the deal, with only minor changes proposed. If they can maintain this alignment as the review progresses, they may be able to jointly resist proposals from the Trump administration that would harm workers or further undermine Canadian and Mexican independence. 

The post Mexico’s CUSMA consultations show alignments with Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Indeed, yesterday’s release of the Saskatchewan government’s Patient First health care plan made no mention of adopting Alberta’s controversial “dual practice” model. However, the plan’s myopic insistence on expanding Saskatchewan’s existing and very expensive for-profit surgical services demonstrates that this government still has a tenuous commitment to the principles of universal public health care. 

The Patient First plan does contain some promising policies, particularly in regard to renewed efforts to recruit and retain health care professionals for our chronically under-staffed public health system. Additionally, expanding the scope of practice for certain health care professionals could be beneficial to the efficiency of the health care system—to the extent that it does not download responsibilities or increase already unsustainable workloads on existing workers. 

Expanding our current public health care workforce is an urgent necessity. For example, spending on private for-profit nursing staffing agencies, to plug growing gaps in our workforce, has grown from $1.4 million in 2020 to over $50 million last year. These agencies were originally designed as a short-term way to complement the public system by providing options for staffing in hard-to-staff rural and remote regions, not as a perpetual and very expensive band-aid for the public sector workforce as a whole. 

As the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions demonstrates, the use of these agencies also undermines morale, quality and continuity of care, and it diverts much-need public money to the private sector. Hopefully the new recruitment and retention tools, as well as the new standards for staffing outlined by the government, will allow us to reduce our reliance on these private agencies in the future. 

Yet, despite the potential positive impact these policies could have, they are overshadowed by the government’s insistence on expanding the use of private, for-profit surgical centres. The Patient First health plan states that the government will “expand the scope of publicly funded surgeries that can be performed through provincial partnerships with private surgical providers.” This may mean that the number of for-profit surgeries increase and the types of surgeries allowed in private clinics will as well—and this is a concerning acceleration of an existing, and problematic, approach.

Since 2014, the Saskatchewan government has relied almost exclusively on private clinics to address surgical wait times. That’s when it ended its successful Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative (SSI), which delivered a “significant short-term injection of funding to expand public surgery capacity,” in the province. As we showed in our No Time to Wait report, despite the Saskatchewan government’s preference for private-sector solutions to the wait-time problem, the only significant reduction in wait-times came through concerted public investment in the capacity of the public system via the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative. Once that investment ended and the province relied solely on private providers, wait times increased once again. 

While we do not know how much private surgical providers are charging the Saskatchewan government today for these procedures, we do know what Clearpoint—the owner of Surgical Centres Inc.—charges in other jurisdictions. A funding agreement between a Clearpoint-owned clinic and Ontario Health documented charges two to three times higher than those of public hospitals for identical surgical procedures. If the province’s budget is as tight as the government suggests, we can ill afford to funnel those limited dollars into the profits of what is a subsidiary of a private equity company. 

The good news is that the government has listened, at least partially, to the advice of health policy experts and health professionals in its approach to expanding the recruitment and retention of health care workers, as expressed in the Patient First health plan. Some of these initiatives approximate what other health care unions and professional associations have been asking for to help expand the public sector workforce. 

The less good news is, that the government’s openness to good policy advice on health care does not extend to its spending decisions, which have committed precious public dollars to expensive for-profit care in the private sector, which has been shown time and again to deliver poorer results than investments in the public sector. 

Payments to for-profit private health care providers

Saskatchewan Health Authority Payee Disclosure List 2024/25

RN/RPN/NP contract staffing agencies

5010675 ONTARIO Ltd (Gratitude Health)  $3,783,439

Elite Intellicare Staffing    $3,507,497

Goodwill Staffing & Recruitment  $1,920,416

New Horizons Staffing Incorporated  $18,659,046

Solutions Staffing Incorporated $1,923,923

Truecare Alliance Staffing  $3,556,632

Select Medical Connections Ltd $6,081,879

Nurse Relief Incorporated $7,238,951

McCare Global Healthcare Services Incorporated $722,429

Ezcare Nursing Agency $175,121

Finney Taylor Consulting Group Ltd $297,734

Lifeline Healthcare Staffing Agency Incorporated $6,252,050

Payments For-Profit Surgeries

Canadian Surgery Solutions $1,774,350

Surgical Centres Incorporated (Clearpoint Health Network)) $14,249,188

Payments to For-Profit Diagnostics

Prairie Skies Medical Imaging Incorporated $14,850,577

National Medical Imaging $250,100

Open Skies MRI $861,166

The post Patients or profits first? appeared first on CCPA.

Massive and deep cuts are coming across a wide array of federal services as a result of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review (CER), which pile onto previous federal cuts from the last few years. While the federal government has spun these cuts as “efficiencies” whose effects will be softened with AI, a look at the numbers shows wide and deep cuts to services and offloading of costs to cities.

At Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the cuts threaten to hollow out significant parts of Canada’s immigration system. The cuts will target four key areas:

• Refugee health care: The largest cut, at $829 million over four years, is to health care for refugees and asylum seekers. We analyzed these cuts in greater detail in a previous analysis, which is available here.
• Settlement Program: The IRCC’s Settlement Program ensures that economic immigrants are able to use their skills to improve the Canadian economy—for example, by ensuring that doctors are not driving taxis. It manages credential recognition and language programs, among other things.
  • The CER threatens to slash $686 million from the program over four years. 
  • This category of immigrant is one of the few where the Canadian government is actually planning on increasing, by five per cent by 2027-28.
  • Combined with previous cuts, the entire Settlement Program’s budget will fall by a third, which will ensure that these immigrants—who are selected for their skills—are not able to use those skills in a productive way.
• Asylum Housing: The Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP) is an IRCC mechanism that refunds municipal governments that pay for emergency housing for asylum seekers experiencing homelessness. The CER plans to eliminate IHAP funding.
  • In 2025-26, the federal government paid 95 per cent of the costs for asylum-seeker housing, while municipalities paid five per cent. The ratio appears that it would have been 50/50 by 2027-28, but now federal funding will fall to zero.
  • Half of the entire homeless population in Toronto consists of asylum seekers, as is 42 per cent of Ottawa’s homeless population. 
  • Four municipalities—Toronto, Peel region (Toronto suburbs), Ottawa, and Montreal—account for nearly all IHAP funding, and those municipalities will now be forced to either pay the costs of refugee housing themselves, or accept a sharp increase in homelessness.
• Basic Service levels: A surge in staffing in 2023 and 2024 managed to get immigration application backlogs under control. However, major staffing cuts starting in early 2025 meant that by December 2025 no application stream was meeting its service goals. Decisions on applications are now languishing and more often ending up in federal court.

The areas outlined above comprise the vast majority of cuts to IRCC. All of them will coincide with a major reduction in services and service quality. In the case of housing, they will transfer massive costs to already-strained municipal governments. It’s a humanitarian crisis in the making.

Introduction

The 2025 federal budget introduced major cuts to almost all federal departments’ funding. Affected departments were expected to cut $56.7 billion over the next four years largely as part of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review (CER), a truly staggering cut. These cuts, though, should really be thought of as transfers, not cuts on their own.  In the same budget, the Department of National Defence saw an increase in its funding of an almost identical $58.8 billion also over the next four years. 

With any cut, particularly with ones this large, governments will try to appear as if they are minimizing the service impacts through the use of neutral language. They’ll avoid details on the specifics of what exactly is going to be lost and use words like “efficiency” and “back-office”. With this round of cuts, they have also been suggesting that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a way of maintaining service levels. 

In the case of the Department of Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the CER cuts from November 2025 will actually be cut on top of previous cuts that started in early 2025.

Beyond the spin of “efficiency” and AI, the government is cutting specific programs and services inside the IRCC. The analysis below goes into detail of where, exactly, those cuts will take place—and how much is on the chopping block. 

Naming the services to be cut

To date, the actual dollar amounts to be cut as well as the staff to be lost have been reasonably transparent. What the federal government has not yet done is to actually name the services that that money and staff represent—which specific programs and services will be cut?

Through different sources examined below, we’ve been able to uncover all of these details at IRCC.

Worth $829 million over four years, the biggest cut is to asylum and refugee preventive health care. These cuts are simply making asylum seekers and refugees pay 30 per cent of preventive services like dental care and co-payments for prescription drugs. 

The second largest cut is to the Settlement Program worth $686 million over four years. This cut is to services that help economic migrants rapidly integrate into Canada’s society and economy. As we’ll see below, this is only about half the value of the cut in this area.

The third largest cut is a downloading of housing costs to four municipalities. IRCC is booking $256 million over four years in “savings” here, but the net result as we’ll see is those cities spending between $150 million to $252 million out of their own pockets.

The fourth largest cut is worth $138 million over four years and involves reductions in services due to Canada accepting fewer migrants. But, as we’ll see, previous cuts have already substantially worsened application backlogs at the department. Service levels are already well below the department’s own standards and further cuts will deteriorate them further, often pushing applications into federal court.

The remaining seven per cent of the cuts involve shutting down smaller programs (“sunsetting” them) and having Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) do some of IRCC’s workplace inspections.

What’s clear from naming the cuts is that they aren’t about internal efficiencies, they are just old fashioned service cuts to health, integration, and anti-homelessness programs for new Canadians, transferring costs to four cities and major service degradation.

Let’s go through the details:

Asylum seekers and refugee health care cuts

I have examined the cuts to refugee health care in more detail in a previous analysis. By 2028-29, these cuts will amount to almost a quarter billion a year from asylum seekers and refugees who aren’t yet eligible for provincial health care systems. Starting May 1^, 2025, they’ll be forced to pay 30 per cent of dental and other preventive health services along with a new co-pay for prescription drugs. 

While we’ve come a long way in Canada with the new Canada Dental Care Plan, we’re stripping asylum seekers and refugees of this coverage.

Asylum seekers and refugees fleeing violence at home don’t have an extra quarter billion a year to spend so instead they’ll likely just skip dental care and prescription drugs, end up in emergency rooms for which IRCC will actually pay 100 per cent of the coverage.

This cut alone will make up 40 per cent of the total “cost savings” of the IRCC’s cuts. 

The Settlement Program

Canada accepts “economic migrants” every year—that is, people who want to come to Canada who aren’t fleeing persecution but instead have skills our economy needs. We can determine exactly how many economic migrants we want to bring in annually.

As part of bringing in these new Canadians we want to ensure they’re rapidly integrated into Canadian life getting credentials recognized, improving language skills and rapidly gaining high quality employment. By doing this we can quickly take advantage of these new Canadians’ skills and see economic growth as a result. 

We don’t want a newly immigrated family physician languishing as a cab driver. Instead we need to have credentials rapidly recognized, language skills improved and a new practice rapidly set up, not just for the new Canadian, but for the benefit of all Canadians who badly need a family doctor.

The “Settlement Program” is the main way that IRCC attempts to accomplish economic integration. Unfortunately, IRCC is planning major cuts to it.

The latest 2026-28 Immigration Levels plan significantly cuts student and temporary workers. However, it actually plans to increase the acceptance of economic migrants by five per cent between 2025-26 and 2027-28, rising from 232,150 a year to 244,700. Unfortunately, while taking in more people on an annual basis, IRCC now plans to cut the budget for integrating them by $338 million a year or 30 per cent over that same period (falling from $1.125 billion in 2025-26 to $787 million in 2028-29).

Roughly half of this cut in support is from CER cuts accounted for in Figure 1. The CER cuts are actually on top of previous rounds of cuts resulting in this massive decline in support for integration of 30 per cent or about a third of a billion dollars a year.

These cuts will only happen to programs outside of Quebec. The funding for the Settlement Program within Quebec is protected due to the Quebec-Canada Accord on immigration. Instead of the federal government managing the Settlement Program and resettlement assistance in Quebec, the province manages those programs.  One of the provisions of the Accord is that the amount transferred can never go down, thus insulating Quebec from the CER cuts. 

The Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) providing similar services for government assisted refugees and the francophone support programs are also protected.  This was a choice of the department to maintain these programs while cutting other programs more to cover them.

IRCC has suggested that cutting off economic migrants from integration supports after five years can achieve most of these cut goals. But this isn’t nearly severe enough. IRCC will have to squeeze settlement agencies, likely using a “cost per client” approach which would penalize agencies paying fair wages. Settlement programs in larger centres like the GTA and Vancouver will likely see disproportionate cuts. 

There are employment implications of the Settlement Plan cuts specifically for racialized women. They’ll remain unemployed for longer without rapid integration. The focus on saving jobs and ensuring employment for vulnerable populations is lost in these cuts conversations.

Settlement agencies, separate from the federal government, are generally the ones delivering the integration services. As such, they may well wear the blame for cuts in eligibility and programs instead of the federal government who funds the system. 

It is inevitable that these deep cuts will slow the integration of new Canadians into our economy and society. We accepted these new Canadians due to their skills, and we’ll not capitalize on them through rapid integration.

This round of Settlement program cuts amounts to 33 per cent of the CER cuts at IRCC. 

Asylum seekers homelessness

A shocking 50 per cent of the homeless population in the City of Toronto is actually asylum claimants, the proportion is 42 per cent in the City of Ottawa. The lack of affordable housing places a heavy burden on municipal governments who are the first payers when it comes to housing the homeless. In fits and starts, the federal government has attempted to offset these costs primarily through the Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP). 

The IHAP is an ad hoc program that isn’t consistently funded as shown in Figure 3. The cities incur the expense of housing asylum seekers and then send the receipts to the federal government which may or may not cover them.  It was unfunded for two years, 2021-22 and 2022-23. The only reason there was spending in 2022-23 was a reprofiled of funds from 2020-21. 

Even before the CER cuts were announced, the IHAP was scheduled for a massive cut from $400 million this year (2025-26) to $267 million in 2026-27. The CER cuts revealed that the government had penciled in $81 million a year afterwards, although this had yet to appear in any budget documents. That $81 million a year that was nominally there in 2027-28 and afterwards, has now been cut making up the “savings” of IHAP. 

But the cities are going to be out much more than that.

In 2025-26 the cost sharing with the cities for housing asylum seekers was 95 per cent federal and five per cent municipal. Even before the CER, this was planned to fall to 75 per cent federal / 25 per cent municipal in 2026-27 but plans for future years were in limbo.  It now appears that IRCC wanted to move to 50 per cent federal / 50 per cent municipal, before the CER cuts that is.  However with the CER cuts, the feds will stick cities with the full cost. In 2026-27, the federal government is arbitrarily deciding that it will cover $15 million fewer receipts that it receives from the cities, dropping its spending in that year from the planned $267 million to $252 million.

Regardless of how IRCC accounts for these massive cuts to the asylum housing program, the costs of keeping these folks off the street won’t go away—it will just become a municipal problem.  

IRCC has argued that reduced asylum claims means housing cost will decrease, which may be true, but they won’t be zero. There has been a marked decline in claimants in 2025 compared to 2024. IRCC plans to have claims plummet even further in 2026 and beyond.

However, unlike economic migration, IRCC can’t cap asylum claims at a specific number. As a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, Canada can’t send asylum seekers back to a country if they face persecution, torture or death. Furthermore, Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that anyone present in the country is entitled to a fair hearing of their claim. While IRCC might want the asylum claims to be cut in half from 113,000 in 2025 to 56,200 in 2026, this may be more dependent on wars and dictatorships elsewhere than IRCC’s immigration level plans.

Even if IRCC’s projections of asylum claims come to pass at roughly 55,000 a year, this still implies major costs to cities that the feds will no longer help with. If we calculate the average IHAP cost per asylum claimant between 2023-24 and 2025-26 we can estimate that it will cost between $150 and $160 million a year depending on the year at the much lower asylum claim count. Prior to the CER cuts the feds had planned to contribute $81 million towards that cost, from 2027-28 and beyond. But it now appears that the feds will dump the entire cost onto the cities as they reimburse nothing starting in April 2027. No matter how IRCC accounts for this as “savings” it is really just downloading costs onto four cities.

And that’s if the projected asylum claims are accurate. The big risk for the cities is if these asylum claim estimates are overly optimistic. What if claims fell from 113,000 to only 90,000, like we saw in 2022. This would still be a drop but would be far above the roughly 55,000 projected by IRCC.  If there were 90,000 claimants, it would cost the cities $250 million a year to house them. Not only are the housing costs transferred to the cities, but the CER cuts ensure that all risks of higher asylum claims are also passed off to the cities. 

There are really only four municipalities that are footing the bill for asylum seeker’s housing and who bear the risk if claim numbers come in high: Toronto, Montreal, the Peel Region and Ottawa.

Toronto received 60 per cent of the IHAP funds over the past three years given how large the homeless asylum seeker population is there. The cost to the city alone past March 2027 for asylum housing could be $91 million to $151 million if that proportion of funds remains and depending if we see 55,000 asylum claims or 90,000 in future years.

The Region of Peel, a municipality in the suburbs of Toronto, has received 10 per cent of the funds covering the construction of its new reception centre, but now the Region will be expected to operate it from its own funds. It could be on the hook for $15 to $27 million a year after March 2027 if that proportion of funds remains consistent.

Cities in Quebec don’t receive funds directly from the federal government, instead it is routed through the province, but 14 per cent of IHAP funds have gone to Quebec, mostly to Montreal’s municipal government. That city could foot an annual bill of between $21 and $35 million.

Finally the City of Ottawa has received 10 per cent of the IHAP funds, it initially cancelled a reception centre of its own, but now seems to be moving forward on a new site. Once ready, it seems the city will now have to pay for its operation completely out of their own funds starting in 2027-28.* The cost housing asylum seekers at this new site and elsewhere could amount to $15 to $25 million a year.

These four cities have received 94 per cent of IHAP funding over the past three years and no other individual municipality has received more than two per cent of IHAP funds between 2022-23 and 2024-25.

The CER cuts will almost certainly put the nail in the coffin of this program and download those costs to four cities to house homeless asylum seekers in the future. The nascent plans to renew this program in the future with a 50/50 split are almost certainly dead now. 

Staffing cuts

As noted above, the CER staffing cuts at IRCC thus far are fairly small—eliminating the positions of 328 workers. However, the CER staffing cuts are being piled upon much larger staff cuts that started earlier in 2025. 

In January 2025, the IRCC sent an internal email noting it was planning on cutting 3,300 jobs over the next three years, with 20 per cent being indeterminate and 80 per cent being term or casual employees. The departmental report published in June 2025 notes a reduction of full time equivalents (FTEs) over three years from 13,319 to 11,257 or 2,026. 

Given the timing, much of the term and casual employees would have been laid off by March 31, 2025, when the IRCC job snapshot was taken. And indeed we find that there were 1,826 fewer term and casual employees in 2025 than 2024 in the job snapshot data. There would have been further job losses after March 31 2025, for indeterminate employees whose layoffs take longer. The extent of those further job cuts have yet to be included in departmental counts and would be over and above the CER and other cuts. Therefore the staffing cuts in this analysis are going to underestimate the final count. 

Broadly the federal government plans to cut its workforce by 10 per cent between 2024 and 2028-29. However, the staff cut suffered at IRCC will be at least 17 per cent, almost twice as much as the general cut. And when the final count is made, it will likely be several percentage points higher, likely closer to 20 per cent.

If we take the full picture from 2024 through the full CER implementation, the IRCC head count falls from 13,092 people in 2024 to a projected 10,820 following the CER staffing cuts or a 17 per cent reduction.

The term and casual employees who were already cut were reducing critical backlogs. Figure 6 shows the proportion of application types where 80 per cent of applications were processed.  With the extra help in 2024, several application types actually managed to successfully process at least 80 per cent of applications including: the federal high-skilled (Express entry) application;  spouses, partners and children (outside Quebec) applications and citizenship grant applications. The surge of workers in 2024 meant that roughly half of the application types were keeping backlogs at bay.

However, once the mass layoffs started in 2025, the department was no longer able to keep backlogs at bay and service quality plummeted. 

In December 2024, three application types had backlogs below 20 per cent. By December 2025, none of the application types were hitting their goals. These backlogs are already leading to more federal court applications either for judicial review or mandamus (forcing a decision because of the backlog) pushing the backlogs at IRCC into an increased case load in federal courts.

While the department is clearly saving money by laying off 17 per cent of its workers, the result is just lower service levels and major backlogs in applications.

Summary

We now have the details on the CER cuts at IRCC. These are anything but back office efficiencies relying on AI, instead they are old-fashioned service cuts and downloading costs to big cities.

Two fifths of the CER cuts are health care cuts for asylum seekers. A third of the cuts are to the Settlement Program that helps new Canadians integrate more rapidly, gain employment and contribute to Canada’s economy. The staffing cuts from the CER come on top of much larger cuts that happened in 2025 that allowed backlogs to balloon again. 

A further 12 per cent of the cuts is just cancelling any support for the cities who house otherwise homeless asylum seekers. No matter how IRCC accounts for it, these four cities will likely face $150 million to $250 million annually to house asylum seekers. 

And despite all the federal talk about using AI to streamline services, AI can’t house the homeless. These cuts are almost entirely straightforward service cuts.

* 2026-03-13 Clarification on the date of the end of IHAP funding for the City of Ottawa of 2027-28, as highlighted earlier in the analysis. Clarification on the nature of the Ottawa reception centre being a building purchase, not new construction as included in the previous hyperlink.

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On average, women earn about 87 cents per hour for each dollar earned by men in Canada. The gender disparity in annual earnings is even more pronounced, with women earning 72 cents on the dollar. 

The gender pay gap has narrowed by 20 percentage points since 1977 when the federal government introduced Canada’s first pay equity provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act. But it remains unacceptably wide—in fact it is one of the largest in the OECD, ranking 26^th among 31 peer countries.

The gender pay gap’s huge toll

Women in Canada are paying a high price for this wage discrimination. In dollar terms, women are on average making $19,000 less per year than their male colleagues, the same among full-time workers too. This amounts to $200 billion in lost wages. Even modest pay equity adjustments could close those gaps and significantly boost Canada’s GDP.  

The gender wage gap’s especially high especially among Indigenous and racialized workers and those with disabilities compared to non-Indigenous, non-racialized male workers or those without disabilities, close to a 40 per cent gap of annual earnings.

Over a lifetime, the gender pay gap adds up to astonishing financial losses for women. According to U.S. research, the gender pay gap on average costs women more than half a million dollars in lost earnings over the course of 40 years and upwards of $1 million among Black, Hispanic, and Native American women. 

Pay discrimination and earnings polarization

Progress has been made in narrowing the wage gap in the aggregate, but it remains hugely uneven, within a context of growing wage and earning inequality. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this reality home, its economic fallout shouldered by the most vulnerable workers and families, shining a light on deeply entrenched gender biases in Canada’s labour market. 

The current situation of economic uncertainty and high living costs provides even stronger reasons for making gender equity a priority. School teachers, health professionals and community support workers, for instance, all experienced negligible wage growth between 2019 and 2025 taking inflation into account. Indeed, women working in nursing actually lost ground, their real wages falling by 1.3 per cent over the six years. Meanwhile, the incomes of men in senior management and finance have surged. 

Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn coined the term “swimming upstream” to characterize women’s pursuit of pay equality in the face of growing earning inequality. These authors were talking about the evolution in the gender pay gap during the 1980s, but the metaphor captures the present moment as well. 

Current approaches fall short

Canada was an early leader in the introduction of pay equity laws aimed at eliminating the cumulative effects of occupational segregation and the undervaluation of “women’s work.” The first such legislation was introduced in Manitoba in 1986, followed by Ontario, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec over a 10-year period. 

Yet, the gender pay gap persists, a reflection of the complex sources of gender discrimination in the labour market and the significant weaknesses and gaps in Canada’s current legal frameworks and our social safety net. 

The wage penalty attached to motherhood; gendered and racialized norms, biases and stereotypes around competence, leadership and likeability; lack of access to attendant care, accessible transportation or other accommodations; and the inequitable treatment of foreign credentials and related work experience—these all contribute to wage disparities and diminish the value of women’s labour. 

The upshot: women are channeled into lower-paying occupations and sectors of the economy, work presumed to align with their “natural” or “traditional” abilities and interests, and “self-select” into more flexible, invariably lower paying, work options to accommodate family needs. The chart below says it all.  

Swimming upstream  

In the face of Canada’s persistent pay gap, the federal government seems intent on re-creating the Canadian economy of the 1960s through investment in male-dominated industries and the expansion of the military. 

This position reinforces the myth that women’s labour is not essential to the economy, that the care economy, where millions of women work, is not the foundation of a strong and resilient country, that gender pay discrimination and earning polarization isn’t a major threat to our collective well-being.  

The response to the economic assault confronting Canada can’t be a raft of programs focused solely on displaced workers on the shop floor, as important as that goal is. It must take an inclusive approach that builds out essential community infrastructure, strengthens employment standards, fosters unionization, contains skyrocketing income inequality, and transforms compensation and hiring practices through proactive pay equity and gender pay reporting. 

International Women’s Day is a time to recommit to ending pay discrimination and economic injustice. It’s a time to speak out loudly for a future that lifts up everyone.

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Canada’s AI minister was not only in attendance but busy meeting with Indian officials to discuss cooperation and technology partnerships. This follows Canada and Germany’s joint declaration of intent and the launch of the Sovereign Technology Alliance, all of which are taking shape against the backdrop of an intensifying rivalry that has come to define the global AI landscape. 

U.S.–China relations are increasingly defined as a great power competition, with AI now at its centre. Leaders in both countries frame AI as the defining technology of the 21st century, one that will determine economic dominance, military superiority, and whose values get embedded in the global technological ecosystem. This zero-sum framing has pushed governance to the margins as both powers flex their geopolitical muscle to ensure rapid AI development continues unabated.

Canada is positioning itself as a potential anchor of a middle power alternative to this AI race. However, what it did not bring to the summit was a functioning AI law, meaningful worker protections, or a credible answer to how it plans to govern the technology it is so eager to develop. This is the central contradiction of the “middle power moment:” the countries best positioned to offer an alternative are the same ones still struggling to demonstrate that democratic AI governance is possible.

If Canada’s AI alliances are to matter, these countries must be prepared to set and defend global regulatory standards and rein in private ownership. Sovereignty is not proclaimed—it is demonstrated in the policy choices governments make when corporations or powerful states push back.

The cost of concentration

Genuine democratic AI governance starts with an honest account of the power it must confront. Meaningful regulation has to contend with a complex web of issues, including corporate concentration, financial speculation, dependency, and unchecked deployment of AI technologies.

A handful of companies have authority over the AI supply chain and this concentration is a direct obstacle to middle power sovereignty. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon control the majority of cloud infrastructure, which are the compute resources all large-scale AI development depends on. They also hold self-reinforcing advantages such as employee talent, access to data, and pathways to monetization. Model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic are bound to these cloud giants through licensing agreements, revenue-sharing arrangements, and intellectual property deals that ensure Big Tech captures value at every layer. Meta occupies a distinct position, simultaneously releasing open source models while monetizing AI through its advertising infrastructure and the behavioural data of billions of users. This concentration is precisely what makes unilateral national “sovereign AI” strategies insufficient. No middle power can meaningfully shift AI governance alone.

This imbalance underscores the widening global digital divide. In 2024 alone, China filed approximately 300,000 AI patent applications while the U.S. filed approximately 68,000, together accumulating the vast majority of the world’s AI knowledge base. Building that knowledge base requires resources most countries do not have. Countries without domestic cloud infrastructure, chip manufacturing capacity, access to data or research talent become structurally dependent. They access AI through platforms owned elsewhere, governed by terms set elsewhere, and optimized for markets elsewhere. Research shows this dependency extends well beyond AI itself, encompassing hardware, platforms, and intellectual property across the entire digital market. Any serious sovereignty agenda must address this imbalance.

The scale of concentration is also reflected in investment flows. The U.S. dominates AI spending, accounting for roughly 62 per cent of global private AI investment, spending $471 billion since 2013. China is the second largest spender at $119 billion. Analysts predict AI spending could reach $2.5 trillion in 2026 alone, driven by the rapid expansion of data centres and computing capacity. Much of this investment is speculative: generative AI tools that produce text, images, and video have attracted capital far beyond demonstrated productivity gains, raising warnings of a financial bubble. While hype may fade, the investments in physical infrastructure, including data centres, energy systems, and cloud capacity, represent long-term capital commitments whose environmental, economic, and social impacts will outlast the current enthusiasm.

Once investors commit capital at this scale, rapid deployment becomes a financial imperative. Corporations integrate systems across institutions and markets before oversight mechanisms catch up. AI content increasingly saturates our information ecosystems, eroding public trust in our institutions as the line between human and machine-generated material blurs. At the same time, governments and employers are expanding surveillance systems and algorithmic management tools across policing, borders, and workplaces, often with little transparency and documented bias.

Public spaces are being fortified with AI technologies, where citizens are not just consumers of AI; they are increasingly its subjects. This makes regulation more urgent than ever. However, urgency alone is insufficient. For middle powers to forge a genuine alternative, they must also contend with an organized and well-resourced opposition.

The innovation-regulation dichotomy 

Opposition to meaningful regulation is not new. Middle powers are not immune to this pressure as the alliance between technology companies, fossil fuel interests, and the military-industrial complex has spent decades perfecting the playbook for resisting accountability. 

The scale of that effort is now visible in trade policy. A recent mapping of industry submissions to U.S. trade negotiators documents 260 complaints filed by 10 American tech lobby groups, including the Computer and Communications Industry Association and the Coalition of Service Industries, targeting democratic governance frameworks across more than 40 countries. Cross-border data flow restrictions account for the largest share of complaints, followed by digital services taxes and cloud service regulations. Canada is among the most targeted, alongside the EU and Brazil. The intention is to frame every regulatory standard as a trade barrier and use bilateral pressure to dismantle it country by country.

We saw this in Canada with Bill C-27, the proposed federal privacy and AI legislation, where an industry-dominated consultation process that excluded civil society and workers contributed to years of controversy before the bill eventually died. 

The pattern persists even where regulation is most advanced. The EU’s Digital Omnibus, proposed in November 2025, is framed as reducing the administrative burden on businesses, but operates in practice as a deregulatory intervention. The Digital Omnibus weakens the definition of personal data, broadens exemptions for AI training on sensitive information, and expands the use of automated decision-making in employment contexts. While the amendments do not repeal protections outright, they narrow enforceability and redistribute responsibility for compliance away from developers. Faced with threats of capital flight or lost investment, governments too often weaken regulatory standards in the name of competitiveness.

Corporate lobbyists consistently frame AI governance as a trade-off between innovation and regulation, but the argument that guardrails on privacy, transparency, and environmental impact will undermine competitiveness does not hold up. Clear regulatory frameworks have historically provided the stability that innovation requires. Safety standards in pharmaceuticals, aviation, and finance did not eliminate innovation; they shaped it toward public trust and long-term viability. 

Protecting people from deepfakes, combatting disinformation, preventing discrimination, and preserving privacy and security are not compromises. They are the floor. Canadians are watching these protections remain unaddressed in real time, and they are looking for government action. According to a recent poll, 85 per cent of Canadians want AI to be regulated. The same poll found that 83 per cent are concerned about privacy and worried that society is becoming too dependent on AI. 

The current ‘elbows up’ political moment is fertile ground. As the U.S uses economic coercion to pressure trading partners into alignment, middle powers are discovering that sovereignty is fragile. That political energy, mounting as many nations grapple with fundamental questions about who their economies and policies actually serve, is something to build on. 

Using the tools we already have

Middle powers already have more leverage than they are using. The tools to regulate AI exist, and they are also precisely what is being targeted. What is missing is the political will to apply them and the coordination to make that will count. 

Human rights law could be applied to automated decision-making just as it applies to human decisions. International obligations reinforce those standards. Labour law could govern unsafe working conditions created by algorithmic management, automation, and exploitative data labelling practices. Consumer protection law could address deceptive AI design and manipulative chatbot interfaces. Competition law could challenge the extreme concentration of cloud infrastructure and foundation models. Environmental and energy laws could require impact assessments, emissions reporting, and water-use transparency for data centre expansion. Public procurement rules could demand auditability and human oversight in government AI contracts. Governments do not always need new laws. Existing frameworks may need targeted updates to address the specificities of AI, but that is not the same as starting from scratch. 

The stakes of getting this wrong are high. The past decade of social media offers a cautionary tale. Platforms were allowed to scale globally before any oversight was in place. The result has been exacerbated citizen polarization, intensified vulnerability among youth, information chaos, and reactive regulation that struggles to catch up. 

Coordination gives middle powers leverage they lack individually, and it is the most effective counterweight to corporate lobbying that exploits regulatory fragmentation. Critically, that effort will only be meaningful if middle powers resist deregulation pressure at home. Aligning internationally while weakening domestic safeguards would hollow out the promise of democratic, sovereign AI.

Whether these tools are used depends on how governments understand sovereignty itself. If sovereignty is reduced to technological self-sufficiency or geopolitical advantage, enforcement will always give way to competition. However, if sovereignty is understood as the democratic authority to govern AI in the public interest, then collective enforcement among middle powers becomes a substantive strategy. That reframing determines whether middle powers use the tools they have or continue to negotiate them away. 

Sovereignty through democratic processes

“Sovereignty” and “democracy” are the new buzzwords in AI governance, and they desperately need grounding in material reality.

The nationalistic framing of sovereignty reflects a Cold War logic applied to contemporary techno-politics: AI as the new nuclear arsenal, data centres as strategic assets, innovation as a tool to outpace adversaries. Prioritizing advantage or dominance fundamentally constrains our imagination for what this technology could actually do for the collective. If AI is synonymous with geopolitical competition, citizens in all nations lose.

Nevertheless, this version of sovereignty is driving policy approaches in both the U.S and China, neither of which offer democratic AI. China has built out a network of nearly 700 million surveillance cameras, using AI facial recognition to govern its population while imposing strict censorship rules across digital platforms. Meanwhile, the U.S is embedding AI in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through partnerships with major tech firms to locate and target migrants, while using video analytics and license plate scanners to identify and catalogue activists. The White House has moved to block state AI regulations while banning government use of what it considers “woke AI” or models that address equity considerations, effectively mandating that existing patterns of racial and gender bias in algorithms be treated as the neutral baseline. In both China and the U.S, civil society has no material influence in how AI systems are developed or deployed, nor do they capture the benefits. 

Democratic AI requires actual democratic processes, alongside genuine respect for the dignity, creativity, and intelligence of the public. This is not resolved merely by making today’s models more transparent or lowering their costs, nor by policy tweaks or technological fixes alone.

It requires asking a more fundamental question: who owns the digital infrastructure, and who controls the data? A publicly owned AI entity, developed and governed on behalf of citizens rather than shareholders, would reflect a categorically different set of priorities. So would public data trusts, where people collectively control how their information is used rather than surrendering it to platforms. Consider how a publicly governed Large Language Model could work differently: shared queries build a commons, prior outputs are stored and reused, reducing the energy and compute cost of repeated generation. The architecture itself reflects democratic values, with knowledge held by the public, governed collectively, and accountable to users. Unlike current models built on the uncredited work of writers, artists, and creators, a public system could embed fair attribution and compensation into its design from the start. These institutions would give middle powers something concrete to defend internationally.

Canada’s provincial hydro utilities, public broadcasters, and federally funded research networks like CANARIE, which brought digital infrastructure across Canada in the early days of the internet, demonstrate that states can govern complex technology in the public interest when they choose to. The way forward is through better politics, not better technology. The task for middle powers is to make that choice collectively. This means doing two things at once: establishing public alternatives where the market has failed, and enforcing meaningful accountability across the private AI ecosystem that already exists. These are not competing agendas. They are two sides of the same democratic project.

From declarations to enforcement

Middle powers like Canada, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, and the Netherlands are well positioned to challenge the current AI governance landscape, but this requires moving beyond declarations toward accountability that is binding.

Accountability for AI harms needs to be built into the entire ecosystem from the foundation up to the point of deployment, rather than treated as an afterthought. Governments must hold technology companies responsible for foreseeable harms embedded in their design choices, training data, and system architecture. Deployers must be accountable for how AI systems are implemented in specific contexts, including whether meaningful human oversight exists and what social implications emerge from how those platforms are used. Liability cannot be shifted onto users or abstracted onto the systems themselves. Responsibility rests with the companies and state actors who build and deploy them. When AI causes harm, there must be rigorous investigation and real pathways for reform.

This also requires addressing the limitations of how consultation is currently practiced. Mandates for auditing AI systems have too often treated impacted communities as token voices whose input provides a veneer of public legitimacy. Researchers call this ‘participation washing’: consultation that is merely performative, with no plan for long-term partnerships and no genuine transfer of power to those most affected. This allows industry to continue business as usual, doing nothing to transform the structural conditions or fix the broken incentives driving the push to deploy AI because it is available, not because it is needed.

For middle power cooperation to have material weight beyond these domestic frameworks, it must extend into trade. Conditioning trade agreements and AI partnerships on the protection of workers’ rights, data sovereignty, and environmental standards would transform international solidarity from rhetoric into regulatory leverage. Resource sharing, market access, and research collaboration should come with binding commitments, closing the gap between the values middle powers claim to share and the rules they are willing to enforce together. This is what distinguishes a real middle power alternative from a rebranded version of the same concentrated corporate model with different flags on it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Seizing the moment

Competing for AI development on the U.S. and China’s terms is a race that middle powers will lose. The task is getting off that track entirely. Winning the AI race is not the goal. Demonstrating that a different model is viable and worth protecting is. 

The governance architecture we build now will determine what AI makes possible for generations to come, and middle powers have a genuine opening to shape it, but only if they are willing to be honest about what has failed so far. Sovereign AI that means nothing more than nationalist competition is not sovereignty. Democratic AI that relies on the exclusion of civil society instead of genuine power-sharing is not democracy.

The India summit was significant, but significance is not the same as rupture. Middle powers gathered to discuss the future of a technology whose infrastructure, investment flows, and governing assumptions remain controlled by the two powers they are purportedly seeking an alternative to. Whether these countries seize the moment will not be visible in the declarations they sign. It will be visible in the regulatory choices they make when corporations push back, the public institutions they are willing to build, and whose interests those institutions are designed to serve. 

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Drawing on the best available data, the tables below provide a breakdown of actual class sizes at the provincial, board, and school levels, for grades one to four.

In the 2024-25 school year, only 52 per cent of grade four to eight classes had fewer than 25 students, 45 per cent had between 25 and 29 students, and four per cent had more than 30 students.

While four per cent might seem small, in Ontario’s large education system, it means that nearly 1,100 grades four to eight classes in the province have more than 30 students.

Some boards are more impacted than others.

In the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), 42 per cent of grade four to eight classes (1,420 classes) had between 25 and 29 students, and nine per cent (313 classes) had 30 students or more.

In turn, the much smaller Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board had the largest share of classes, with more than 30 students in the province: 21 per cent, although it represented a small total number of classes, 10.

How come so many classes are above the known class size limits?

Parents hear that class sizes are limited to 20 students for grades one to three, 24.5 for grades four to eight, and 23 for Grades nine to 12. Yet their children are in much larger classes than these limits allow, and so are half of the children in the province. How is that possible?

The short answer is class-size caps.

Only grades one to three have hard caps. In any school board in Ontario, 90 per cent of classes must have 20 students or fewer, and the remaining 10 per cent may have up to 23 students.

For grades nine to 12, the ministry funds class sizes for an average of 23 students per class, and boards are required to uphold this overall average. In most subjects, class sizes are controlled by maximum limits, which were traditionally negotiated locally between teacher unions and boards.

For grades four to eight, class sizes are stipulated as the average at the board level. This means that if some classes are smaller than the target average, other classes can be larger. How large? There are no caps. And it is the absence of caps that allows for the extraordinary share of large classes.

Another crucial piece of the puzzle is class complexity, according to Nichole Grant, Research Director at the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF). For her, class sizes must take into account special education needs. In a weighted analysis, students without special education needs would be assigned a weight of 1, while other students would be assigned higher weights (e.g., 1.2, 1.5). If the Education Ministry made the necessary data available for this type of assessment, the numbers in the tables above would be considerably higher and better reflect the classroom experience.

Reducing class sizes through class caps would have an immediate and positive impact on the classroom experience in Ontario and on student achievement. We know it already. We don’t need EQAO reviews or long-winded consultation processes. We need the Ontario government to stop making excuses and invest in schools.

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On the international stage, the federal government seems content to promote big resource export projects, and is seeking global capital to take advantage of our resource riches. To this end, the PM has been pushing for new foreign investment, such as a $70 billion pledge from the United Arab Emirates. This seems like the inertia of Canada’s colonial history: we began as a British colony, replaced that with investment from the United States, and now we are catering to any and all footloose global capital. 

Missing from the public conversation so far is the role of U.S. and other foreign ownership in Canada, particularly in the core resource sectors the federal government is promoting in its response to U.S. threats. While we often speak of “Canadian exports” in resource sectors, a large share of production is controlled by US or other foreign corporations through their direct investments. To get to “elbows up” it’s worth revisiting who is really on Team Canada. 

Let’s review the data on foreign ownership in the Canadian economy, and the shifting patterns of foreign investment in recent decades—including Canadian investment in the U.S. and other countries. If we really want to be “maîtres chez nous” in the face of developments south of the border, we need to revisit the ownership structure of key sectors of the economy, and repatriate the trillions of dollars Canadian companies have invested outside of the country. 

Foreign ownership by the numbers

At the broadest level, Canadian industry is largely controlled by Canadian corporations. Statistics Canada’s foreign ownership data focuses on country of control as the key determinant, meaning more than 50 per cent of ownership. A limitation is that smaller stakes (under 50 per cent) held by foreign companies or individual portfolio investors are overlooked. Below we focus on asset holdings, which include tangible assets like buildings and equipment, intangible assets like patents, and financial assets.

Table 1 shows the most recent data for 2023 on assets by industry and country of control. The U.S. constitutes just over half of foreign ownership, and for simplicity I’ve lumped together all other countries as the rest of the world (ROW). Some 86 per cent of assets in 2023 were Canadian controlled but this is distorted by finance and insurance, and if we just look at non-financial corporations, the total share of assets that are Canadian controlled falls to 77 per cent. 

One caveat is that the reported total excludes “management of companies and enterprises,” a fairly opaque category that includes some key mechanisms of foreign control, including holding companies and corporate offices managing across regions or supply chains. This is to avoid double counting, but it likely means that foreign ownership is greater than indicated below. Federal and provincial government business enterprises are also excluded from the foreign ownership data.

Comparing these to historical estimates shows a long-term shift towards greater Canadian ownership. Kari Levitt’s 1970 landmark book, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, put foreign control at 34 per cent in 1963 (there may be some comparability issues from updates to industrial classifications and measurement). Levitt’s data for 1963 and the most recent 2023 data show a reduction in foreign control in manufacturing (from 60 to 44 per cent), oil and gas (from 74 to 37 per cent) and mining (from 59 to 30 per cent).

In the oil patch, foreign ownership may be much higher than reported by Statistics Canada. A BMO Capital Markets analyst estimated that U.S. funds now own about 59 per cent of Canadian oil and gas companies. A 2025 report by Silas Xeureb of Canadians for Tax Fairness estimates the big four oil sands companies (Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, and Suncor Energy), which account for over 80 per cent of total oil sands production, were on average 73 per cent foreign-owned, including 60 per cent American-owned. Xuereb comments, “this raises questions about whether the major corporations making decisions about production and employment in Canada’s oil sands are acting in the best interests of Canadians.”

A few other notable sectors in the 2023 Statscan data for their foreign-controlled share are wholesale trade (46 per cent of assets), retail trade (21 per cent) and professional, scientific and technical services (27 per cent). In finance and insurance, the numbers tilt more Canadian, with 91 per cent of assets held by and 87 per cent of profits going to Canadian corporations. Much of this is the chartered banks with the main foreign presence being in credit cards and investment banking. 

These data point to sources of American economic power in Canada that could inform Canada’s response to the Trump tariff war. U.S.-controlled corporations held $1.4 trillion in assets in Canada and made almost $84 billion in profits in 2023 (again, excluding management of companies and enterprises). The sectors with the largest U.S. presence are finance and insurance, oil and gas, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, and professional, and scientific and technical services, which together comprise 85 per cent of U.S. assets and 90 per cent of U.S. profits. 

Foreign direct investment patterns

Another way of looking at this issue is from the changing pattern of cross-border investment flows. This includes direct investment typically leading to active management and control of assets, as well as portfolio investment in more liquid stocks and bonds, which are more passive (although they could be quite active if the shareholdings become larger, like over five or 10 per cent of total shares). 

While Canada has historically been a net recipient of investment from the U.S. and other countries, this has shifted significantly in recent years. Figure 1 shows Canada’s net international investment position—the value of assets held by Canadians abroad minus foreign holdings of assets in Canada. Again, we break out the U.S. and the rest of the world, and data are adjusted as a share of Canadian GDP to be comparable over time. 

Over the past decade, investment flows have surged from Canada to other countries relative to investment into Canada. In 1990, non-residents held net assets in Canada, with two-fifths of this amount from the United States. Canada shifted to being a net asset holder in 2000 for the rest of the world outside the U.S., and in 2015 for the U.S. itself. As of Q3 2025 Canada had a net international investment position of $1.9 trillion, equivalent to about two-thirds of GDP.

If we just look at direct investment, as of Q3 2025, the total stock of Canadian direct investment abroad (CDIA) was $4.7 trillion, whereas foreign direct investment in Canada (FDIC) was $3.4 trillion, for net assets of $1.3 trillion. For just the U.S., CDIA was $2.2 trillion and FDIC $1.5 trillion, for net assets of $700 billion. Note that this is the total accumulated stock of investment and not the annual flows of investment.

Canada’s ownership position vis-a-vis the rest of the world has grown. Going back to 1990, the stock of FDIC increased from 25 per cent of GDP in 1999 to 48 per cent in 2024 but CDIA increased faster from 29 per cent to 80 per cent of GDP over the same time frame. Key industry sectors for both CDIA and FDIC are similar, and include finance/insurance (33 per cent of CDIA in 2024 and 13 per cent of FDIC), mining and oil and gas extraction (10 per cent and 11 per cent respectively) and manufacturing (six per cent and 17 per cent respectively). The industry-level statistics have comparability issues compared to other stats cited above, as they are reported based on book value not market value, and many long-lived assets in the resource sector would have been depreciated substantially on the books but may retain much higher value for the purposes of production.

Perhaps the most significant industry category is that opaque one mentioned earlier—management of companies and enterprises—which is responsible for 22 per cent of the stock of CDIA and 32 per cent of FDIC. Statscan comments that these are “often large corporate groups that receive foreign direct investment and are involved in a variety of activities in the country.” More research is required to better understand what this category means in terms of ownership and control in Canada.

Nonetheless, considering both direct and portfolio investment, it is clear that Canada is no longer reliant on foreign capital to grow its economy as it was in earlier decades. While the Canadian government continues to see foreign capital as critical to a pivot away from the United States, the country should instead look at policies to repatriate Canadian capital currently being invested overseas. 

Revisiting the foreign ownership debate

In the 1960s and 70s, Canada had a robust debate about the role of foreign ownership in the economy. Led by the 1968 report of the Task Force on the Structure of Canadian Industry (aka the Watkins report, named after the esteemed economist Mel Watkins, the task force’s chair), and economist Kari Levitt’s more popular 1970 book, Silent Surrender, many economists at the time challenged American ownership, especially in Canada’s resource sectors and manufacturing industries. Levitt famously commented that Canada is “the most neocolonial country in the world, the richest dependent developed industrialized country.”

That era spawned efforts through the 1970s to boost Canadian entrepreneurship and ownership, with the federal government creating the Canada Development Corporation, the Foreign Investment Review Agency and Crown corporations like Air Canada to Petro Canada. Provincial governments piled on in their own ways, including the development of Crown corporations in electricity and other areas, although these have also been used to facilitate the flow of resources south. 

Much of this washed away in the 1980s with the Mulroney government’s hard neoliberal shift, including the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. By the mid-1990s, Canada was a booster of 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1995 World Trade Organization, the (failed 1998) Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and other bilateral or regional trade and investment agreements. The Mulroney government also privatized other Crown assets like the Canada Development Corporation, Air Canada and Petro Canada. By and large, Canadian governments since then have welcomed and actively encouraged foreign investment through various neoliberal reforms, such as lower taxes on capital and reductions in regulation. 

The federal policy apparatus remains shaped by the 1985 Investment Canada Act, which sets thresholds for official review of significant foreign investments. In 2026, this threshold is just over $2 billion and the review includes a “net benefit” test, including job creation, technology transfer, and other economic impacts such as competition. Investments in the cultural sector (e.g., publishing, film, music) are subject to additional scrutiny to preserve Canadian cultural identity. 

In addition, the federal government can review any investment that could impact national security—including critical infrastructure, technology, and defense. The Act was used to block the Chinese takeover of a Canadian construction company in 2018, and an Arctic gold mine in 2020. In March 2025, the federal government updated the guidelines under the Investment Canada Act to increase its capacity to screen and block potentially predatory foreign acquisitions that “undermine Canada’s economic security.” 

Canada limits foreign ownership in certain areas to protect national interests, particularly in culture, telecommunications, and transportation. Foreign ownership in Canadian airlines is capped at 25 per cent of voting shares under the Canada Transportation Act. Foreign ownership of Canadian telecommunications carriers is limited to 20 per cent of voting shares and 33.3 per cent of total equity, and for broadcasting companies to 20 per cent of voting shares to ensure Canadian content and cultural sovereignty.

It’s worth noting that Canadian ownership does not guarantee economic health. Indeed,  Canadians are regularly gouged by Canadian telecom oligopolies. The federal government has long preached more competition as the antidote to this behaviour, as opposed to price regulation or greater public ownership. Conservative commentators argue that foreign ownership restrictions should be eased or eliminated in order to provide that competition. However, it’s not obvious that the economics of telecom services over the vast landmass of Canada would generate beneficial competition outside the major cities.

Time for a new National Policy

The prospect of renegotiation of Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), or any bilateral successor agreement, raises a number of questions about what Canada might be asked to give up. And the value of any agreement could only be temporary at best, given the whims of the U.S. president in response to any perceived slight. Having normalized this behaviour, even a post-Trump U.S. will not be a reliable trading partner.

The creation of Canada as a country was, in significant part, a response to American expansionism. The original 1879 National Policy aimed to boost East-West linkages in place of North-South linkages with the growing and expanding United States. The tariff wall created incentives for U.S. companies to build branch plants in Canada to service the Canadian market. These eventually became rationalized as part of North American production. 

Canada has at various times aimed to use industrial policies to shape foreign investment towards economic development. The Auto Pact in 1965 was based on the principle that a company must essentially build a car in Canada in order to sell one here, but allowed producers to get the economies of scale of servicing Canada and the United States. Although the Auto Pact was ruled in violation of World Trade Organization rules in 2001, its legacy is still visible across central Canada. 

With the WTO essentially sidelined, Canada has the latitude to ensure that market access to our 40 million person market be accompanied by commitments to build here, in automotive and other sectors. If anything, Canada should expand its ability to set conditions on foreign investment to benefit Canadian workers, communities, and the environment, as opposed to replicating and multiplying the problematic language of free trade deals that restrict such capacity. 

Canada can go beyond this if we think outside the limits of the mainstream and revisit our own historical experiences. First of all, let’s launch a new generation of Crown corporations and other public enterprises. Think of where Canada might be had PM Mulroney not killed the Canada Development Corporation in 1986. Other countries have successfully deployed public enterprises to take a more direct role in controlling economic activity. 

State enterprises are already players in Canada’s oil sands—they’re just not Canadian state enterprises. Or look at Norway for a model of state-led resource development with a wealth fund now worth $2.2 trillion. In contrast, the majority of oil and gas profits in Alberta have gone to U.S.-controlled companies, Alberta’s fiscal situation is far weaker, and the future holds massive unfunded liabilities for clean up. 

Public enterprise may have broader benefits beyond the capture of economic rents and boosting domestic value added from the exploitation of resources. Crown corporations offer a better pathway to ensure resource development is consistent with treaties with First Nations and broader efforts at reconciliation and revenue-sharing in the resource sector. And when it comes to challenges like climate change, and the need to wind down the problematic oil and gas sector over the coming decades, public enterprise may be essential to the energy transition.

The 2025 federal budget makes a modest contribution in this regard, with the promise of a $2 billion Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund. While this is not a huge commitment in the grand scheme of things, the fund would consider equity investments to advance critical minerals projects, as well as more conventional loan guarantees and offtake agreements. More of this is needed and in other key sectors to break free of the colonial mindset that Canada is just a vast quarry for anyone who wants to come along and harvest resources.

In addition, domestic pools of capital invested overseas need a pathway for repatriation. This includes the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and a wide number of public sector pension plans. This is challenging in the short term, but it seems absurd that the CPP has half of its holdings in a country that is threatening our sovereignty. Channeling these savings into the development of infrastructure and industry that builds Canada’s resilience should be a key test of the federal government’s nation-building orientation. 

Finally, it is worth reconsidering additional foreign ownership limits in key resource sectors, critical minerals in particular, as Canada already does in telecommunications. Joint ventures would still be welcome but the key is Canadian control over Canadian resources driving much stronger economic benefits for the country. 

This need not be just about resource sectors, either. In the broader care economy, much is protected from the full force of free trade agreements, as legitimate public services. However, there is always a margin where the for-profit private sector is playing (e.g. private surgical clinics in health care, for-profit child care facilities). Trade deals can serve to lock in privatization, and an added vector of foreign investment could worsen this situation if the company has access to investor-to-state dispute settlement mechanisms. 

As we look to define what we mean by “elbows up” and “maitres chez nous” there is a robust policy agenda awaiting to build Canada and turn its vast physical and human resources into collective well being. Being Canadian alone is not the only issue but it’s an important one that used to be part of the national conversation—and should be again.

The post Masters in our own house: Foreign ownership and investment trends in Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Findings based on the most recent comprehensive public data available (2023):

• 22.7 per cent of children (40,210 children) lived in poverty, a 4.6 per cent decrease from 2022.
• 26.4 per cent of children under 6 lived in poverty – that is over one in four.
• Nova Scotia has the highest rate of child poverty in Atlantic Canada and the third-highest provincial rate in Canada.
• 48.7 per cent of children in lone-parent families lived in poverty.
• Government income support benefits lifted 27,720 children in Nova Scotia out of poverty. Without these benefits, 38.4 per cent of children would have been living in poverty. This was the least effective reduction in Atlantic Canada.
• 38 per cent of children in Nova Scotia lived in food insecure households, representing 68,000 children.

Despite the data showing a slight decrease in child poverty, when one in five children lived in poverty, that is policy failure, not progress” said Dr. Christine Saulnier, co-author and Director, CCPA-NS. 

“The structural drivers reflected in the 2023 data — low wages, inadequate income supports, and unaffordable housing — remain in place today. This government cannot claim progress while maintaining the lowest per-capita spending on social protection in Canada.”

“We know what works. The question is whether this government is prepared to invest at the scale required. As the Legislature opens, children and families deserve more than incremental change. The upcoming budget is the clearest opportunity to demonstrate whether reducing child poverty is truly a priority,” says report co-author and Acadia University Sociology professor and Director of Fed Family Lab, Dr. Lesley Frank.

“Seeing the persistent and often increasing poverty in Cape Breton and across the province is sobering,” says Dr. Monika Dutt, public health and family doctor, and Research Associate with CCPA-NS. 

“It is especially troubling because these numbers represent children lacking basic supports during the most important time of their lives. Poverty impacts their ability to learn and thrive and has long-term impacts on their mental and physical health, including a higher risk of chronic diseases,” Dutt adds.

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Early today, the government announced $6.4 billion in new funding for universities and colleges – over the next four years. In other words, an average of $1.6 billion per year. The government is calling the increased budget “the highest level in the province’s history.” But is it? 

Not a historical investment 

It is now an old trick of this government to present nominal values as “historical figures,” which is disingenuous and misleading.  Money loses value every day due to inflation; as a result, almost any spending in a given year is the highest on record.

A more serious approach to historical comparisons is to track post-secondary education spending as a share of the total economy, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as in Chart 1. 

In 2018-19, Ontario spent the equivalent of 1.41 per cent of the province’s GDP in post-secondary education. The ratio declined under the PC government. In 2025-26, it reached a low point of 1.07 per cent – and that was already amid the international student cap and the financials troubles it brought to post-secondary education. 

With the new funding announced today, the ratio will increase to 1.16 per cent in 2026-27, and 1.10 per cent in 2027-28. So, not the “highest level in history.” Calculating the ratio for the two subsequent years would require a longer budget outlook than what is currently available. 

Ontario still lags behind 

Even with the new funding, Ontario will be far behind other provinces. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has long documented the fact that Ontario spends considerably less on post-secondary education than other provinces, a persistent trend. 

The latest analysis on this gap was published by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO). Its 2025 report found that Ontario spends $5,092 less per full-time domestic college student than the Canadian average, and $6,510 less per full-time domestic university student. 

The new funding doesn’t even get close to addressing this embarrassing gap. 

Assuming the funding is divided equally between colleges and universities, the new amount will increase per-student funding by an estimated $1,620. Ontario will still lag behind, and by a lot: $3,472 per domestic college student, and $4,890 per domestic university student.

What are “in-demand careers”? 

The announced plan is based on three principles. The first is, “Preparing students for rewarding, in-demand careers that meet labour market needs.” The terms “in-demand careers” and “in-demand skills” are used repeatedly throughout the document. What do they mean? 

We can assume this means funding will be directed to areas and programs the government deems important, which is disconcerting for at least two reasons.  

First, predicting labour force demands is not an exact science. Governments can assess existing labour force gaps and quickly inject funding into training, but these are punctual and immediate actions, not something “over the next four years.” Beyond that, guessing what will be “the jobs of the future” is a tricky game. Coding was a must only a few years ago, and now it’s not. 

The second problem is that the public should be wary of any funding stream where discretion rests with the Ontario cabinet, like with the Skills Development Fund. 

Students will carry more of the burden 

Part of the plan to rescue university and college finances is to allow them to increase tuition by two per cent per year for the next three years, and at the rate of inflation thereafter. Tuitions have been frozen since 2019. The government’s announcement contends that, “This rate of increase will be among the lowest of any province in Canada.”

Let’s look at it another way. 

Ontario had the third-highest university tuition fees in the country in 2022-23, according to the same FAO report. 

Average domestic tuition (and additional compulsory fees) in Ontario would need to drop by 22 per cent to match what BC students pay, and by more than half (52 per cent) to match what undergraduate students pay in Quebec. 

In this context, no matter how small the increase purportedly is, it’s a move in the wrong direction. Tuition must go down, not up.

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The Alberta government is engaged in significant reforms that strike at the foundation of public health care in Canada. Multiple legislative and policy changes encourage greater for-profit surgical outsourcing, opening the door to for-profit hospital ownership, and dismantling the provincial health authority and fragmenting health care delivery. But it is Bill 11 that stands out above all.

Bill 11—the end of Canadian medicare?

Bill 11 fundamentally restructures both the financing and delivery of health care in the province. It is the most significant challenge to Canadian single-payer health care since the creation of public medicare.

Bill 11 legislates significant changes to health care financing (who pays for health care) by creating a private-pay market where doctors and facilities can charge patients for physician and hospital services covered under the Canada Health Act. The Alberta government claims that Bill 11 brings the provincial health system closer to other provinces and European models that allow “dual physician practice” whereby physicians can bill the public insurance plan and charge patients simultaneously for the same service. Dual physician practice is the means to achieve two-tier health care where the wealthiest can pay to jump the queue.

Among the multiple rationales for bringing in two-tier health care, the Alberta government argues that dual physician practice brings Alberta’s health system closer to those in much of western Europe and Australia. The government’s press release states that:

Dual practice exists in New Brunswick and Quebec and is widely used in countries with top-performing health systems, including Denmark, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and Australia.

These are big claims that deserve scrutiny. Let’s take a look at these claims in detail.

No other province allows dual practice based on Alberta’s new model

The Alberta dual practice model does not exist in New Brunswick or Quebec. Neither New Brunswick nor Quebec have “flexibly participating physicians” who are allowed to concurrently bill the public insurance plan and work in the private-pay market. Most concerning, Alberta is the first province to allow dual practice and explicitly encourage the private health insurance market for medically necessary care.

The Alberta government decontextualizes international health systems

Every country has distinct health system characteristics, ranging from how health care is financed (who pays) and how it is delivered (who provides it). These arrangements can even vary at the sub-national level, similar to differences between provincial health systems in Canada.

There are two main forms of health system financing, which refers to who pays for health services.

For the most part, the Alberta government suggests that recent changes bring the provincial health system closer to countries with a social health insurance model (also called the Bismark model), where the health system is primarily financed through income-based contributions from employees and employers, typically through highly regulated non-profit insurers. Germany and the Netherlands are examples of social health insurance models.

The other model is the tax-financed system (called the Beveridge model) with single-payer public health insurance like Canada and Australia or a national health service like England’s National Health Service (NHS England) and the UK nations of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. The NHS is financed through general tax revenue, similar to Canadian provincial health systems. However, in each of the devolved UK nations, the NHS provides more expansive coverage, including dental, eye care, and drugs.

Within these two health system financing models, there are contextual differences between health systems in western Europe and Australia that the Alberta government is using for comparison (referred to as the “comparator countries”). Now that we’ve covered some of the basics concepts, let’s examine why Alberta’s dual practice legislation does not bring “European-style” health care to Canada:

Where private health insurance exists, it is not generally used for queue jumping

In most cases, the international health systems used for comparison by the Alberta government—Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and England (United Kingdom)—have some form of private health insurance (many are non-profit and highly regulated insurers).

However, private health insurance (PHI) is complementary or used as an alternative to the public scheme. Another type, supplementary (also called duplicative) PHI, refers to private insurance that duplicates what is offered by the public scheme. In Germany, for example, duplicative PHI serves only as an alternative to the public social health insurance (SHI) scheme intended for high-income residents.¹ Once opted into PHI, it is very difficult to return to the public scheme, and you must continue paying for PHI. Put simply, PHI does not function as “queue-jumping insurance” like the Alberta model. None of the comparator health systems, with the exception of Australia, have PHI for the primary purpose of queue jumping (see Appendix Table, column D).

Another type of PHI is called complementary PHI, which refers to private insurance for services that are not covered by the public scheme. It does not serve as a parallel tier to jump the queue. In France, for example, complementary PHI is used to reimburse a portion of the costs of services that are included in the public SHI scheme. In this sense, complementary PHI is not used for faster access or better quality services than what is offered under the public SHI scheme.²

Australia—the closest to the Alberta model—provides billions in public subsidy to the private insurance industry and has longer waits than Canada

Australia has public medicare funded by the federal and state governments. About 46 per cent have PHI for hospital care, for which the federal government provides tax rebates towards coverage. High-income individuals risk penalties if they do not purchase PHI. In 2025, the Australian federal government provided $7.6 billion in tax subsidies to Australians purchasing PHI. The Australian experience with dual physician practice and duplicative PHI is a cautionary tale for Canada, considering that public wait times are generally longer in Australia than Canada for four priority procedures. Stephen Duckett, economist and former Alberta Health Services CEO, sums up Australia’s two-tier system in this way:

“In contrast to the claims by proponents, increased private provision does not lead to improved access to public care to any significant extent, nor does it reduce waiting times. It does, however, allow higher incomes for doctors and provides business opportunities for investors in private hospitals.”³

Dual physician practice is limited and highly regulated due to employment contracts

While hospital-based physicians and surgeons (called hospitalists) are allowed to engage in dual practice in some European health systems, these arrangements are often complex and highly regulated, largely due to their status as salaried employees (see Appendix Table, columns B and C). Unlike Alberta and Australia, hospitalists in the comparator countries are primarily salaried employees and have contractual obligations and limitations regarding private-pay work. Therefore, the Alberta government’s comparisons about dual practice in other countries are misleading, considering the salaried employment status of most hospitalists in the comparator countries.

Specifically, salaried employment constrains the ability of physicians to work outside of their contractual hours in the public system. It is also common in these countries for hospitalists’ contracts to limit the amount of time they spend working in the private-pay market in order to ensure that they are available in the public system. Based on Bill 11, as passed in December 2025, Alberta has none of these safeguards. Physicians and surgeons are overwhelmingly self-employed independent contractors who bill the province on a “fee-for-service” basis and have autonomy in how much they will work and where they work. Canadian doctors have among the greatest professional autonomy within the OECD.

Lower physician compensation allows for more doctors per capita

In all comparator countries, general practitioners (GPs) and specialist physicians and surgeons are paid less than in Alberta (with the exception of GPs in Germany), which means that the public system can ensure greater access to medical services (with lower pay, the system can employ more physicians per capita). As well, international health systems with more physicians per capita are in a better position to be able to allow limited dual practice because there are more physicians and surgeons to go around. With 2.4 physicians per 1,000 people, Alberta has almost half the number of physicians of some comparator countries, on a per capita basis.

In Alberta, specialists are paid an average of USD$427,795—significantly higher than next-highest, in Germany, at USD$331,008. Canadian provinces, including Alberta, offer physicians very generous compensation. Physician compensation is one of the most significant cost drivers of health systems in Canada. As a result, provincial health systems have fewer resources to pay for additional physicians and other health care professionals. These countries generally have much lower medical training costs due to much greater public investment in medical training and the health care workforce. Lower physician compensation means more physicians per capita. This is a necessary tradeoff in order to maintain a publicly financed health system and equitable access for all.

Public wait times remain a policy challenge in countries with dual practice

Public wait times remain a policy challenge—to varying degrees—for most comparator countries, even with highly regulated dual physician practice. In Australia, England (UK), Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands, public wait times remain moderate or high policy priorities. These are countries that allow some form of regulated dual physician practice. In Australia, the closest comparison to Alberta, wait times for priority procedures remain much longer (Figure 1), and the country subsidizes the private insurance industry to a significant extent. Encouraging dual practice and two-tier health care does not magically reduce public wait times. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that two-tier health care increases public waiting.⁴

Where private health insurance exists in western Europe, insurance markets are highly regulated and insurers are often non-profit

Across western Europe, private health insurance markets are highly regulated in order to contain costs, maintain affordability, and achieve equity objectives.⁵ All of the comparator countries have a mandatory public health system or public insurance scheme with public or non-profit insurers that provide universal coverage. None of the countries rely on purely private, for-profit health insurers to provide coverage for medically necessary services, like the Alberta model encourages.

For example, in the Netherlands, a health system that is often held up as an example of “private” involvement, the “strong public role in regulation and finance renders this unique model effective ‘public’.’’⁶

Another challenge facing jurisdictions with a much greater role for private health insurance is the public cost of regulation and enforcement. France has mandatory public SHI, but has a large market for complementary insurance that helps cover co-payments for health services (there are also supports for lower-income people). Public dollars spent on regulating the private insurance market are dollars that are not spent directly on health care. As scholars of the French system remind us, “this combination of public-private insurance comes with a high management cost: France has the second highest administrative costs (6 per cent of the health spending) in the OECD, just after the United States, and almost half of this expenditure is related to complementary health insurance.”⁷

OECD countries have a greater share of public financing than Canada

Canada has the largest share of private health care financing among comparable high-income OECD countries. Although the Alberta government suggests that we should be emulating a number of western European countries and Australia for supposed greater private, for-profit involvement, the reality is that public spending represents a greater overall share of health spending in these jurisdictions.

In Canada, 29 per cent of health spending is private (30 per cent in Alberta), which declines to 27 per cent in Australia and Spain, 18 per cent in the UK, 17 per cent in the Netherlands, and 13 per cent in Germany. Rather than market utopias, as the Alberta government seems to suggest, these health systems have more extensive public coverage of health services, prescription drugs, and seniors’ care. It’s not a story about private involvement, but these health systems demonstrate a greater commitment to public financing and coverage.

Making sense of health system comparisons

International health system comparisons are complex. The Alberta government is guilty of “drive-by” comparisons that decontextualize the complex interactions between public and private financing as well as public and private delivery of services. Health systems have evolved over hundreds of years and reflect their unique political culture, legislation, and policy contexts. As this analysis has shown, dual physician practice based on the Alberta approach—allowing physicians to simultaneously work in the public system and private-pay market—does not exist in western European health systems. Rather, these countries exhibit a greater commitment to public financing and regulation than the Canadian provinces.

Instead of moving Alberta closer to European jurisdictions, Bill 11 encourages the growth of a U.S.-style private health insurance market for all health care services that Albertans—and Canadians—rely on. Alberta is the first Canadian province to introduce two-tier legislation and encourage a private health insurance market for services covered under the Canada Health Act. This is a decisive shift towards U.S. health care based on greed and profit-taking, not “European” health care based largely on principles of social solidarity and universality.

Appendix: Characteristics of selected international health systems and Alberta

Alberta

Type of system: Under Bill 11, provincial public health insurance will exist with duplicative private health insurance, contrary to Canada Health Act

Primary health insurance financing: General tax revenue, mainly provincial but also federal transfers. Unlikely to change under Bill 11.

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:⁸ Bill 11 will likely encourage a mix of employer-sponsored duplicative private health insurance, out-of-pocket payment for surgeries and diagnostics, and some individual private health insurance.

Australia

Type of system: National public health insurance⁹

Primary health insurance financing: General tax revenue; earmarked income tax (Medicare levy).¹⁰

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:¹¹ Complementary and duplicative coverage for faster access. 46% have hospital coverage. Private insurance heavily subsidized by government through means-tested tax rebates. HIgh earners face penalty for not having private insurance.

Denmark

Type of system: National health care system¹²

Primary health insurance financing: Mostly national income taxes; 20% from municipal and state block grants.¹³

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:¹⁴ 42% purchase complementary non-profit coverage; 30% have duplicative for-profit coverage, mainly through employer, for expanded access to private providers.¹⁵

France

Type of system: Social insurance model: Statutory insurance provided by non-competitive, employment-based funds. Tax-financed coverage for unemployed.¹⁶

Primary health insurance financing: Multiple sources: employer/employee payroll tax, income taxes, general and earmarked taxes.

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:¹⁷ 95% have complementary coverage from non-profit insurers, either through employer or means-tested government vouchers. Limited insurance by for-profit insurers.

Germany

Type of system: Social insurance model: Statutory/mandatory insurance provided by 109 non-profit “sickness funds” covering 88% of population. Wealthy may opt for fully private insurance.

Primary health insurance financing: Sickness funds: compulsory wage contributions from employers/employees and distributed to sickness funds.

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:¹⁸ Sickness fund enrollees may purchase duplicative and complementary insurance covering minor benefits not covered by sickness funds. Duplicative insurance is an alternative to the public social health insurance scheme, and once opted in, it is very difficult to return to the public scheme.

Netherlands

Type of system: Social insurance model: Statutory/mandatory insurance offered through 11 non-profit insurers.

Primary health insurance financing: Earmarked payroll tax (employers); community-rated insurance premiums (individuals); general tax revenue; government grants.

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:¹⁹ 84% buy supplementary coverage for benefits excluded from statutory package (dental care, physio, eyeglasses).

Spain

Type of system: National health care system (SNS), managed by regions

Primary health insurance financing: Mostly general tax revenue

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:²⁰ 20% buy duplicative or complementary coverage for faster access to hospital and specialist care and for services not covered by the statutory plan.

England

Type of system: National health care system (NHS England)

Primary health insurance financing: Mostly general tax revenue; 20% from national insurance, a payroll tax shared between employers and employees.

Secondary health insurance and out-of-pocket payment financing:²¹ 11% buy duplicative coverage for faster access

The post Fact check: Alberta’s new two-tier system is not “European” health care appeared first on CCPA.

Join the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for a webinar about this new, dangerous development.

The webinar took place on February 18, 2025 at noon ET. Watch it in full below.

Our expert guests:

Andrew Longhurst, senior health policy researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Drs. David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, distinguished professors of Public Health at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for single-payer healthcare in the United States.

The post Webinar: U.S. health care comes to Canada: What to know and how to fight it appeared first on CCPA.

Madame la ministre,

Nous sommes une communauté d’économistes et de chercheurs qui nous appuyons fortement sur les données et les analyses de Statistique Canada pour aider les Canadiennes et les Canadiens à comprendre ce qui se passe dans leur pays. Nous sommes consternés et préoccupés par la nouvelle selon laquelle Statistique Canada envisagerait de supprimer plus de 850 emplois, soit 12 % de son effectif, au cours des trois prochaines années. Réduire l’effectif du principal service de données du pays reviendrait à réduire la capacité de prendre des décisions fondées sur des données probantes. Cela porterait atteinte au cœur même d’une démocratie informée. Nous vous exhortons à reconsidérer ces coupes et à protéger cette source de données qui est essentielle pour le Canada.

Cela s’est déjà produit par le passé : il y a 15 ans, le gouvernement de Stephen Harper avait supprimé le questionnaire détaillé obligatoire du recensement pour le remplacer par une enquête volontaire auprès des ménages, ce qui avait compromis la collecte de données essentielles et entravé la recherche et la planification des services pendant des années. Cette mesure a créé d’énormes lacunes dans les rapports économiques, sociaux et de santé à travers le pays, des centres urbains aux communautés autochtones les plus isolées. Face aux vives réactions négatives des groupes communautaires, des entreprises, des établissements universitaires et de tous les autres paliers de gouvernement, le gouvernement de Justin Trudeau a finalement rétabli le questionnaire détaillé obligatoire du recensement.

 Les suppressions de postes prévues à Statistique Canada et dans le reste de la fonction publique auront des répercussions dans tout le pays. La réduction du personnel de Statistique Canada aura pour conséquence une diminution de la collecte de données et une baisse de leur qualité, la perte d’une expertise essentielle, l’étouffement des voix marginalisées, une moins bonne reddition de comptes du gouvernement envers le public, des erreurs coûteuses et une diminution de la quantité d’informations disponibles à une époque marquée par les perturbations et par la désinformation. Ces conséquences combinées diminueront la confiance de la population dans les institutions publiques, voire dans leurs propres communautés.

Les données sont la base de la connaissance. Elles nous permettent de savoir qui nous sommes et qui nous devenons. Les données nous renvoient une image de la population canadienne qui renforce notre compréhension de notre identité et nous aide à améliorer notre vie collectivement. Si, comme l’a récemment déclaré le premier ministre Carney, nous devons « cesser de faire semblant, appeler la réalité par son nom et renforcer notre position chez nous », alors il est essentiel, pour l’avenir du Canada, d’assurer un soutien à la recherche et au développement, y compris à la production de statistiques de haute qualité, a fortiori dans le contexte géopolitique actuel.

Statistique Canada est un chef de file mondial dans le domaine de la statistique. Des investissements récents dans les données désagrégées ont permis de générer de nouvelles informations et perspectives sur l’évolution rapide de la société canadienne. Alors que nous assistons, horrifiés, à des attaques contre le savoir et la science aux États-Unis – des attaques contre la vérité – les coupes budgétaires imposées à Statistique Canada envoient clairement le mauvais message. Nous vous exhortons à faire machine arrière.

Peggy Nash, Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Katherine Scott, Senior Researcher, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Marc Lee, Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

David Macdonald, Senior Economist, National Office, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Erika Shaker, Director, National Office, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Rachel Pettigrew, Research Assistant, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Andrew Longhurst, Senior Researcher & Political Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Hugh Mackenzie, Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Molly McCracken, Manitoba Director, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Ricardo Tranjan, Senior Researcher, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Rob Kristofferson, President, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations

Andrew Jackson, Retired chief economist, Canadian Labour Congress

Michael Savage, Director of Research, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations

Jordan Thompson, Union Representative, AULReP Alberta Union of Labour Relations Professionals

Nora Loreto, President, Canadian Freelance Union

Mark Hancock, National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees

Cheryl Wing, President, Ontario Public Service Staff Union

Mike Yam, National Representative, Research Department, Unifor

Clint Johnston, President, Canadian Teachers’ Federation

Sharon DeSousa, National President, Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC)

Bert Blundon, President, National Union of Public and General Employees

Linda Silas, President, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions

Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses des postes

Nathan Prier, President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE)

David Mastin, President, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario

Prosper Canada

Right To Food

Anupam Das, Professor of Economics

Richard G. Lipsey, Emeritus professor, Simon Fraser University

Andrea Reimer, Adjunct Professor of Practice, UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs

Marina Morrow, Professor, York University

John Calvert, Adjunct Professor

Tim K Takaro, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Jessica Vorstermans, PhD, Associate Professor, York University

Penny Gurstein, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia

Hui Xie, Professor of Biostatistics

Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University

Matthias Hoben, Associate Professor, Helen Carswell Chair in Dementia Care, York University

Geoffrey Reaume, Associate Professor, York University

Kiffer Card, PhD, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Eric Doherty MCIP, Transportation Planning Consultant, Ecopath Planning

Farah Ahmad, Professor, Health Policy and Management, York University

Nicole Herpai, PhD Stduent, University of Manitoba

Gustavo Indart, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto

Larry Kazdan

Lindsay McLaren, Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary

Gerardo Otero, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and International Studies, Simon Fraser University

Mathieu Perron-Dufour, Économiste et Professeur, Université du Québec en Outaouais

David Fairey, Principal Labour Consuting Services

Mario Seccareccia, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Ottawa

Robert W. Dimand, Professor of Economics, Brock University

Kanna Hayashi, Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Robert Chernomas, Professor of Economics

Jim Stanford, Economist and Director, Centre for Future Work

Pat Armstrong, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus

Peter A. Victor, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, York University

Travis Salway, Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Andrew Reeves, Postdoctoral Fellow of Ecological Macroeconomics and Metrics

Dr. Thomas Gunton, Professor, Simon Fraser University

Ellie Perkins, Economics Professor

Dr. Joan McFarland, Professor of Economics (retired), St. Thomas.University

Ian Hudson, Professor, University of Manitoba

Jin Huh, Executive Director, Social Planning Toronto

Erick Villagomez, Lecturer, University of British Columbia – School of Community and Regional Planning

Judy Lewis (retired), Probus

John Holmes, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University

Bryan Evans, Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University

Anya Rakhecha, Senior Policy Advisor, Ministry of Health

Mark Hudson, Professor, University of Manitoba

B. Kimiko, Director, Collective Bargaining Services

Jesse Hajer, Associate Professor, University of Manitoba

Suzanne Mills, Associate Professor, McMaster University

Adam King, Assistant Professor, Labour Studies Program, University of Manitoba

Manda Vrkljan, University College Librarian, University of Toronto

Mark Thomas, Professor of Sociology, York University

Elizabeth Comack, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Manitoba

Aditya Rao, Member of the Board of Directors, Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre

John Stapleton, Principal, Open Policy

Dr. Gillian Petit, Senior Research Associate, University of Calgary

Jerry Buckland, Professor, Canadian Mennonite University

Charles Smith, Professor, Political Studies, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan

Jin Huh, Executive Director, Social Planning Toronto

Linda Briskin, Professor Emeritus, York University

Michael C. Wolfson, Retired GOC Senior Executive

Roderick Hill, Professor of Economics (retired), University of New Brunswick

Ian Johnson, NSGEU (retired)

Herb Wiseman

Thomas Granofsky

Joanne Hussey

David Camfield, Professor, Labour Studies & Sociology and Criminology, University of Manitoba

Jennefer Laidley, Independent researcher and Maytree Fellow

Derek Fudge, Former National Director of Policy Development

Barb Thomas, Labour and Racial Justice Educator/Facilitator

Edward Sale, Chairperson, Augustine Centre Inc.

Kacy Doucet

Matt Corbeil

Genevieve Latour

Simon Morin Gélinas, Analyst

Lindsay Larios, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba

Trevor Manson, Co-chair

Dr. Sarah Marsden, Director of Systems Change and Legal, First United

Andrew Woolford, Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Manitoba

Melissa Vezeau

Kalysha Closson, Adjunct Professor, Simon Fraser University

Shannon Mok, PhD Candidate

Simon Bourassa-Viau, Économiste

Sarah Cooper, Assoc. Professor, University of Manitoba

Stéphanie Audet Brazeau, Traductrice

Shelly Tessier, Analyst

Joanne Richmond

Julia Smith, Associate Professor, Labour Studies Program, University of Manitoba

Louise Birdsell Bauer

Eric Miller, Adjunct Professor and Director, York University

Gillian Parekh, Professor

Nicola Chopin

Dr. Kate Tairyan, Senior Lecturer, Simon Fraser University

Kearon Bennett, President, Ottawa Engineering Limited

Diane Dyson, Lead, Highfield Consulting

Merryn Maynard, Manager, Social Impact, The Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security

Sue Maxwell, Chair, Zero Waste BC

Taiya Robert, Policy Analyst

The post Lettre ouverte à l’honorable Mélanie Joly, ministre responsable de Statistique Canada appeared first on CCPA.

The GST credit is a benefit targeted at low-income families, who will benefit the most from the change, but first let us take a look at how it impacts all families, then look at low-income families

Canadians are justifiably concerned with grocery prices, but this improvement in the GST credit does not address that problem specifically. Grocery prices will continue to increase at the (or above) the inflation rate, they won’t decline.  What the benefit does is help lower- and lower-middle income families afford those higher prices.

The GST credit was meant to offset the fact that low income households have to pay GST, and they probably can’t afford to. The federal government pays that credit (now named the CGEB) in four installments direct to bank accounts. The first two in 2026 will remain unchanged, and then sometime before June, the federal government will make a one-time ad-hoc payment worth 50 per cent of the annual GST credit amount. For the last two payments in 2026, the feds will boost them by 25 per cent each.  That 25 per cent boost will continue for the next five years. 

So in 2026, the GST credit will be boosted by 62.5 per cent overall, if we include the 50 per cent lump sum before June and the two increases of 25 per cent—and then by a flat 25 per cent for the next five years. 

We can use Statistics Canada’s The Social Policy Simulation Database and Model (SPSD/M) version 30.3 to simulate some of the impacts of these changes in the 2026 calendar year.

Figure 1 examines what proportion of families would benefit from the 2026 improvements in the GST credit, which is targeted to lower income families and then tapers off as income rises.  The credit is also proportional to the number of people in the family, so families with more children receive more support. The benefit any specific family would see from the change is going to be very specific to their circumstances. If a family receives the GST credit already, they’ll definitely see a benefit. Here are  the example tables.

What is generally clear though is that the income targeting means that the bottom 40 per cent of families will almost universally see some benefit from these changes. The top 60 per cent of families may see some benefit, but it’s much less likely. Only 20 to 30 per cent of families making over a pre-tax family income over $65,000 are likely to see any benefit. 

In the aggregate, 53 per cent of families will see at least some benefit from this change, so the benefits will be quite widespread.

The government backgrounder cites a benefit for a family of $805 more from June 2026 to June  2027. That is certainly possible, but it picks the period whereby the benefit is the highest due to this year’s the 50 per cent lump sum. If we stick to calendar years, in 2026 the maximum benefit from these changes for a family of four is actually $678.75, with that amount growing for larger families  and shrinking for smaller ones. Across all families that benefit, the average boost is $403 per family in 2026.

Because this change is focused on lower incomes, it should lift 172,000 people above the Market Basket Measure (MBM) poverty line in 2026, as shown in Figure 2. Most of those lifted out of poverty would be adults (about 95,000) but the children in those families would also benefit and 43,000 children would be lifted out of poverty as would 34,000 seniors.

Unfortunately as 2027 support will be lower, at a 25 per cent boost instead of 62.5 per cent in 2026, poverty in these groups will climb back up.

Provincial Matching

Should feds be the only ones trying to offset the higher costs Canadians are facing?

In the past, the provinces have matched federal policy changes on sales taxes. When there was the GST Holiday from December 2024 to February 2025, many of the provinces matched the feds with their own HST or PST holidays for the same period.

The provinces can and should do the same with the GST credit boost.

All of the provinces, save Manitoba and Alberta, have their own sales tax credits for their part of the HST or their PST. Alberta doesn’t have a sales tax, and hence no credit. Manitoba does a sales tax but has no credit for lower income families. Manitoba’s PST is seven per cent which is slightly higher than Saskatchewan’s at six per cent and the same as BC at seven per cent, both of which have sales tax credits for lower income households. 

Just like the GST credit changes, we can use Statcan’s SPSD/M to simulate what impacts the provinces boosting their own credits would have. In this scenario, we’ll boost the provincial sales tax credit amounts by 75 per cent in 2026 (50 per cent one time boost + 25 per cent ongoing). As with the federal version, we’ll increment up the benefit levels by 75 per cent but keep the clawback rates and turndown levels the same. As Alberta and Manitoba have no such credits, their families would see no change in transfers.

The provincial sales tax credits all operate separately from the GST credit and from each other, they all have different benefit levels and apply to different income levels. In the provincial simulations below, we’re improving the basic amount by 75 per cent, but leaving the other clawback rates and income turndown levels unchanged.

The BC credit is particularly miserly compared to the other provinces, providing an average benefit of $61 in 2026 for those lucky enough to receive anything. The system has no additional amounts for children, unlike every other system. PEI also has a particularly small credit which would amount to an average gain for families of just over $100 for those that see any benefit.

Families in most provinces could see a roughly $400 boost from improvements in their province’s PST credit. 

Fewer families receive provincial sales tax credits as they tend to be more focused on lower income families compared to the GST credit. While the federal GST credit boost would see 53 per cent of families getting at least some benefit, the provincial credit boost would only go to between 20 and 30 per cent of families. Although that proportion is much lower in BC at only eight per cent. 

Manitoba has no sales tax credit but charges a sales tax. If it were to adopt Saskatchewan’s sales tax credit, which has a similar geography and sales tax rate, there could be a significant benefit. 

If Manitoba were to adopt the Saskatchewan Low-Income Tax Credit (SLITC), the average benefit (for those that saw a benefit) in Manitoba would be  $576 a family in 2026. That’s before improving it by 75 per cent, as we’re doing with the other provincial credits. Just over a quarter of Manitoban families would see some benefit from an imported Saskatchewan credit. It would also lift 8,000 families in Manitoba out of poverty. 

The impact of improving provincial sales tax credits is similar to improving the federal GST credit, families near the poverty line would be lifted above it. If both the GST credit and provincial PST equivalents were boosted there would be a combined effect on poverty rates and average gain (again assuming nothing provincial happens in Manitoba or Alberta).

On average, families who saw a gain would receive almost $700 more across both federal and provincial changes. The proportion of families seeing a benefit from either the federal or provincial changes (but most likely both) would go up to 57 per cent of families.

The impact on poverty rates improves if the provinces pitch in. With both levels of government working together, we’d see a quarter million people lifted out of poverty, as defined by the MBM. This would include roughly 137,000 adults, 63,000 children and 44,000 seniors.

Affordability is not just a federal responsibility

Affordability and poverty reduction aren’t just a federal responsibility, they’re also a provincial one.

The federal government’s change to an existing mechanism will have a rapid effect on lower income families and those living in poverty. More targeted and effective income transfers are proposed in our Alternative Federal Budget and Nova Scotia alternative budget. We should be implementing these more thorough mechanics with these sales tax boosts acting as a bridge.

The provinces can and should be matching this federal effort to help lower income households afford the basics while reducing poverty rates.

The post GST rebate: why aren’t provinces matching federal measures?  appeared first on CCPA.

Rising property values have impacted every corner of the market. As home prices have surged, the rate of homeownership has declined across the country, while buyers remain in debt for longer periods of time. Tenants pay higher rental costs, and building social housing is more difficult because of the cost of land.

Policymakers and economists blame a severe supply shortage for high housing prices. This line of thinking led the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to call to double the rate of construction, to build 4.3 million new homes by 2035. 

The CMHC’s proposal would increase Canada’s housing stock by 25 per cent over a decade, even though they anticipate population growth of only eight per cent, leading to “abnormally high levels of unoccupied housing units,” as the Parliamentary Budget Office observed. The CMHC’s projected payoff is surprisingly modest: they anticipate real housing prices would only decline to pre-pandemic levels.

These issues point toward a more fundamental question: What is the evidence that a supply shortage has created the housing crisis to begin with? 

The trajectory of price, supply and household debt

The “supply-shortage argument” is encapsulated by the CMHC’s claim that “increasing housing supply is the key to restoring affordability.” If the argument is correct, then we should expect to see evidence that increases in dwellings per capita lower prices over time. But historical data show the opposite. 

Over the past half-century, dwellings per capita have risen significantly, yet price has risen too, along with household debt. With the exception of home prices, all of the data reported below are from the federal government. The technical version of this article presents the analysis in greater detail, with a methodological appendix as well as footnotes.

In 1976, a standard single-family home in Canada was worth less than three years of income for a two-income household. By 2023, that number had increased to nearly seven years. 

The stock of dwellings per capita has risen considerably over that time, from about 290 per thousand people in 1971 to 403 in 2023. Even housing stock relative to the adult population alone (which has remained at a flatter and higher level due to the declining share of children in Canada’s population) has grown, from 477 dwellings per thousand adults in 1971 to 510 in 2023. 

Figure 3 shows the household sector’s mortgage debt and total debt relative to income. Whereas total debt was 60 percent of its annual income in 1976, by 2023 it was 151 percent. Mortgage debt has consistently accounted for two thirds of all liabilities. There are also some clear (if imperfect) parallels between real prices and real debt, with both dipping in 1985 and 2001.

What is the basis of the supply-shortage argument?

In the face of these indicators, it is not viable to argue that a supply shortage has driven housing prices up. There is no shortage of supply. While real prices have more than doubled, housing stock per capita has increased by 39 per cent, and real mortgage debt has more than tripled. 

If prices have moved in the opposite direction from what the supply-shortage argument predicts, then how do analysts defend that argument? 

First, a small number of studies find that a boost in supply can lead to price reductions. However, there are strikingly few of these analyses and the impact they identify is small. One frequently cited study of New York City finds that a 10 per cent increase in the supply of condominiums reduces condo prices by approximately one per cent within a 500-foot radius. 

This finding attempts to isolate the impact of the other factors that can influence housing prices, like interest rates, property taxes, subsidies, and so on. Therefore New York’s condo prices do not necessarily decline when new supply is added; they might just increase less than they would have otherwise, in which case relative supply cannot be viewed as the dominant factor in price determination. 

No parallel analysis has been conducted for Canada. The CMHC’s model is the closest thing we have, but they do not make an explicit claim about the extent to which Canadians can expect real prices to decline if, say, we were to boost supply by 10 per cent. Still, the weakness of the evident effect is apparently what has led them to call for a rate of construction well in excess of population growth. 

It is difficult to find clear evidence that increased supply pushes price down, because in private markets, new supply only emerges when prices rise and developers feel reassured they can earn a profit on their investment. Price and supply both move up together over time, with increased supply not necessarily pushing prices down. 

The second reason for the supply argument’s staying power is that analysts can cherry-pick their evidence by selecting narrow indicators on population or time period. To take one example, Jean-François Perrault highlights the decline in dwellings per capita from 2016 to 2020 and suggests that this was the reason for the sudden price spike during the pandemic. In fact that decline was extremely minor and the 2016 ratio was surpassed by the end of 2021. More importantly, he overlooks the larger picture: that over the long run, dwellings per capita have grown, and yet they are also more expensive. 

Some analysts prefer to take households as the key demographic unit,  but this approach also reveals no clear evidence for the supply-shortage argument. Census data show that there have consistently been more dwellings than households since 1971. In the intense period of housing inflation since 2001, that ratio has actually risen slightly, from 1,011 dwellings per thousand households to 1,017 in 2021.

On top of that, the square footage of housing units in Canada has on average been growing across all housing types, which should in theory provide more flexibility for people to live with roommates. 

No matter how we count population, therefore, the national picture shows no indication that housing inflation has resulted from a concrete shortage of supply. 

Although economists have argued fervently that housing supply reduces price, they have been hard pressed to find empirical evidence for it. They do not hesitate to use clear historical indicators to demonstrate that supply responds positively to price increases. But when setting out to demonstrate supply’s downward impact on price, they instead use abstract models that presume what they are trying to explain. 

Then what does explain housing inflation?

If a supply shortage cannot explain housing inflation, then what can? 

One key counterargument centres the financialization of housing. Describing this phenomenon, the United Nations writes that “housing and real estate markets worldwide have been transformed by global capital markets and financial excess.”

In this view, the housing crisis has been created by banking practices that have directed excessive amounts of credit into the property market, and especially residential mortgages. As a result, buyers can bid prices up to ever-higher levels, resulting in a market where people must pay more for the same type of housing. Hence financialization can be defined as an inflationary tendency in the housing market that is induced jointly by banks’ desire to expand mortgage lending and buyers’ confidence that the value of their properties will rise. 

These inflationary pressures are therefore the same as historical speculative bubbles in gold, stocks, cryptocurrencies, or tulip bulbs. Consider, for instance, that record high gold prices today are incentivizing massive extraction projects around the world—and even as the supply of gold has grown, price has continued to rise as well. If and when the price of gold drops, it likely will not be because of the new supply but because of a drop in investor faith. 

However, the image of a bubble bursting and prices returning to a more rational “equilibrium” level does not seem to apply to the housing market. Because housing is a necessity, people are willing to pay high prices for it. Bidding wars can therefore persist even when relative supply grows, so long as credit markets enable them.

Proponents of the financialization perspective point to a matrix of institutional transformations that have pushed credit markets in this direction. These include the rise of a global market in mortgage-backed financial assets, the growing importance of credit scores, the decline of property taxes in many areas, and in some cases banks’ growing preference for issuing mortgage loans. 

For some Canadian banks, the risk of mortgage lending has been lowered by complex instruments that insure against losses, the most significant of which are offered by the government itself. Additionally, central banks in Canada and beyond have at times implemented unconventional monetary policies that strongly encourage expanded lending by banks. 

The financialization argument may be less straightforward and harder to test than the supply-shortage argument, but what it lacks in elegance it might make up for in accuracy.

A crisis of distribution

The housing crisis is not a crisis of supply; it is a crisis of distribution. Housing inflation has boosted owners’ wealth substantially—a particular windfall for those who own multiple properties and carry little mortgage debt. Meanwhile, rising prices have put homeownership out of reach for many Canadians and put new buyers deeply in debt, while driving up homelessness.

There are two clear implications for policymakers. First, improving affordability may require ambitious regulatory reform in the banking sector. Many analysts have made robust arguments to this effect, which deserve to be taken seriously and explored further.

Second, there is no evidence that demographic pressures have contributed to the steep housing inflation Canada has experienced in recent decades—meaning that policymakers cannot reasonably blame immigration for the long-term trend. Over the past half-century, the number of housing units has risen substantially relative to population, and their average size has increased as well. 

In spite of the clear evidence to that effect, the supply-shortage argument has remained dominant among policymakers, journalists, and economists. Regardless of the motives behind that consensus, the effect has been to direct attention away from the material conflict between owners and non-owners within Canada, and towards a fictitious conflict between Canadians and non-Canadians.

The post The numbers don’t lie: The housing crisis is not caused by a supply shortage appeared first on CCPA.

The end of Canadian medicare? was created in collaboration with the Parkland Institute and is also available at parklandinstitute.ca

On December 18, 2025, Alberta became the first province to legislate two-tier health care and private health insurance for medically necessary services. Bill 11 establishes  two-tier health care, which is defined as a system that provides faster access to those with the ability to pay privately, and longer public wait times for those who are unable to pay for queue jumping.

This is the latest intervention in the health care system by Danielle Smith’s United Conservative government, following a dramatic restructuring of the provincial health authority, transfer of health care facilities’ ownership, expansion of for-profit surgical outsourcing, and complex changes to the hospital funding model that create perverse incentives.

Here are 11 things you should know about Alberta’s new two-tier health care system—and why it matters for the rest of Canada.

1. Bill 11 legislates two-tier health care in Alberta—the first in Canada

Under Bill 11 (the Health Statutes Amendment Act), Alberta is the first province to allow “dual practice” where doctors can work simultaneously in both the public system and the private-pay market. Bill 11 amends the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act by creating a new category of doctor or surgeon: “flexibly participating physicians” can charge patients privately while simultaneously maintaining their ability to bill Alberta’s public insurance plan. No other province in Canada allows this. Dual practice has been roundly criticized by health policy experts based on the large body of Canadian and international evidence that a two-tier system increases public wait times and creates unequal access based on income.

2. Bill 11 establishes “dual practice” where physicians can work concurrently in the publicly funded system and private-pay market

Bill 11 amends the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act and creates a new relationship between doctors and surgeons and the Alberta public insurance plan. Under this dual practice model, “flexibly participating physicians” are those who provide publicly insured health services and “non-plan services.” These “flexibly participating physicians” may decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether the service requires the patient to pay out of pocket. While the Alberta government stated that dual practice will be limited to some surgical specialties, the legislation as passed allows all physicians and surgeons to engage in dual practice.

Although flexibly participating physicians must first provide patients with information about the cost of the non-plan service, there is an inherent power imbalance in the doctor-patient relationship. A patient who needs medical care is in a vulnerable position and will feel pressured to pay in order to receive that care, if they have the means. If they do not, they will end up at the back of the line, despite their medical need.

The Alberta Health Care Insurance Act, prior to Bill 11 amendments, was similar to legislation in other provinces that requires doctors to un-enroll from the public insurance plan if they want to work in the private-pay market and directly bill patients. Other provinces require physicians to choose whether they are in the publicly funded system or not (in Ontario, physicians can’t un-enroll from the public plan). This requirement maintains a financially viable public system by preventing the movement of physicians to focus their time in the private-pay market. 

The bill shrouds these arrangements in the language of “flexibility” for participating physicians, however, a recent investigation by journalist Charles Rusnell found that some Alberta doctors—primarily surgeons and anaesthetists—were being scheduled to work in for-profit, chartered surgical facilities (CSFs) despite their objections. Rusnell’s exposé also revealed that CSF shifts were being prioritized over public hospital shifts, at government direction. While the explicit terms of Bill 11 would seem to make this kind of political strong-arming unnecessary, it is equally likely that these tactics will actually intensify under a new system that puts corporations and cabinet—not medical professionals—in control of decision-making.

3. Bill 11 creates Canada’s first private insurance market for medically necessary care—driving up health care costs

When dual practice is allowed, it encourages high-income patients to buy private health insurance to cover these new costs. An unrestricted private health insurance market—which Bill 11 creates—is likely to increase health care costs. We can look at the United States to see how much a system dominated by private insurance and profit-taking drives up health care costs for patients, employers, and government. As employers and individuals purchase private health insurance, the profits of private insurers, investor-owned facilities, and their physicians drive up the costs of medically necessary procedures.

As a result, the public insurance plan must pay increasingly more to doctors and investor-owned facilities where they perform services because the cost of the same basket of services is bid up by increasing profits, often disguised as “administrative costs.” The result is that health care costs rise rapidly for the government (the public insurance plan), placing a greater burden on public finances. Over time, health care spending increases to excessive levels that often encourage governments to narrow the scope of services that are insured. It’s a race to the bottom.

4. The introduction of private payment increases public wait times

Contrary to claims from the Alberta government, Alberta’s two-tier system will not reduce public wait times. Rather, the introduction of private payment for publicly insured services will increase public wait times as physicians and surgeons focus their time in the lucrative and less complex private-pay market.

Despite differences in how jurisdictions regulate private financing (i.e. private payment), a large body of Canadian and international research evidence clearly shows that private financing increases wait times for those waiting in the public system. In a comprehensive review of the experiences with private financing in OECD countries, the authors concluded that:

[P]ublic-sector waiting lists and times are longer in nations with parallel private sectors… A parallel private sector may in fact draw resources out of the public sector and/or put in place incentives that have the effect of increasing waits in the public sector. Waiting lists for publicly financed services are likely to respond to infusions of public, not private, finance.

These findings are consistent with other international analyses (from Australia and the UK), as well as an international evidence synthesis published in the British Medical Bulletin, that found little evidence that private financing reduced public waiting times. This large body of evidence showing that private finance increases public wait times formed the basis for the B.C. Supreme Court to reject the legal challenge led by the for-profit Cambie Surgeries Centre to strike to B.C.’s public health care legislation.

5. Bill 11 unbundles hospital care and opens the door for user fees

Bill 11 continues the Alberta government’s direction of “unbundling” hospital care into services that are publicly funded (at no cost to the patient) and user-pay services. Under the amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act, the minister can create “approved programs” and “specific programs” that are publicly insured. This likely begins the process of the government determining which acute care programs will be available free of charge to patients and which services that will require user fees.

Bill 11 establishes “non-insured hospital services”, in which patients are responsible for paying user fees to the hospital operator (keep in mind with previous changes, hospital operators could be for-profit corporations). The legislation also creates “enhanced goods and services”, which patients can be billed for. What are possible “non-insured hospital services” and “enhanced goods and services”? We don’t know because the government is withholding this information until it passes the accompanying regulations at a later date.

Further reading: See sections 54 and 57 of the amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act.

 6. Bill 11 muddies the definition of a “hospital” and allows private, for-profit hospital operators

As part of the government’s direction of blurring which hospital services are insured/publicly funded and which services might require direct patient fees, the government has muddied the definition of an Alberta hospital. Bill 11 introduces a new form of “hospital services facility” that may be owned and operated by a public, non-profit or for-profit “health services facility operator.” Governments engaged in privatization initiatives tend to blur the definitions, so the very essence of public entities lose their meaning and confuse citizens. In Alberta, the government is doing exactly that.

Further reading: See section 45 of the amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act.

7. Bill 11 encourages the private insurance market with group insurance plans for medically necessary care

Bill 11 adds a new section to the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act to allow and encourage group insurance plans for private-pay health services. The major aim of Bill 11 is to encourage the creation of a much larger private health insurance market, likely encouraging existing employer-sponsored insurance plans to expand into medically necessary health care. 

Further reading: See section 69 of the amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act.

8. Bill 11 encourages hospitals to compete for revenue from user fees and private health insurance

The original intent of hospital insurance legislation in every province—and the Canada Health Act—was to prevent physicians and facilities from charging patients for necessary medical care. Now the Alberta government is creating health care insurance and provider markets where every patient is seen as a source of revenue. 

Bill 11 adds new government powers to “[determine] the operating costs of hospital services facilities” and determine how hospital operating costs must be shared by government and patients. This new language clarifies that the Alberta government intends for hospitals to compete for revenue from patients and private insurers by selling “enhanced” and “non-insured goods and services” in the private-pay market. Bill 11 also allows the government, through regulation (passing a new law is not required), to allow hospital operators to bill patients for “authorized charges” of “non-insured hospital goods and services.” It is possible that this will also be a growing source of revenue for private hospital operators, if they are allowed to charge patients for services that were previously publicly funded.

This policy direction builds on previous government reforms, including the transfer of hospital properties and assets from Alberta Health Services to Alberta Infrastructure. At a United Conservative party members-only event in August, Premier Smith spoke of plans where the government retains ownership of the capital assets, but leases them to operators to provide services, which could include private, for-profit entities. Taken together, these reforms suggest that the provincial government will require hospitals to compete with each other for patient revenue from user fees and private insurance, and encourage hospitals to reduce operating costs by reducing their largest expenditure—staffing levels.

Further reading: See section 71 of the amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act.

9. The threat of U.S. control is real: Alberta’s private health care delivery and insurance markets are likely to attract U.S. investors

Under Bill 55, passed in May, the Alberta government previously established the potential for public hospitals to be owned and operated as private, for-profit hospitals. Bill 11 goes further by encouraging health facilities to compete for revenue from private-pay services. These facilities are likely to put pressure on physicians to charge patients directly in order to increase revenue. 

The U.S. has the largest for-profit health care provider and insurance markets in the world. The cumulative effect of these reforms—allowing physicians to work in both the public system and private-pay market, encouraging investment in for-profit surgical facilities and hospitals, and building the insurance market for medically necessary health care—is very likely to attract U.S. investment interest. A 2023 CCPA report, At What Cost?, documented U.S. investor interest in provincial surgical outsourcing markets. Alberta’s two-tier health system is likely to spur much greater interest, especially if other provinces follow. 

Canada’s international trade and investment agreements provide limited protection to the entrance of U.S. investors and insurance corporations to the Canadian health care market. Once these corporations enter the Canadian market, they will become entrenched and protected by trade and investment agreements. We will not have U.S.-style health care, we will have U.S. health care.

10. Dual physician practice and the private-pay market require long public waits 

The business case for private payment for elective surgeries and other medically necessary services requires long public wait times. Contrary to claims by the Alberta government that the introduction of dual physician practice and private payment will shorten public waits, the private-pay market demands that there are public wait times to attract patients to purchase care. If the government’s plans actually achieve shorter public wait times, there is no market for privately financed care. There is a perverse incentive for physicians and surgeons to make their public wait lists longer in order to drum up business for their private-pay work.

11. Bill 11 is at odds with the Canada Health Act

The Canada Health Act establishes criteria for provincial health insurance plans that provinces must maintain in order to receive federal health funding. These principles include public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility. The amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act (Bill 11) likely violates multiple sections of the Canada Health Act, including the principles of universality and accessibility. 

“Universality” requires that the provincial health insurance plan must ensure “uniform terms and conditions” for everyone in the province. By encouraging private payment for publicly insured health services, the Alberta government has effectively ended universal health care in the province by encouraging preferential access for medically necessary care through a private-pay market.

Under the Canada Health Act, “accessibility” requires that provinces “must provide for insured health services on uniform terms and conditions and on a basis that does not impede or preclude, either directly or indirectly whether by charges made to insured persons or otherwise, reasonable access to those services by insured persons.” Put simply, provincial governments must not introduce measures—like tiered access to publicly insured health services—that establish preferential access for some and impede access for others. 

Bill 11 is at odds with the universality and accessibility principles of the Canada Health Act, which puts its federal funding in jeopardy. In 2025-26, the Alberta government will receive $6.6 billion through the Canada Health Transfer—about 28 per cent of the $24 billion Alberta health budget. It is likely that the Alberta government is setting up a political and legal confrontation with Ottawa over the Canada Health Act, which risks the future of this important legislation. 

There is a growing threat if other provinces join Alberta—including Ontario as the largest market—by introducing similar two-tier legislation (Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is already signalling that it will follow Alberta). The more provinces that join Alberta, the greater the likelihood that it will lead to the dismantling of the Canada Health Act as the federal framework that upholds provincial public health insurance plans. This could end Canadian medicare as we know it.

What’s next?

Two-tier health care has clearly arrived in Canada. Bill 11 and dual practice fundamentally reshape the Alberta health care system. Already, the insurance industry is expressing excitement about the door that has opened. There are three things we will be keeping an eye on with the rapidly changing health policy landscape. 

First, will the Alberta government—as it has promised—limit, by regulation, which medical and surgical specialities that may engage in dual practice? And will there be any other guardrails limiting how much time doctors and surgeons may spend working in the private-pay market like we see in other jurisdictions? Will the Alberta government transparently report on public wait times by specialty area so we can evaluate the effects of dual practice?

Second, how many will elect to work as “flexibly participating physicians” and will most of them concentrate their private-pay practice in for-profit facilities or also in public hospitals? This will start to paint a picture of the extent to which equitable health care access has been eroded in Alberta.

And finally, will the federal government remain silent on the potential multiple violations of the Canada Health Act? Will civil society be compelled to seek a court order to force the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act? We will be seeking answers in coming months to these important questions on the future of Canadian medicare.

The post The end of Canadian medicare? Alberta legislation opens the door to U.S. health care appeared first on CCPA.

Canadian media have also given uncritical praise for Carney’s domestic agenda and, particularly, his vision of making Canada an energy superpower, based on expanding oil and gas exports while dramatically increasing Canada’s mining sector to provide the rare earth minerals many economists predict the global economy will need in the coming years. While boosters see this  as an innovative break from the past, in reality, this is a strategy based largely on the familiar ‘export led growth’ solution to Canada’s economic challenges. 

It is also consistent with the further implementation of the neoliberal trade agenda, as evidenced by Carney’s advocacy of the Canadian Trade Agreement and his commitment to negotiate more international trade agreements.This agenda has already done much damage to Canada’s economy and society.

While there has been considerable discussion about creating a ‘made in Canada’ response to Trump’s arbitrary trade war, much of what is being proposed by organizations such as the Business Council of Canada frames the challenge essentially as one of adopting economic policies that will make Canada more internationally competitive, coupled with recycling the same old agenda of free trade, smaller government, deregulation and lower taxes. 

Consistent with this approach, Carney continues to negotiate new neoliberal trade agreements at precisely the same time that the Federal Government is saying we need to take more control over our economy. Yet these agreements actually reduce the government’s capacity to adopt policies that challenge the neoliberal agenda. Framing the response to Trump’s tariffs as primarily a trade issue significantly narrows the scope of the response Canada needs to address the underlying problems created by this agenda over four decades. 

There is little evidence that Carney recognizes the extent to which our public programs and services have already been decimated by downsizing, privatization and business models that define—and dramatically narrow—the role of governments. 

Since the 1989 free trade agreement with the U.S., the federal government has sold off dozens of crown corporations (Air Canada, Canadian National Railway, Petro-Canada, Canada Development Corporation, Connaught Laboratories, Canadair, Canadian Patents and Development Ltd., Telsat Canada and more).  While corporations got to buy them at fire sale prices, the major reason they were privatized was ideological. Successive federal governments sold them because they had adopted the neoliberal ideology which assumed that anything that could be done by the market, no matter how well or poorly, should be handled by the private sector, not government. 

As a result, the role of the federal government in the economy has contracted dramatically over the past four decades. Provinces have enacted similar policies through extensive privatization, program cuts and adopting fiscal austerity. 

Rather than outlining plans to rebuild key public programs and services—a clear route to increasing employment and Canadianizing the economy—Carney is promoting the old ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ agenda by investing in infrastructure to support the export of raw resources, most of which are not even processed in Canada. It is the “staples trap” described by Harold Innes and Mel Watkins.  And while Carney has implemented measures to shelter parts of Canada’s manufacturing sector, these do not include any new publicly owned enterprises. Rather they are primarily focused on sheltering companies threatened by Trump’s tariffs. The major exception has been a significant increase in defence spending, as Canada seeks to meet his long term goal of spending  five per cent of GDP on the military.

Given Carney’s aversion to tax increases, this military budget is likely to be paid for by further reductions in federal transfers to the provinces, exacerbating federal-provincial tensions. Carney is also reducing the federal government’s capacity to provide services to Canadians. In its fall 2025 budget the federal government announced plans to cut 40,000 positions by the 2028-29 fiscal year. 

On the environmental file, Carney has been a disappointment. His decision to abolish the consumer carbon tax sent a chilling message  about global warming. The tax had the positive effect of shifting consumption towards lower carbon products and played a significant role in reducing Canada’s emissions.  His advocacy of expanding oil and gas exports signals continued reliance on fossil fuels and reflects his desire to maintain the support of the(largely foreign-owned) industry. Similarly, his strategy of attracting foreign capital to build new mines belies his claims to be shifting to a more Canada-focused approach to economic development.

Canada’s response to Trump should not be another version of the export led growth agenda based on a leaner, more competitive economy that privileges foreign and domestic investors. Instead, it must focus on building (or rebuilding) our public infrastructure and services while reducing our vulnerability to international market forces, the opposite of what trade agreements are designed to do. 

Part of this response means expanding publicly owned and controlled programs to meet the pressing needs of Canadians. The list of inadequate—or missing—public programs and services is well-known: child care, public transit, primary health care, nursing homes and home care, properly funded education, domestic pharmaceutical production and many others. Most of these are labour intensive, meaning they have the added benefit of offering good jobs. They are a much better way to invest public dollars than building more pipelines and related infrastructure to accommodate foreign oil, gas and mining interests. 

It is interesting to contemplate how many quality child care places the federal government could have created with the $34.5 billion it spent on the Trans Mountain Pipeline to give predominately foreign oil companies access to international markets, or how this money could have been used to expand National Pharmacare Plan or the Canadian Dental Care Plan. The opportunity cost of this misallocation of resources is huge. 

Canadians were not given the choice about where to spend this money. This is evidence of a major democratic deficit in Canada. Decisions involving large amounts of public money slide through the legislative process with minimal controversy if their beneficiaries are corporations, while media and business attack proposals for new or improved public services as unaffordable. We need to make a strong case that the ‘care economy’ should be the cornerstone of our response to Trump. 

There is also an argument for a shift in the kinds of goods and services we produce in the economy. The market is simply not meeting many of the basic needs of Canadians. The way it distributes what it produces is highly unequal, privileging those with money and excluding those without. Moreover, many products have little social value and are often harmful. We don’t need more casinos, vaping stores, liquor outlets, payday loan stores or monster sized SUVs. We do need more child care places, nursing homes and improved public transit, to cite only a few of the numerous areas where the social needs of Canadians are not being met adequately. The state must shift the resources misallocated by the market towards goods and services that improve quality of life and reflect more egalitarian values and priorities.  

If we are serious about Canadianizing the economy, we need to in-source many of the programs and services that have been carved out of the public sector through decades of privatization. These contracted out programs and services do not provide ‘savings’ for the public. Rather, they enable investors—often foreign—to profit by underpaying their workers and short-changing the public by providing inferior products. 

The CUSMA (NAFTA’s replacement) and other trade agreements are based on neoliberal assumptions. They privilege investors while tying the hands of governments. Federal, provincial and territorial governments have incorporated their extensive obligations  into their domestic policies and legislation. Purchasing departments, for example, must confirm that the way they acquire goods and services conforms with our trade agreement obligations, precluding the use of purchasing tools for other objectives. Government contracting practices have decimated the non-profit sector through onerous competitive tendering requirements, enabling multinational companies to squeeze out publicly funded community services. 

These constraints reflect major changes to government purchasing since 1989. They have a ‘chilling effect’ on policy development and constitute significant barriers that preclude governments pursuing other options. Any serious effort to Canadianize our economy must untie these policy handcuffs. 

Non-renewal of the CUSMA would not automatically eliminate the constraints it has imposed on Canadian governments. Canadianizing the economy requires repealing the extensive list of laws and policies governments have implemented over the past four decades to meet their trade agreement obligations, including cancelling many of the neoliberal requirements in the Canadian Trade Agreement. But Carney has shown no interest in getting rid of these constraints on policymaking, as they fit comfortably with his policy agenda. 

Clearly, we need to advocate policies that respond effectively to Trump’s erratic and hostile trade demands. We also need measures to shelter workers who are being victimized by his policies—and to halt the further erosion of our manufacturing sector, a key part of Trump’s agenda of insourcing production to the U.S. at the expense of Canadian jobs. 

But our vision should be broader. It must recognize that an effective response goes beyond simply countering his tariffs to include a fundamentally different approach to the purpose and role of government in our economy. It means removing the neoliberal handcuffs and bringing government back into the picture. 

The post Carney in Davos: Neoliberalism in a nicer suit appeared first on CCPA.

In a submission to the provincial government ahead of the spring budget, the Ontario Hospital Association stated that the hospital sector faces a structural deficit of $1 billion and needs a predictable, multi-year funding plan. This deficit is not surprising—data reveals that the province continues to have the lowest per capita hospital spending in the country at $1,967—behind BC ($2,111), Quebec ($2,113), and Alberta ($2,169). 

This has caused Ontario to have one of the most below capacity hospital systems in the industrialized world. Ontario had five per cent fewer hospital beds per 100,000 people in 2022 than in 2009—based on the most recent data available.

And while the hospital sector is being downsized through government funding decisions, Ontario is expanding outsourcing contracts with for-profit surgical facilities. In December, the government announced four new private orthopedic surgery facilities as part of a $125 million scheme over two years to increase for-profit involvement. This is the largest injection of public dollars into for-profit health care in Ontario—and likely Canadian—history.

For investor-owned providers, it’s a time of plenty. For public hospitals, austerity is the order of the day.

Funding decisions are political choices. And the decision to flow dollars to investor-owned facilities comes at the expense of public hospitals.

Despite assurances by the Ontario government that for-profit facilities securing lucrative contracts with the government would have to show how they won’t harm staffing levels in the public system, no concrete guarantees have been made public.

That’s because the introduction of for-profit surgical facilities has only one place to draw specialized staff from: existing public sector staff. There is no secondary workforce waiting in the wings.

To continue down this path ignores the growing body of evidence from Canada and internationally. The experience of the Alberta private surgical initiative is instructive. 

After pouring $154 million into public funding to for-profit surgical facilities between 2019-20 and 2023-24, the initiative only added 16,493 of the least-complex procedures to the province’s surgical capacity – an eight per cent volume increase. This happened as hospital surgical activity declined by one per cent. The private surgery initiative simply shifted surgeries —and the workforce required—to for-profit facilities at the expense of public hospitals.

What did this mean for patients? 

Wait times increased for nine out of 11 priority procedures, including all priority cancer surgeries, which are only performed in the hospital setting. Now, Alberta has among the longest waits for key procedures in the country. 

As the Ontario government prepares the 2026 provincial budget, it still has an opportunity for sober second thought. As things stand, handing contracts out to investors to pull staff and resources from the public system isn’t sound health policy. It simply makes Ontario’s wait times worse.

The Ontario government can support patients and the public hospitals they rely on by addressing the hospital funding crisis. 

First and foremost, the provincial government should provide predictable annual funding increases of between five to six per cent in order to account for population growth, aging, and inflation. The government’s 2025 budget plan, according to the Ontario Financial Accountability Office, only increases health sector funding by 0.7 per cent. For context, health care spending grew at an average rate of five per cent annually over the 34-year period from 1990 to 2023.

In order to avoid cuts to current service levels, Ontario will need to increase health sector spending by $6.4 billion in the upcoming budget. However, immediate emergency funding is needed now to ameliorate the $1 billion structural deficit facing Ontario hospitals. As the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions warns, at least 1,000 jobs are already being cut in hospitals in North Bay, Hamilton, Ottawa, Niagara and the GTA.

While these numbers may seem big, Ontario spends less than three per cent of GDP on hospitals, and less than eight per cent of GDP on the broader health sector. Indeed, rather than helping heal the gaping wound of hospital finances and staffing, the Ontario government’s current spending plans are making the hemorrhage worse.

The post In Ontario, it’s a time of plenty for private health care while public hospitals starve appeared first on CCPA.

The most recent data shows eight of ten provinces will miss the federal goal of having 5.9 child care spaces per 10 children. Only two provinces have that level of access: Quebec and P.E.I. As the chart below shows, they’re also the two provinces who have been pulling their weight the most by paying more for child care out of their own provincial budgets. The rest of the provinces weren’t even paying half the cost of their child care programs—they coasted on federal investments.

This data snapshot comes from 2022-23, when there were two major federal initiatives under way: the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program—that is, the main federal $10 per day child care program—had kicked in, but there were also pre-existing funding from the Multilateral Framework Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care (MFA) that was signed in 2017. That year’s data is relatively early in the CWELCC program, and the federal funding was set to double from just under $5 billion in 2022-23 to just over $8 billion in 2025-26. As such, this picture is out of date, even if it’s the best we’ve got right now.

Child care spending in P.E.I. and Quebec pulled up the provincial contribution average in 2022-23. Those investments are putting them ahead of the pack today, as they are the only two provinces meeting the target of 5.9 child care spaces per 10 children.

Prior to CWELCC, different provinces had wildly different child care systems.  At that point, only four provinces had set fees, although they were set higher than $10 a day—except Quebec. B.C., for its part, did have a nascent $10-a-day program for some of its centres and was actively reducing fees in all other centres. Those provinces started with greater spending on child care prior to the major federal expansion. The four provinces with the highest provincial contributions to child care either had set fees (Quebec, P.E.I. and Manitoba) or were actively reducing fees (British Columbia).

Outside of P.E.I., many of the smaller provinces contribute relatively little to their own provincial child care budgets. Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador—and even the larger province of Alberta—seemed happy to have the federal government cover two thirds or more of their child care budgets in 2022-23.

In fact, many of the provinces who have been loudly complaining that the CWELCC program is “too expensive” are also the ones who are paying the least for it. Since CWELCC funding roughly doubled after 2022-23, these ratios may swing further into federal contribution territory.

The push is on to build more spaces so more families can benefit from affordable child care. It’s time for laggard provinces to do their part and at least match federal dollars so the system can be expanded more rapidly.

The post Provinces need to own their responsibility for expanding low-fee child care appeared first on CCPA.

The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget (NSAB) released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Nova Scotia Office (CCPA-NS) calls for sweeping changes in housing, insurance, utilities, food, transportation and more. 

“As the price of everything continues to rise, many people are struggling with higher costs for groceries, transportation, utilities, and insurance. The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget provides implementable solutions to address the high cost of living,” says Dr. Christine Saulnier, director of CCPA-NS and Co-Coordinator of the NSAB. 

“The alternative budget shifts the focus from supporting the few who benefit from outsourcing and offshoring, privatization, and resource extraction, to supporting the many who want a more equal, democratic, caring, and sustainable society. Now more than ever, we need alternative ideas about how to organize our economy and society,” adds Saulnier.

Economist Dr. James Sawler says: “Nova Scotia’s fiscal position is strong. The debt-to-GDP ratio is much lower than years ago, and the debt is locked in at low interest rates. The province has plenty of space for an expansive fiscal policy focused on long-term investments in housing and reducing poverty.”

“We can end the housing crisis by building more non-profit, cooperative and public housing, keeping people in their homes, and enforcing the existing laws to protect tenants,” said Dr. Catherine Leviten-Reid from Cape Breton University, leader of the working group on housing for the alternative budget. “We also urgently need to implement new tenant protections, which we will do through a landlord licensing system introduced in this budget.“ 

Leviten-Reid adds, “The government’s focus is on building homes for the upper end of the income spectrum; this trickle-down approach is a failing strategy and will not solve the housing crisis.”

“Governments can put more money in people’s pockets by opening public grocery stores to lower food costs, creating new transit options to get you where you need to go, and introducing public insurance to reduce your car and home insurance payments,” said Kyle Buott, Co-Coordinator of the NSAB. “All of these ideas are already in action somewhere in North America. It can be done and should be.”

The post Nova Scotia Alternative Budget 2026: For the many appeared first on CCPA.

Against this backdrop, the extent of community organizing and resistance in Minnesota is inspiring. People from all walks of life have stepped forward to help neighbours who might be targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, the country’s heavily militarized secret immigration police. Alerting the neighbourhood when ICE officials are in the area, serving as escorts, shopping for food, picking up kids from school, are just some of the daily tasks neighbourhood organizations help with.  

Minnesotans are standing up to ICE agents, braving bone-chilling cold to come out, in the thousands, to send the message that ICE is not welcome in Minneapolis. Facing pepper spray, batons and police brutality, they have not been deterred. They have grown in ever more determined numbers. 

One such person was emergency room nurse Alex Pretti, who was assisting another protester when he was attacked without provocation and shot and killed by ICE agents. Alex was full of empathy for others, which led him to want to defend those community members who were under attack. Federal officials have tried to brand him as a terrorist, but many others have countered that falsehood with the truth. 

Pretti’s murder comes after that of Renee Good, mother of three who was shot, point blank, as she tried to steer her car past the ICE agents. She was also accused of being a radical leftist. The outrage following these two deaths—and the dispensing of rule of law—reaches around the world.

Minneapolis has a long history of community organizing and protest, from labour strikes to the more recent protests over the murder of George Floyd. It is a city with a memory of organizing and standing together, standing up for one another. That solidarity pushed through labour law reforms and accountability for racist actions. 

What community members are standing up to in Minneapolis is a federal government that is using its institutions to exert authoritarian control over Democratic-voting communities in the U.S. It seems that the plan of the government is to overwhelm local communities, so as to be able to operate with impunity while rounding up people without checking their documents, without a warrant, without a hearing, and holding them without cause. 

This is not just about problems with the U.S. immigration system. This is about a political ideology whereby a dictatorial leader imposes his view of nationalism. With the support of a military-like organization in ICE, the government tries to suppress opposition and impose its will. 

In other words, this is fascism. And it is terrifying.

Democracy is imperfect and also frail. What the people of Minneapolis are doing is standing up to authoritarianism in support of their communities and in support of democracy. 

Alex Pretti didn’t intend to give his life in defending his neighbours, but the state took that from him. Renee Good intended to return home to her family but the state put a bullet in her head. In response, community members have come out in even greater numbers to push back.

Autocratic rulers can evolve practices gradually, chipping away at rights and pretending that they are normal. They can pretend that when they say vaccines are bad and guns are good that they are convincing people. Or they can spring into action and overwhelm people, rounding people up on the streets and deporting them, separating families, flagrantly disregarding the law. 

We can feel powerless just witnessing all this on video. The impulse to do something is strong. What can we in Canada do to help? I can think of a few ways. 

Saying nothing is not an option. We can use our voices, by sending messages of support to those brave community members. Knowing that the world is with them means a lot. We can organize solidarity demonstrations, record them and send messages of encouragement to Minneapolis. We can call out what is happening for what it is.

We are seeing in the U.S. how the consolidation of extreme wealth undermines democracy. Billionaires shape policy and isolate themselves from an increasingly unequal society. Their growing control over a more and more concentrated media landscape enables government officials to shut down the questions they don’t like and ignore reporters who ask tough questions. 

In Canada, we are far from the U.S. situation. However, the use of the notwithstanding clause to deny trans rights or collective bargaining rights are dangerous examples of that autocratic trend. Whether in Alberta, Ontario or Quebec, that these governments are turning their back on basic rights is disturbing. It should serve as a warning to us all not to take our democracy for granted. To hold our elected officials to account.

The federal government’s decision to push through Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, sidestepping consultation and approval processes to rush through development and resource extraction projects, also raises alarm bells. Democracy thrives on transparency and due process.

We can see what happens when inequality and resentment grow into an authoritarian regime. It is a cautionary tale that we need to ensure does not take root here.

Meanwhile, our solidarity is with the people of Minneapolis, who are just trying to go about their daily lives and find themselves living in dystopia. 

The post Resist: It’s the only response to authoritarianism and murder in Minneapolis appeared first on CCPA.

At the five-year deadline of the provinces’ agreement to make good on their promises of affordable and accessible child care, there is a lot more progress to be made.

By March 31, 2026, the provinces are supposed to achieve the following federal goals under the nationally funded program, the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program, which is meant to bring child care fees down to $10-a-day and create more of those affordable spaces near families with children. That child care space expansion is supposed to happen in the non-profit or public sector—not the for-profit sector.

As part of the program, spaces have been created but progress has been uneven.

More spaces are being created, but more than half are in for-profit centres

The federal government’s stated preference in the CWELCC agreements was to expand child care spaces in the non-profit or public sector to keep costs down, quality up and to ensure that the public money now funding the system didn’t evaporate as corporate profit. With a few exceptions, the new spaces created have been overwhelmingly in the for-profit sector, contrary to the explicit goals of the agreements. Of the new spaces created since 2022, 57 per cent were in for-profit centres. There was some non-profit expansion, which made up 27 per cent of the new spaces over the past year. Home-based child care is also playing a role, making up 16 per cent of the new spaces.

The provinces, in aggregate, have fallen behind in space creation promises

The provinces agreed to create over 284,000 new spaces, primarily in the non-profit and public sector, by March 31, 2026. But six months before that deadline, they had created only 194,000 new spaces—most of them for-profit and a portion of them not even in the CWELCC system, which is particularly true in Ontario.

The number of child care deserts is going down, but not at the rate promised

Regardless of whether new space targets are achieved, the most important outcome for parents is finding a space near where they live. The federal government is targeting 5.9 licensed child care spaces for every 10 non-school aged children.

As of the third quarter of 2025, only two provinces achieved that interim federal goal—P.E.I. and Quebec. British Columbia and New Brunswick are on their way to having five spaces per 10 children but aren’t there yet. The rest are not on track to reach this target.

Several provinces are unlikely to make good on their promises by deadline

Three provinces—Quebec, British Columbia and New Brunswick—hit their space creation targets ahead of time.

Ontario is close to its target, if we include all spaces, but growth has been concentrated in the for-profit sector, which charges much higher fees.

Alberta will almost certainly miss its original target of 68,700 new spaces by March 31, 2026. And the province has only added an abysmal 3,600 non-profit spaces, despite promising 42,500.

It looks like P.E.I. will also miss its agreed-upon target, although, given the high coverage rate in that province, the need is lower.

The remaining four provinces will almost certainly miss their space creation goals, by a large margin. They include Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia.

In the aggregate, the provinces are falling short. With only six months left of the first five-year agreements, as of September 30, 2025, we were 90,000 spaces short of where we should be in terms of promised space creation.

Gap between politics and reality

Of the biggest provinces, only Quebec is above the federal target of having 5.9 spaces per 10 children. The other large provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta are well below that target, after four-and-a-half years. Ontario and British Columbia are doing well towards their CWELCC space creation targets, but even if they reach them, parents will continue to experience long wait lists and frustration in trying to find a spot.

This inadequate coverage will continue to put political pressure on the program. There will be a substantial communications gap in March 2026 as government press releases celebrate met targets while parents on the ground see a much different reality.

While public money is now the primary funding source for licensed child care, the expansion of spaces has been overwhelmingly in for-profit centres, counter to the CWELCC agreements. If expansion continues along this path, it will lock in a child care system that is more expensive than it needs to be, with lower quality.

As we move into the second half decade of a national child care plan and a second set of agreements, the federal government and the provinces must redouble their efforts to expand the number of licensed spaces. The push is now on to meet the new demand for child care with the high quality, low fee, non-profit spaces that parents deserve.

Introduction

The 2021 federal budget kicked off a new national plan, one part of which was to reduce child care fees to $10-a-day called the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program. While this lowered fee was one of its more visible goals, the agreements included a major expansion in the number of licensed child care spaces. Once fees dropped, demand would skyrocket. For the national plan to be successful, the spaces would have to be there to accommodate that new demand. The agreements call for expansion to be primarily in the non-profit and public sectors.

By 2022, all the provinces had signed five-year agreements that end March 31, 2026. Each of the agreements set space creation targets by jurisdiction to be accomplished by the end date.

As of early 2026, all the provinces signed agreements to continue with the CWELCC program, although on different time frames. Ontario¹ and Alberta² have only signed up for an additional year, ending March 31, 2027. All other provinces and territories have signed up for another five years. Future research will examine whether the provinces and territories have hit the $10-a-day promise. This analysis examines whether they’ve hit their space creation goals.

While we aren’t quite at the end point of the agreements, we can evaluate space creation as of the end of the third quarter of 2025 (September 2025). This gets us to within six months of the deadline and can provide insight into the success and failures of the first five years. In this analysis, we are leveraging the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ proprietary Childcare Licensing and Accessibility by Region (CLAR) database.

The database tracks all 1.4 million licensed child care spaces in the provinces and is the only database of its kind. Unfortunately, due to data constraints, a similar tracking system isn’t possible for the territories. It compiles provincial child care licensed databases, standardizes them and tracks them over time. This analysis follows the same methodology of our initial report from the CLAR database in the summer of 2025 which had data up to Q1 2025, with some minor revisions.³ For more detail, see the methodology section.

The CLAR database only includes spaces that have been licensed to centres or homes. We are excluding various provincial categories of spaces “under development” or “to come”. In addition, the database tracks licenses, not enrolment—and enrolment will almost always be at least slightly lower than licensed capacity. As such, this analysis represents a “best case” look at space creation.

We’re evaluating the provinces’ progress based on their original commitments and we’re also attempting to be consistent between them, even when the CWELCC agreements differ. Specifically:

• Alberta committed to 68,700 new spaces by March 2026 (42,500 non-profit spaces and 26,200 for-profit ones).⁴ However, this deadline was extended to March 31, 2027, with the one-year extension signed in 2025.⁵ Ontario also extended its agreement by a single year, but its space creation timelines didn’t change. In this analysis, we’re holding all provinces to the original timeline ending March 31, 2026.
• Ontario’s CWELCC agreement gives them a start point of 2019 for space creation while all other provinces have 2021 as their start point. All spaces created between 2019 and 2021, the two years before Ontario even signed up for the federal plan, are included towards their space creation goal, well before CWELCC was even introduced. In this analysis, we’ve set the start point for Ontario as 2021, just like all the other provinces.
• Saskatchewan is claiming that a small-scale Junior Kindergarten program called the PreK program is new in 2024, adding over 5,000 “new” child care spaces in a single year.⁶ In fact, that program has existed since 2007, the spaces aren’t new and the PreK space count has been identical since 2014-15. We aren’t including these as new child care spaces.

Where the provinces stand after five years

There are different ways of calculating new child care space creation over the past five years. Sometimes governments report the raw change in the space count, irrespective of whether those spaces are part of the CWELCC system. Sometimes new spaces are reported as only the new CWELCC spaces. In this section, we will report both, as shown in Figure 1. In either case, we’ll examine the net change in spaces: new spaces created due to facility opening or expansion, minus spaces lost due to facility closure or shrinking.

In either version of space creation, it doesn’t matter if those new spaces were directly created as a result of a government program—say, a capital grant—whether those spaces are enough to satisfy demand, whether they would have been created through natural expansion anyway. It also ignores whether those spaces are non-profit or for-profit.

With six months to go, as of September 30, 2025, provincial progress in hitting their CWELCC space creation targets is all over the map. Three provinces—Quebec, British Columbia and New Brunswick—hit their targets ahead of time, whether looking at net new CWELCC spaces or net new spaces generally.

Essentially all new spaces in British Columbia were CWELCC ones. However, almost all the expansion occurred in the for-profit sector, against the wording of the CWELCC agreement, raising long-term costs, reducing quality and stability while locking in lower workers’ wages.

Quebec slightly exceeded its target, if we look at CWELCC spaces created, but if we look only at new spaces of any type, it slightly missed its target. Quebec signed an “asymmetric” agreement with Ottawa but still committed to create more of its “reduce fee” spaces at just under $10 a day, which we’re calling CWELCC spaces. The province has seen a net reduction in non-CWELCC spaces since 2021.

New Brunswick hit its CWELCC space creation target. If we look at all net new spaces, not just CWELCC ones, it created 400 more spaces than it promised. Unfortunately, almost all space creation was in for-profit spaces, which is counter to its agreement and raises program costs while reducing quality.

Ontario is close to its target, as shown in Figure 1, if we include all spaces, not just CWELCC ones. However, Ontario has a uniquely large expansion in spaces that aren’t in the CWELCC program and charges much higher fees as a result. If we look at all new spaces, it’s possible that with additional licensing before March 31, 2026, Ontario could close the current 13,000 space gap. Unlike many other provinces, Ontario also committed to create another 9,300 spaces next year (2026-27), so it might fall further behind on that goal.

Ontario centres aren’t forced to be part of the CWELCC system. For instance, one can open a centre and charge whatever they want. Of course, the fee charged would have to be much more than the regulated price of $22 a day, and that centre wouldn’t receive government support. There is an obvious incentive for new centres to join the CWELCC system in order to offer much lower fees. However, upon joining, new centres must disclose their finances to the province and limit their profits. A profit-driven centre might not wish to do so. In addition, a centre cannot join the CWELCC system if it is not within the geographic boundaries and auspice quotas of the SSMs’ Directed Growth Plans.

Alberta will almost certainly miss its original target of 68,700 new spaces by March 31, 2026. Figure 1 shows it is falling short by almost 26,000 new spaces. The one-year extension that the province signed in 2025 grants it another year to create those new spaces; hopefully it will meet that revised timeline. As a sub-goal, the province also committed to create 42,500 non-profit spaces as part of that larger 68,700 figure. Unfortunately, the province has only added an abysmal 3,600 new non-profit spaces since 2022—nowhere near the 42,500 it agreed to.

It looks like P.E.I. will also miss its agreed-upon target, although, given the high coverage rate in that province, the need is lower. Like Quebec, P.E.I. has seen a net reduction in non-CWELCC spaces and, therefore, created slightly more CWELCC spaces.

The remaining four provinces will almost certainly miss their space creation goals, by a large margin. They include Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia. These provinces expanded spaces in their non-profit sector.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba will fall furthest behind in space creation compared to other provinces, despite having among the highest need for new spaces. Their space creation goals over five years were ambitious, but they have fallen short.

As shown in Figure 2, the provinces agreed to create over 284,000 new spaces, primarily in the non-profit and public sector, by March 31, 2026. With six months to go, as of September 30, 2025, they had created only 194,000 new spaces—most of them for-profit and a portion of them not even in the CWELCC system. In aggregate across the country, the provinces are falling short. With only six months left of the first five-year agreements, we’re 90,000 spaces short of where we should be in terms of promised space creation.

Not all the new spaces are low fee

Net new space figures presented by governments often ignore whether those new spaces are CWELCC spaces. Figure 3 breaks apart the net new spaces created into those that are a part of the CWELCC system and those that are not. Both for-profit and non-profit centre spaces are included in this section.

CWELCC centres receive government support and charge lower fees as a result, whereas non-CWELCC centres don’t receive government support (or receive less) and will generally charge market rates. Depending on the province, centres aren’t forced to be part of the CWELCC system. Being part of the system means offering much lower fees, but it comes with strings attached. Specifically, centres can’t increase profits by raising fees and their profits are often limited by signing up.

As already suggested in Figure 1, Ontario has the largest proportion of newly created child care spaces that are outside of the CWELCC system. Of the spaces created between the fourth quarter of 2022 and third quarter of 2025, only 67 per cent were CWELCC spaces charging a reduced fee. The other 33 per cent of spaces were created outside of the system, charging market rates. While Ontario is close to hitting its CWELCC space creation targets, in raw terms, a third of those new spaces aren’t in the CWELCC system.

A portion of Manitoba’s new spaces are also outside of its $10-a-day program. While the province is set to substantially miss its space creation goals as examined above, 16 per cent of those new centre spaces aren’t in the CWELCC system.

New Brunswick outperformed its CWELCC space creation target six months before its deadline. However, 10 per cent of those newly created spaces are outside the CWELCC system, likely charging well more than its set fees of $21 a day for infants and $18 for older children.

The remainder of the provinces created almost all new spaces within the CWELCC system, with less than five per cent of new spaces outside of the system and likely charging much higher fees.

Quebec and P.E.I. created more than 100 per cent of their net new spaces as part of CWELCC, or, in the case of Quebec, its “reduced fee” program. This is possible as there has been a net reduction in non-CWELCC spaces in both provinces as the net count of new CWELCC spaces has expanded. Quebec, in particular, has been moving centres into its “reduced fee” system.

For-profits have owned the expansion

The federal government’s stated preference in the CWELCC agreements was to expand child care spaces primarily in the non-profit or public sector to keep costs down, quality up and to ensure that the public money now funding the system didn’t evaporate as corporate profit.

Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, the new spaces created have been overwhelmingly in the for-profit sector, contrary to the explicit goals of the agreements. Of the new spaces created since 2022, 57 per cent were in for-profit centres. There was some non-profit expansion, which made up 27 per cent of the new spaces over the past year. Home-based child care is also playing a role, making up 16 per cent of the new spaces.

Net growth in licensed home-based spaces has been most significant in Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. However, much of this growth may reflect existing unlicensed home providers moving into the licensed sector to lower their fees. While this transition significantly reduces fees for parents, it reclassifies the spaces in those homes rather than creating new physical capacity.

Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan were the only provinces that provided no operating funding to new for-profit centres. Their centre-based expansion was almost entirely in the non-profit sector as a result.

Other provinces, like Alberta, British Columbia and New Brunswick, did allow operational funding to go to new for-profit centres, allowing them to expand rapidly. The result will be a more costly system and likely more pressure on governments from the for-profit providers to increase their financial support to sustain profits.

The other likely result of more for-profit spaces will be lower quality care. Non-profit child care consistently outperforms for-profit care across key indicators.⁷ Non-profit centres are overrepresented at higher levels of quality.⁸ These quality differences are closely tied to hiring better trained staff, paying them more and investing in their professional development.⁹ Expanding primarily in for-profit centres will do the opposite.

Hitting targets doesn’t mean there’s a space nearby

Regardless of whether new space targets are achieved, the most important outcome for parents is finding a space nearby where they live. The federal government included text in most, but not all, of the agreements specifying a target of 5.9 licensed child care spaces for every 10 non-school aged children. While this target is low for the long term,¹⁰ given how far behind most provinces and territories are from having even that coverage rate, it makes for a plausible interim goal.

As of the third quarter of 2025, only two provinces achieved that interim federal goal— P.E.I. and Quebec, as illustrated in Figure 5. British Columbia and New Brunswick are on their way to having five spaces per 10 children but aren’t there yet.

The rest are not on track to reach the federal target. So even if they hit their space creation goals, and many of them won’t, it won’t matter much for parents because they’ll still have a very difficult time finding licensed child care.

Of the biggest provinces, only Quebec is above the federal target of spaces compared to its child population. The other large provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta are well below the federal target after four-and-a-half years. Ontario and British Columbia are doing well towards their CWELCC space creation targets, but even if they reach them, parents will continue to experience long wait lists and frustration in trying to find a spot.

This inadequate coverage will continue to put political pressure on the program. There will be a substantial communications gap in March 2026 as government press releases celebrate met targets while parents on the ground see a much different reality.

The CLAR database allows us to go much further and calculate the child care access for each of the 54,000 city blocks in Canada. In other words, it isn’t good enough just to have more spaces, those spaces should be located nearby where children live. In urban areas, ‘nearby’ is defined as within 5 km and in rural areas it’s within 10 km.

As implied by the general coverage rates, Manitoba has the highest proportion of its children with no nearby child care spaces. Half of Manitoban children (46 per cent) in the third quarter of 2025 lived on a block that is a child care desert. That is where there are less than three licensed spaces per 10 children. In fact, only four per cent of the children in Manitoba live on a block that meets the federal standard of child-to-space availability.

Saskatchewan is similar, with 42 per cent of its children living in a child care desert—although this second Prairie province has slightly more children that live in areas at or above the federal target. Unfortunately, both of these worst performers will miss their space creation targets as well; spaces that are desperately needed to better serve families with young children.

A third of the children in Nova Scotia and Ontario live in child care deserts. A quarter of children in Nova Scotia live on blocks at or above the federal target. Ontario has relatively few of its children with adequate coverage at or above the federal target (six per cent).

Just over 31 per cent of children in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador live in a child care desert. However, Alberta fares slightly better at the top end, with 19 per cent of its children at or above the federal target, whereas Newfoundland and Labrador has only managed eight per cent with adequate coverage.

Many of these worst performers, excluding Ontario, have larger portions of their populations living outside major centres. However, living in smaller towns and rural areas is hardly a recipe for poor provision of child care. P.E.I. is very rural yet has very few children living in deserts. Quebec has vast northern rural areas, yet the rural areas of La Belle Province have better child care coverage than the big cities in the Prairies.

As for British Columbia, its average coverage rate isn’t particularly good but it has managed to keep most of its children out of child care deserts (14 per cent living in child care deserts), doing slightly better than P.E.I. in this regard. Most children in B.C. do have some child care nearby, although few children live on a block that hits the federal target of 5.9 spaces per 10 children.

New Brunswick has the most extremes. On the one hand, 21 per cent of its children live in child care deserts while another 34 per cent live on blocks with plentiful child care options. There are large differences between the coverage in its centres of Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton compared to its smaller towns and more rural areas, where child care is much harder to find.

Only seven per cent of Quebec children live in child care deserts and two thirds already live on a block that meets or exceeds the federal target.

Despite missed target, new spaces are eliminating deserts

While major new federal programs are challenging to implement and many provinces will miss their space creation targets, progress is being made. This is particularly true in the reduction of children living in child care deserts since 2022.

Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have been particularly successful at reducing the proportion of their children with almost no licensed child care nearby. Since 2022, all three have effectively moved a quarter of their child populations from a situation where they had almost no access to child care to a situation where there is some.

British Columbia has been uniquely successful at boosting children into the federal target range. Since 2022, it has managed to move 17 per cent of children into a situation where their block has at least 5.9 spaces per 10 children.

Unfortunately, Manitoba had very poor child care coverage in 2022 and that only improved marginally by the third quarter of 2025. There have been relatively few new spaces created over the past five years. This province was one where expansion was needed the most and, unfortunately, it’s where there’s been the least.

Saskatchewan, like Manitoba, had poor child care access in 2022. But Saskatchewan added relatively more spaces since 2022. It was also doing worse than Manitoba in terms of coverage in 2022. The net result was that it moved a quarter of its children out of the child care desert category, mostly into the inadequate child care category—a small step forward.

At the other end of the spectrum, P.E.I., New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec all moved 10 per cent or more of their children into the best category, with 5.9 spaces per 10 children. Except for Nova Scotia, these provinces already had low prevalence of child care deserts, making it more difficult to reduce those further. Nova Scotia, the province of extremes, has a third of its children in child care deserts.

Conclusion: the availability of child care after five years of CWELCC

Progress towards a national system of accessible child care has been uneven. The provinces started in very different places. Some had good coverage rates at the starting line, and some started far behind. All provinces have built new spaces since then, but some have been more successful at expansion than others and some have been more successful at creating new spaces in the CWELCC system. As a result, there has been a clear improvement in the accessibility of child care over the past five years.

For most parents though, finding a child care space will remain a frustrating experience with the licensed centres. While public money is now the primary funding source for licensed child care, the expansion of spaces has been overwhelmingly in for-profit centres. This runs counter to the CWELCC agreements that the provinces entered into. If expansion continues along this path, it will lock in a child care system that is more expensive than it needs to be, with lower quality.

As we move into the second half decade of a national child care plan and a second set of agreements, the federal government and the provinces must redouble their efforts to expand the number of licensed spaces. The push is now on to meet the new demand for child care with high quality, low fee, non-profit spaces that parents deserve.

Methodology

The data in this report relies on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ proprietary Child Care Licensing and Accessibility by Region (CLAR) database. This database tracks every licensed child care space in the provinces and does so semi-annually. Those licensed spaces can be in either licensed homes or centres. It also calculates coverage rates down the city block level, called Dissemination Areas (DA) by Statistics Canada. We are presently tracking 1.4 million licensed spaces and calculating coverage rates in 54,000 Dissemination Areas (DA).

A more detailed version of methodology is available in the August 2025 version of this report, which examined data to the first quarter of 2025.¹¹ This section only highlights changes and improvements from that original methodology. Broadly the original methodology is still what’s being used with the following minor revisions.

Our CLAR database tracks the opening and closing of centres and homes, as well as their expansion and contraction of licensed spaces. In order to determine the mix of CWELCC vs. non-CWELCC spaces, we need to examine the net change across all these trends over the database timeframe of Q4 2022 and Q3 2025. In some provinces, it wasn’t clear if centres were part of CWELCC in 2022, but then they closed before the status could be ascertained. In those cases, we assume that those spaces were in CWELCC.

The data has now been updated to the end of Q3 2025 and will be updated again for Q1 2026 to capture the entire CWELCC period. The Statistics Canada projections of child populations were updated to the June 1, 2025 sub-provincial child populations estimates, so child counts by Dissemination Areas are updated accordingly, as are Dissemination Areas coverage rates.

In terms of changes to the original methodology, to calculate coverage rates, a two-stage floating catchment area approach continues to be used. However, stronger urban vs. rural travel distance preferences were implemented, ensuring children in urban DAs will only ever travel 5 km to a child care centre, no matter if the centre is located in a rural or urban DA with children living in a rural area, expanding their travel to 10km.

The database now has much improved data on Quebec homes, successfully locating almost all of them, instead of placing them synthetically, as was the case in the last update.

In the previous report, only some provinces had reliable identification of child care centres located on public school grounds. Now the CLAR database has the information in all provinces, although that doesn’t affect the analysis in this report.

Table 1 provides an updated overview of the data that’s available by provinces from the CLAR database.

The data sources have changed only marginally since the summer August 2025 report in Quebec and Alberta. The updated URLs are available in Table 2.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Elizabeth Adamson, Lynell Anderson, Morna Ballantyne, Jane Beach, Martha Friendly and Eric Swanson for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this analysis.

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In theory, this new provision applies equally to all individuals and corporations, but history tells us that large corporations have disproportionate access to government officials and are able to get their way. The broad nature of this new provision means that corporations could be able to avoid everything from environmental regulations to conflict of interest laws, so long as they have a single minister on board.

So, why is Prime Minister Carney’s government trying to push through such a policy in an omnibus bill? It is worth noting the direct financial interest he holds in the corporate sector’s profitability, through the shares he holds in 567 (mostly American) corporations, as revealed by his ethics disclosure. At the end of 2024, he owned about $9 million in Brookfield Asset Management stock options alone. 

We can further understand Carney’s interests by examining his career and his connections. Although his experience at Brookfield Asset Management and as Governor of the Bank of Canada (and Bank of England) is well known, the true scope of his connections in the business world is less widely understood.

As Canadian members of the World Elite Database, a network of researchers that studies elite populations across the globe, we can document Mark Carney’s centrality in corporate networks. The image below visualizes the career network of the Canadian corporate elite (CEOs and Board Chairs of the corporations listed on the TSX60 during the last five years). Two people are related if they held a position at the same organization during the same period at any point in the past. It is first worth noting that the corporate network in Canada is closely knit: most corporate leaders are part of one large connected group. As we look closely, we can see that Mark Carney takes a central place in this network, having more connections than over two thirds of the corporate elite. 

During Carney’s career, he’s had roles at several hubs of corporate power, including Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and Bloomberg. He crossed paths with eight other corporate elites, through which he is connected to 59 people who have become heads of Canada’s largest corporations. His integration in corporate networks has surely shaped who has Carney’s ear. Today, he is deeply connected with people who have a direct interest in stripping regulations that protect the public against the unconstrained power of big business.

These connections have been reflected in his actions since becoming Prime Minister. Lobbying disclosures show that Carney held 83 lobbying meetings with corporations or business associations during his first nine months as Prime Minister, over twice as many as Trudeau did over the same period (31). Under Carney’s tenure, government officials have met 109 times with the Business Council of Canada, which largely represents CEOs of large Canadian corporations, more than three times as much as during Trudeau’s first nine months. 

Carney’s policies have consistently benefitted big business. This new provision is in many ways an extension of the powers he granted to the President of the Privy Council under the Building Canada Act to fast-track certain “national interest projects” through federal authorizations, something the oil and gas industry had long lobbied for. This new provision has gotten far less media attention yet it goes far beyond fast-tracking specific projects, extending federal exemptions to any corporation who can get a minister on their side.

In his short time in office, Carney has also repealed the Digital Services Tax, a policy that would have ensured largely American digital multinationals paid their fair share of taxes in Canada, and reached a Memorandum of Understanding that exempted Alberta from clean electricity regulations, and rescinded the planned oil and gas emissions cap.

In this context, this new provision that opens the door to exempting corporations from nearly any federal law is not such a surprise. Carney is deeply integrated in corporate networks that have been calling for policies like this for years and has already implemented several policies that have undermined our democratic laws in favour of large corporations.

We must see this clause for what it is: a brazen anti-democratic power grab by big business that has Prime Minister Carney’s full support. The omnibus bill will be before committees in the House and Senate when parliament returns at the end of January. Opposition parties must use their full power to stop this anti-democratic provision.

Cet article est aussi disponsible en francais.

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The headline announcement is a reduction of Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola seed (from 85 to about 15 per cent) in exchange for a limited number of electric vehicle imports to Canada (49,000) per year at a 6.1 per cent tariff (Canada’s most-favoured nation rate). This outcome, and a one-year tariff reprieve on Canadian lobster and canola meal, will ease some farmer concerns in Western Canada. 

Autoworkers, on the other hand, are expressing serious concerns about opening the door to Chinese EVs given the impact this has had on auto-producing European countries. “Lifting the surtax risks turning Canada into a dumping ground for China-owned companies at the expense of our domestic auto industry and the Canadian workers who rely on it,” said Unifor, the union which represents most Canadian auto workers, in a statement today.

The EV tariffs were imposed in 2024 to harmonize with the Biden administration’s cold war–like position with respect to China’s industrial dominance in automotive, renewables and, increasingly, high tech production. The tariffs and Biden-era subsidies, including EV consumer rebates, prompted an inflow of investment into electric battery and vehicle manufacturing in North America. Many of these auto sector plans were reversed when Trump dismantled Biden’s attempt at a green industrial strategy.

Removing the Canadian EV tariffs looks reasonable from the perspective of improving China relations, but it is a highly risky move absent a more elaborated industrial strategy for the automotive and other struggling manufacturing sectors.

An official statement from the PMO says that Chinese investment in Canadian EV supply chains and renewable energy is part of the arrangement. But as Unifor points out, this investment is not guaranteed. The anticipated five-year timeframe for the importation of affordable (under $35,000) EVs from China, within the annual vehicle limits, coincides with the introduction of similar and similarly priced models by North American producers including Ford and General Motors but may still undermine the market share (and therefore jobs) of union-made vehicles.

There are two clear political bonuses to the federal government from the China relations reset. The first is internal. Western premiers and opposition MPs can no longer reasonably claim there is a federal bias toward Eastern Canadian manufacturers over Western farmers. Canola prices will rise with the news of stable market access in China, at least for the coming year.

Less high-profile but equally importantly, Canada and B.C. signed a non-binding MOU with China on modern wood construction that could provide an important new market for a Canadian lumber industry struggling under U.S. tariffs and environmental stresses. The prize would be making more money and creating more jobs out of felling fewer trees. 

Additional cooperation on civil nuclear energy could pay off for Canadian technology and manufacturing as China aims to transition its significant number of coal-fired power plants to nuclear power. Concerns about the high cost and risk of nuclear versus cheaper and more reliable renewable power technologies notwithstanding, Canada-China nuclear cooperation on proven technology makes more sense than cooperating with the United States and United Kingdom on untested and expensive “small” modular reactors. 

A second, related bonus to the federal government is that, in solving the China trade war first, the prime minister may be able to forge a stronger all-of-Canada position on U.S. relations and the upcoming CUSMA review. That review is set to begin by the end of January, with a July 1 decision date on whether to rollover the North American trade deal in some form or other.

The U.S. media, to the extent they were interested, has interpreted Carney’s visit to China as a natural outcome of being pushed away, again and again, by the brutish Trump administration. The U.S. president said again this week he doesn’t need CUSMA or anything Canada makes. 

At the same time, the prime minister has been at pains to stress the importance of Canada-U.S. relations to his government even with a population solidly in favour of a hardline position in defence of Canadian sovereignty. Canadians are also still concerned about political freedom in China and the extensive use of forced labour in Chinese supply chains, in particular mining and basic manufacturing. 

Speaking of mining, the Canadian announcements from Beijing emphasize the benefits of Chinese investment in new fossil fuel and extractive projects in Canada. This looks like a shift from Trudeau government restrictions imposed on Chinese investment in projects deemed sensitive for national security. 

A Canada-China foreign investment protection agreement signed by the Harper government grants rather extreme guarantees to Chinese investors in the event future provincial or federal governments change their mind about expanding oil and gas exports, which they surely will given the implications for global warming. Canada is currently being sued for at least $1 billion by a U.S. LNG firm under similar investment protections in CUSMA. Energy and mining-related investor-state claims are on the rise internationally. 

The Chinese government knows Canada’s room to manoeuvre is limited by American hegemony in North America. These agreements with Canada are small potatoes for President Xi, who benefits internationally from the flow of Western leaders hoping to make nice with China in the face of U.S. aggression. The future of Canada-China relations depends on what Canada agrees to in the upcoming CUSMA review.

A more stable economic and diplomatic relationship with China, including lowering EV tariffs (which put Canada at odds with both U.S. and Mexican policy), may be a message to the Americans that we have options and some leverage to withstand some of the more outlandish demands we expect from the CUSMA review. 

Or it could prove a short-lived reprieve if the Carney government agrees to harmonize international trade policy under a more tightly controlled (from Washington) Fortress North America—a very real possibility, as discussed in our look at the CUSMA review scenarios. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has already called the EV tariff drop “problematic.”

Which brings us back to industrial strategy. Canada’s exports to China are heavily weighted toward raw materials (iron ore, coal, canola seeds) and our imports weighted toward high-tech goods, including automobiles. 

We may be able to double these exports with the help of oil and gas, but this is not a strategy for economic sustainability or good job promotion in the long-term. For that, we need more internal cooperation among governments and the private sector, to fortify our economy against ongoing and future trade threats from any direction.

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Chances are you spent some of your holiday gatherings talking about the price of food. Costs to consumers have increased by almost 30 per cent since 2020, while mega-grocers doubled their profit margins, and total profits ballooned by over 120 per cent. The growing distrust of Canada’s oligopolistic food retail system, where five large chains control 80 per cent of the market, has prompted thinking outside the corporate big box store.

One headline-grabbing proposal that has gained prominence over the past year is to open government-run low-cost grocery stores. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani popularized the idea when he campaigned on city-run stores in every borough. Meanwhile, here in Canada, NDP leadership hopeful Avi Lewis made a “public option” for groceries a centerpiece of his campaign, and a Food Secure Canada analyst partnered with The Breach to make a viral video about public grocery stores.

What recently seemed like an obscure proposal is rapidly becoming a topic du jour. The public’s response to the idea has been largely positive, although some national media voices have been critical. What we need now, is solid modeling.

A close look at international approaches and retail economics points to some helpful facts and lessons. Millions of people are already shopping at public grocery chains in Mexico and the United States. Our analysis shows that a public grocery network across Canada could save families approximately 30-45 per cent off their grocery bill depending on where they live, the price tag is reasonable, and our governments have the experience to make it work.

Scale matters

Recent examples have shown that small-scale approaches are problematic. In Florida, Kansas, and Illinois, municipal governments opened grocery stores after they had been abandoned by large chain grocers. All ceased operating within a few years. 

This isn’t very surprising. Small public grocery stores in underserved areas struggle with the same challenges faced by independent family-run grocery stores and corner shop depanneurs in Canada: they rely on the distribution systems used by big retailers. As individual stores they have no comparative purchasing power, so they are easily priced out. 

Large-scale public food provisioning tells a significantly different story. Mexico’s SuperISSSTE chain is a public grocer owned by the Mexican government that began in 1953 and is being reinvigorated after years of neglect. It currently runs 46 stores in urban centers nationwide, operating at volumes that give them the negotiating leverage needed to deal with suppliers. They prioritize Mexico-made goods, providing much-needed stability to local producers. Mexico also runs 24,000 Tiendas del Bienestar (Shops for Well-Being) servicing rural areas and run by the local community, supplied by a network of 300 warehouses, offering savings for staples of at least 15 per cent. 

The U.S. military commissary system is a successful publicly owned global food retailer: it serves 8 million shoppers through 235 supermarkets on bases worldwide, offering savings of 23.7 per cent compared to commercial grocers. These savings are so high that U.S. veterans will often choose to live close to a military base after retiring, so they can keep shopping at the publicly run grocery store. Not only do they provide well-paying jobs, but suppliers love them, as they guarantee fair prices and stable contracts. This is particularly valuable for small and medium scale local food providers who are encouraged to invest in their businesses by the predictable demand. This well-functioning model uses scale to drive down costs and build food system resilience. 

Similar to the U.S. commissary model, a more ambitious large-scale  “Costco-plus-local” approach could work in Canada. This could be a warehouse-style chain (or network of smaller stores) that guarantees fair contracts with local and national suppliers, uses high-volume buying power to bring down wholesale costs, and further reduces prices through publicly subsidized labor and overhead. This could reduce grocery prices by approximately 30-45 per cent depending on where people live, be rolled out relatively quickly, and have a modest price tag. The key is that scale matters.

A modest price tag

Based on our initial estimates, a scaled-up network of public grocers across the country would need a moderate up-front investment—one that would bewell within what governments are used to spending on public projects. 

It would cost approximately $350 million for initial infrastructure to open 50 stores (40 in urban centers, 10 in remote regions), six distribution hubs, and run associated logistics. Annual operating costs, with government covering labor and overhead like rent, would be an additional $290 million—less than half the lifetime cost of one F-35 fighter jet. Canada recently cut a deal with the U.S. to buy 88 of them.

The network could use direct purchasing from local food hubs and producers, competitive bidding to secure “everyday low pricing” from packaged food suppliers, centralized distribution, and logistics best practices. All the benefits could be passed on to the consumer, leading to reductions of between approximately 25 and 30 per cent in consumer prices in urban areas, and approximately   45 per cent for northern communities (where groceries currently cost double or triple southern prices). A family could save between $2,500-10,000 annually, depending on where they live. For example, with 210,000 families shopping per year (200,000 in urban centres, and 10,000 in the North), this would result in $600 million in savings.

In other words, after the initial modest investment in the buildout, for every dollar the government puts in annually, Canadian shoppers could save $2 in return. 

A crucial strategy would be to combine the grocery network’s purchasing power with institutional procurement. Canada’s five year $1 billion investment in the National School Food Program—recently made permanent with a $216 million annual commitment—will fund significant quantities of food, but procurement currently relies largely on highly concentrated distributors. By partnering on some purchases with hospitals, universities, and other public and non-profit facilities, the network could have greater leverage and cost savings.

The benefits of a public option for groceries would also extend to other sectors of the Canadian economy. It would support Canadian farmers, fishers, ranchers, gatherers and businesses with stable contracts. It would be welcome in a trade war when shoppers are looking to buy Canadian. And more unionized well paid jobs raise standards across the country. In return for a modest government investment, the benefits to Canadians would be immediate and significant, as well as helping to build resilience into our food system for the long-term.

Governments can do this

Canada already has public retail options. Provincial liquor stores generate billions in revenue and show that governments can successfully run retail operations at scale. Notably, these liquor stores have become a bulwark against U.S. bullying by taking U.S. products off the shelves, giving Canada a bargaining chip in trade negotiations. A public grocery store could do likewise. 

Meanwhile, provincial-run cannabis stores demonstrated the government’s ability to roll out new retail infrastructure—and new supply chains—with remarkable speed. Within a year of legalization, provincial governments opened dozens of brick and mortar public cannabis stores across the country. 

We also have precedents for rapidly dealing with Canada’s jurisdictional issues such as territorial agreements and budget transfers. In under a year after the initial budget announcement, the federal government signed National School Food Program agreements with all provinces and territories. These laid out combined federal/provincial commitments to shared national school food policy values and visions, where federal funding would go, who was responsible for management, and the number of meals to be served. We have the experience to pull this off with speed and at scale. 

Responding to common objections

The most common argument against public grocery is that it sounds like the government is taking control of food sales. This misunderstands the proposal, as private grocers would still operate. Instead, public grocery stores would add a competitive public option alongside existing stores to address market failures. What we have now—five chains controlling most of the market—is far from a competitive marketplace. A public grocery option would add another retailer to the mix, increase competition, and expand choice for consumers. 

Another objection is that other policies would work better. The Globe and Mail suggested strengthening the Competition Act and easing barriers for international grocers to enter Canada. Yet the Competition Bureau hasn’t successfully blocked any of the 27 food supply chain mergers since 2001, and it’s hard to see how bringing in more mega grocers from abroad would fix the fundamental market failure of corporate consolidation. While more robust competition policy is a key part of the picture going forward, for-profit grocers will not deliver the kinds of price cuts that a publicly subsidized option can.  

There’s also the critique that, since large retailers have low profit margins, the price savings in a public option for consumers would also be low. However in reality, a company like Loblaws, even with a profit margin of three to four per cent still makes total profits of over $2 billion that could be passed along to consumers as price savings. Additionally, a large-scale public grocer, with subsidized operating costs, good wholesale prices, and no shareholders to pay dividends to, could pass along even steeper discounts to families across the country. 

The bottom line

We are caught in a system where food is treated as a means for profit rather than as a human right, with wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few mega corporations, leading to spiraling prices. Canadians are fed up with insufficient and ineffective government approaches to fix the situation. Meanwhile, families continue to face impossible choices at the checkout, and affordability is the defining issue of our times.

A public option for groceries offers real action. The $290 million annual cost is less than one per cent of Canada’s defence budget, and just over one per cent of what the federal government invests annually in infrastructure—yet it would likely reduce grocery prices throughout a network of stores by 30-45 per cent. As seen from examples in other countries, it can be done, and it is already being done.

Public grocery stores aren’t a panacea. They won’t solve food insecurity, which is caused by inadequate income, and requires urgent government action. But they can help with food affordability, strengthen local food production and Canadian food supply chain resilience, and provide well-paying jobs.

The question we should be asking isn’t whether this could work in Canada—it’s why it hasn’t been tried yet. And who is going to step up and make it happen?

Raj Patel is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems a member of the council of Progressive International, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System among other books and articles, and co-director with Zak Piper of the award-winning documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper. 

Aaron Vansintjan is Policy Manager at Food Secure Canada and has worked as a consultant for non-profits and governmental bodies. He holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London and an MSc at McGill University and has written two books on environmental politics.

Anna Paskal is a food systems consultant who has worked with the United Nations, governments, national and international civil society, think tanks, philanthropy, academic institutions, and research institutions. Currently, she is Senior Advisor with UNDPs new Food and Power Initiative, and working with IPES-Food, Food Secure Canada and Food Communities Network.

Errol Schweizer has over 25 years of experience in the grocery industry, starting out as a clerk at Whole Foods, to scaling the national grocery department to US $5 billion, to working on municipal food policy in Austin. He publishes The Checkout Grocery Update, contributes to Forbes on food pricing, market dynamics and labor economics and is a member of IPES-Food.

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Summary

Over the past 50 years, women in Canada have made substantial gains in employment and earnings, supported by greater participation in full-time work, higher education levels, and movement into professional and unionized jobs. Despite this progress, major gender inequalities persist. Women—especially mothers of young children, caregivers, women with fewer years of formal schooling, and those facing overlapping forms of discrimination—remain concentrated in lower-paid occupations rooted in traditional gender roles. Persistent occupational segregation is a key contributor to Canada’s large gender pay gap and to rising inequality among women themselves. The employment recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic opened the door to change for some female workers, but as this study finds, not for Canada’s largely female and racialized low-waged workforce.

Did the pandemic disrupt the nature of women’s work?

The pandemic significantly disrupted the labour market, triggering very large job losses and equally large employment gains, all in a comparatively short period of time. Between 2019 and 2024, women saw major job growth in specialized middle-management, professional occupations in business and in education, and in administrative and financial supervisory roles—the four occupations together accounting for more than half of all employment gains for women. The number of working in the care economy, especially in health, education and community services, also increased. These gains were smaller than those recorded in professional and managerial occupations, but health care, education and social service industries remain the largest employer of women. By contrast, the number of women working in sales, clerical and administrative occupations fell sharply. These jobs still employ almost one million women; indeed, of the top 10 “sub-major group” occupations, six involve sales, service and administrative occupations—occupations that typically pay between $17 to $23 per hour. But these occupations now represent a smaller share of the female workforce, part of the long-term transformation of white-collar work, a trend which has accelerated in the aftermath of the pandemic. Meanwhile, there was no change in women’s representation in traditionally male-dominated trades, production and transport roles.

Gender segregation: Where are we now?

There has been a decrease in the share of women and men working in highly concentrated female occupations, those where over 80 per cent of the workers are female. But if we look at all occupations where women represent more than 60 per cent of all workers, the proportion of women working in these fields is up, from 45.2 per cent in 2019 to 49.9 per cent in 2024, a total increase of 779,800 jobs. Men’s representation in these female-majority occupations grew as well, from 12.1 per cent to 15.1 per cent (or 446,100 jobs). These trends speak to the ongoing shift in the occupational composition within all industries, from routine to non-routine jobs, boosting the numbers engaged in several traditionally female occupations in business, administration, education and health care.

Have current employment trends narrowed the gender pay gap?

The pandemic and post-pandemic job shifts led many women to move into better-paying occupations, but these gains did nothing to narrow the overall gender pay gap. Although women’s average wages increased between 2019 and 2024, high inflation wiped out most early progress, and by 2024 women still earned just 87 cents for every dollar earned by men—the same as in 2019. Wage growth was strongest for women who entered or advanced in high-paying fields such as management, finance and applied sciences, yet men’s wage gains in these same occupations were often larger, widening pay gaps at the top, especially in senior management. At the same time, women in the care economy—teachers, nurses, and community service workers—saw real wage declines, in part due to wage caps and long-standing undervaluation of care work. And there has also been little movement in wages among those engaged in low-paid work. In 2024, 34.8 per cent of women worked in low-waged occupations, effectively unchanged from 2019 (35.2 per cent). The upshot is that women now make up a larger share of workers in the highest paid occupations (33.2 per cent to 35 per cent) and in the lowest-paid occupations (52 per cent to 54.7 per cent). This study provides evidence that the patterns of female employment are not only tracking, but now influencing, the broader trends of polarization.

Missed opportunity

The pandemic and its aftermath represented a rare chance to reshape Canada’s labour market and reduce long-standing gender inequalities, but that opportunity was largely missed. While some women moved into higher-paid professional roles, the crisis did little to change the unequal division of paid and unpaid labour, improve wages and working conditions among low-waged, precarious workers, or substantially reduce occupational segregation. Instead, high costs of living, uncertain job markets, and the rapid spread of AI are generating increased insecurity among marginalized workers. As AI begins transforming not only routine jobs but also professional and technical roles, the risk of widening inequality is growing in the absence of meaningful regulation and worker-centred supports to navigate the transition. Government action is needed now to strengthen workers’ rights and protections for precarious workers, improve pay equity and pay transparency laws, expand the availability of high-quality public services, including education and care, and modernize social protections in service of a more inclusive, gender-just labour market.

The widening gap: Gender segregation and job polarization in the post-pandemic labour market

The COVID-19 pandemic represented a profound economic disruption. The pandemic wiped out 35 years of women’s economic gains in two short months. Women’s employment started to rebound in late 2020, buoyed by a surge in consumer demand and high levels of immigration, even as large numbers of older workers left the labour market. As the employment recovery peaked in 2022, the percentage of employed women aged 25 to 54 years reached an all-time high of 81.4 per cent.¹ A sizable group of women—including many from marginalized communities—were able to pivot from retail and other hard-hit industries into professional service jobs and the care economy.²

The nature of work has been slowing shifting over several decades in response to increased globalization and the offshoring of manufacturing, as well as the adoption of automation and information technologies, now including generative AI. The share of jobs involving routine tasks in production, craft, repair and operative occupations as well as sales, clerical and administrative support, has declined, while the share of jobs involving non-routine and/or cognitive tasks in managerial, professional and technical occupations and service occupations has increased.³ The pandemic appears to have accelerated these trends as workers sought out better paid, more secure and safer employment, while employers, for their part, ramped up to meet changing market demand, including new investment in technology and automation.⁴

This brief explores the changing occupational structure of the labour market in greater detail, focusing on the experience of women workers through the 2019 to 2024 period.⁵ How did women fare through this period? Did the pandemic and its aftermath disrupt long-established patterns of gender segregation? What can we expect looking forward? Are recent employment gains at risk in the context of the current trade war and expansion of AI in Canadian workplaces?

Deeply entrenched labour market disparities

Over the last 50 years, the gap in employment rates between men and women has narrowed substantially as women moved into the labour market in large numbers. Over this same period, women’s income from employment increased, helping to reduce the gender gap in earnings. Several factors help explain women’s economic progress, including growth in full-time employment, longer job tenure, and higher levels of educational attainment. Many more women now work in higher-paid professional occupations, such as in law and social, community and government services, and in unionized (typically public sector) workplaces, which offer decent wages, employment benefits and job security.⁶

Yet disparities persist—particularly among mothers with young children and other caregivers, women with fewer years of formal education, and women confronting overlapping sources of discrimination.⁷ It is the product of entrenched systemic biases, the unequal burden of care, and outright discrimination. The gendered division of labour across and within occupations and industries is another manifest source of economic disparity.⁸ Despite almost equal rates of labour force participation, women (and other marginalized groups) continue to be concentrated in lower-paying occupations and sectors of the economy, work presumed to align with their “natural” or “traditional” abilities and interests.⁹ The comparatively few women who work in “non-traditional” jobs earn more than other women, but they, too, generally earn less than their male peers.^{10 11} In Canada, only three women made the top 100 CEO list in 2023.¹² Canada continues to have one of the largest pay gaps in the OECD.¹³

The segregated character of Canada’s labour market has been markedly resistant to change. In 2021, the majority of women (54 per cent) were employed in just 20 occupations, all involving the “5 Cs”: caring, clerical, catering, cashiering and cleaning. This is only a slightly smaller share than in 1987, when 59 per cent of women were employed in these same occupations. By contrast, just 19 per cent of men were employed in “female” occupations in 2021, compared to a similarly low 16 per cent in 1987—a three percentage point increase over 34 years.¹⁴ While women have a strong economic incentive to move into higher-paid “male” occupations, the reverse isn’t the case among men. Men’s limited movement into female-dominated occupations remains a key barrier to any future progress.¹⁵

Progress in reducing high levels of gender occupational segregation stalled 25 years ago and there’s been limited improvement since. Linda Kaida and Monica Boyd, in their study of women’s work, for example, found that there were only small movements of women out of low-paid, highly female-concentrated occupations, such as clerical work, into higher paid positions in more gender-integrated professional and managerial roles during the 1991-2016 period—a much slower rate of improvement compared to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, women’s representation in heavily male-dominated occupations, in areas such as repair, construction, or transportation, was virtually unchanged.¹⁶ Emma Quinn and her colleagues likewise conclude that there was little change in the segregated character of Canada’s labour market between 1991 and 2016: half of 500 detailed occupational categories were dominated by either men or women (with representation of 75 per cent or greater) at the time of each census over this period of time.¹⁷

These findings are particularly troubling in light of the continuing importance of industry and occupation (and related job characteristics) on the size of the gender pay gap relative to men and other measures of women’s economic security, such as the prevalence of low-waged work. Drolet and Amini (2023) estimate that the combined effect of industry and occupation accounted for over one-third (36.6 per cent) of the gender wage gap in 2022, and an even larger share among Indigenous women (42.8 per cent).^{18 19} This study, and others, highlight the scale of the challenge in making further progress in reducing gender inequality against a backdrop of ongoing labour market polarization, entrenched financial/business interests, lax state oversight and regulation of labour markets across the country,²⁰ and Canada’s porous welfare state, as so graphically revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

These studies reveal, as well, the scale of the opportunity that the pandemic represented to jumpstart Canada’s “stalled gender revolution.” As our findings show, while both men and women experienced significant growth in management, professional and technical occupations over the past five years—pushing up women’s average wage—women continue to be over-represented in the lowest-paying occupations compared to male workers. Indeed, the gap between women in high-paying occupations and those in the lowest-paying occupations appears to be growing, the same dynamic evident among male workers as well.

Did the pandemic disrupt the nature of women’s work?

The pandemic disrupted the labour market, triggering very large job losses and equally large employment gains, all in a comparatively short period of time. One of the most notable changes was the sharp reduction in low-waged service sector employment and the simultaneous increase in several higher-paying industries, such as professional services, finance, educational services and public administration. Women workers have been on the frontlines of these changes—both figuratively and literally—as this study of women’s location in Canada’s occupational hierarchy attests. Just as the pandemic fuelled industrial change, it also accelerated changes to the nature of work and the demand for specific occupations, impacting both the level of gender segregation in the labour market and access to economic security for women on both sides of “good” job vs “bad” job divide.

Marc Frenette’s analysis of long-term occupational trends in the Canadian labour market provides important context for this discussion of women’s employment and occupational segregation.²¹ Since the late 1980s, there has been a significant increase in the share of workers engaged in managerial, professional and technical occupations (non-routine, cognitive tasks)—among both men and women. The share of men involved in these occupations rose steadily between 1987 and 2019 and then jumped by 4.6 percentage points between 2019 and 2024, rising from 29.6 per cent to 34.2 per cent. The increase among women working in managerial and professional occupations was equally significant, the proportion of women rising from 23.7 per cent in 1987 to 33.3 per cent in 2019 and then to 39.3 per cent in 2024 (see Figure 1a and 1b).

These trends were accompanied by steep declines in the share of men working in production, craft, repair and operative occupations (routine, manual tasks), and in the share of women working in lower-paid sales, clerical and administrative support occupations (routine, cognitive tasks), reflecting the deep-seated gender divides in the labour market. Back in 1987, almost half of all male workers were engaged in production, craft, repair and operative occupations (47.1 per cent). By 2019, the share of male workers in these occupations had fallen to 37.9 per cent—and by another 2.8 percentage points, to 35.1 per cent in 2024, fuelled by the impact of automation and just-in-time production processes as well as the offshoring of production. (The decline among women in production, craft, repair and operative occupations was much smaller (just 0.5 percentage points between 2019 and 2024) but not surprising, given the comparatively low number of women employed in these jobs.)

The widespread adoption of information technologies also contributed to the transformation and decline of work in sales, clerical and administrative support, largely impacting female workers. Between 1987 and 2024, the share of women working in these occupations dropped by 10 percentage points, from 41.3 per cent to 31.2 per cent. One quarter of these losses (-2.6 percentage points) occurred between 2019 and 2024 as the pandemic upended personal service industries, such as retail and accommodation and food services. The scale of pandemic-related losses was comparatively smaller among men, declining just 0.7 percentage points between 2019 and 2024. Indeed, the overall share of male workers engaged in sales, clerical and administrative support has remained largely unchanged since 1987, rising from 15.7 per cent to 16.7 per cent in 2024.

We see a similar pattern in service occupations (non-routine, manual tasks). The proportion of men engaged in services has edged up slightly over the decades, declining between 2019 and 2022, and then rebounding by 2024. In 2024, one in seven male workers (13.9 per cent) were involved in service occupations, the same as in 1987 (13.7 per cent). The share of women engaged in service occupations since 1987 has been relatively constant too, at roughly one-quarter of all female workers up until 2019. Between 2019 and 2022, women’s share dropped sharply, by 2.8 percentage points, to 23.8 per cent as personal service industries contracted and community services struggled to fill staffing positions even as demand soared. Care economy jobs have bounced back since 2022, notably in education, but women’s losses in personal services have continued, the gains in one group of service occupations offsetting the losses in others.

Table 1 provides a more granular look at the changing distribution of occupations in Canada, comparing the top occupations among women in 2019 and 2024, ranked by concentration and count of female workers among the 43 “sub-major group” occupations tracked annually in the Labour Force Survey. Not surprisingly, given the comparatively short time frame, there was little change in the top 10 list of occupations with the highest concentration of female workers between 2019 and 2024. And the top six occupations by female head count were the same too—sales and service occupations took the top two spots of all occupations. But there are a few key changes to note that speak to the ongoing transformation of Canada’s labour market.

First, the expansion of managerial, professional and technical occupations is clearly evident among both male and female workers. The biggest increase among female workers was in the specialized middle-management occupations, an increase of 69.2 per cent (182,300 positions). Women workers also reported large increases professional occupations in business (50.3 per cent), professional occupations in education (18.1 per cent), and administrative and financial supervisors and specialized administrative occupations (17.5 per cent). Together, these four occupations accounted for over half (56 per cent) of all employment growth among female workers between 2019 and 2024. The same four occupations were on the top 10 list of growth occupations among male workers too—but accounted for just one-third (33.4 per cent) of total job growth among male workers.

The increase in women working in professional business occupations pushed up women’s share of employment in that occupational group by 4.7 percentage points, to 62.5 per cent. Women also made inroads in professional finance occupations, reaching 50.2 per cent of all employed. Even though women reported the largest increase in specialized middle-management occupations, their share of these jobs actually fell by 2.5 percentage points, from 51.2 per cent in 2019 to 48.7 per cent in 2024, because growth in these occupations was even larger among their male peers (69.2 per cent or 182,300 jobs)—a point that we will return to below.

Relatedly, while the number of women in middle-management occupations grew, there was a decline in the ranks of senior management. The number of women engaged in these occupations declined by 8.1 per cent between 2019 and 2024, their share of all senior managers and legislators declining by 2.8 percentage points to 29.2 per cent. A recent report from the Prosperity Project, examining data from the FP500 companies, calls out this troubling trend, especially among equity-seeking groups, as well as the decline in the number of women in the leadership pipeline. It concludes that “progress is possible, but it is neither guaranteed nor equitably shared. Some women are rising, but too many are being left behind.”²²

Secondly, there were increases in the number of women working in care economy occupations, including nursing, social and community services, and paraprofessionals in legal, social, community and education services. But these gains were smaller than those recorded in professional and managerial occupations: just 17.4 per cent of total employment gains between 2019 and 2024. That said, health care, education and social service industries remain the largest employers of women, representing 34.1 per cent of the total female workforce. And a growing number of women now work in health, education, law, community and government service occupations, up 1.8 percentage points over 2019, reaching 30.7 per cent of all female workers in 2024.

Apart from professionals in educational services, care economy occupations did not make the men’s top 10 list of “growth” occupations. But technical trades, helpers, labourers and transport drivers, and general trades occupations did. Together, these occupational groups accounted for 16.6 per cent of total employment growth among men and an even smaller fraction of employment growth among women (1.7 per cent). Indeed, women’s representation in general trades occupations declined between 2019 and 2024. Despite efforts to break down occupational barriers, women’s representation in these traditionally male-dominated fields remains very low, just 7.9 per cent in general trades in construction and maintenance and 12.9 per cent among helpers and labourers and transport drivers in 2024. As Kaida and Boyd (2022) conclude, speaking about change in occupational segregation between 1991 and 2016, “the observed progress is asymmetrical.”²³

There was employment growth, however, in professional occupations in applied sciences (except engineering) among both men and women. The number of men working in this area jumped from 460,000 to 633,000 (37.7 per cent) between 2019 and 2024, while the number of women increased by over 64,000 to 221,000, pushing up women’s share of employment in this occupation by 0.4 percentage points to 25.9 per cent.

Third, the share of workers engaged in sales, clerical and administrative occupations lost a lot of ground. There were fewer women working in these occupations in 2024 than before the pandemic, notably among those working in sales and service support occupations (-8.3 per cent, or 89,900 jobs), sales and service representatives and other customer and personal services occupations (-7.2 per cent, or 55,700 jobs) and administrative and financial support and supply chain logistics occupations (-7.5 per cent, or 44,000 jobs). Among male workers, sales and service support occupations, sales and service representatives, and other customer and personal services occupations also experienced the largest absolute declines, -40,200 jobs and -21,900 jobs, respectively. But these losses, indeed all employment losses between 2019 and 2024, were less than half of the total reported by female workers.

It’s important to note that these changes were not enough to knock sales and service support occupations out of their top spot on the list of women’s occupations—in 2024, almost one million women worked as cashiers, wait staff and cleaners. Indeed, of the top 10 “sub-major group” occupations, six involve sales, service and administrative occupations, such as those in office support and logistics, personal services or real estate—occupations that typically pay between $17 to $23 per hour. But with these losses, women’s representation in some female-majority occupations, such as administrative and financial support, has continued to decline, part of the long-term transformation, in this instance, of white-collar service industries and a key factor contributing to occupational “desegregation” dating back to the 1970s.²⁴

Gender segregation: Where are we now?

The top 10 most highly concentrated female occupations (where women represent over 80 per cent of workers) were the same in 2019 and 2024, dominated in each year by care economy jobs. But there has been a decline both in the absolute number (-138,400 jobs) and the proportion of women working in these occupations, as shown in Figure 2. In 2019, 22.8 per cent of the female workforce worked in occupations where over 80 per cent of all workers were women. By 2024, the share of women working in these largely female fields had declined by 3.2 percentage points, to 19.7 per cent. The six occupations with the largest share of female workers all experienced decline. The share of women working in nursing, for example, fell by 1.6 percentage points, from 90.1 per cent in 2019 to 88.5 per cent in 2024,²⁵ even as the overall number of female nurses increased (four times the increase reported by men).

There was also a significant drop in the share of women working in more “integrated” occupations where the concentration of women ranged from 40 to 60 per cent. This group of occupations includes sales and service support occupations, professional occupations in finance and in law, as well as the growing number of workers employed in specialized middle-management occupations. The surge in specialized middle managers between 2019 and 2024 was not enough to offset the even larger job losses among those in sales and service. In 2019, 41.2 per cent of all female workers were employed in these occupations. By 2024, their share had fallen to 37.1 per cent—representing a net loss of 93,800 jobs.

At the same time, there was little change in women’s representation in male-majority occupations such as machine operators, technical occupations in natural sciences and contractors (those where over 60 per cent of workers are male). Their share of total employment edged down by -0.3 percentage points, as male employment gains in these occupations eclipsed those of women at a pace of five to one. In 2024, 13.1 per cent of female workers worked in male-majority occupations compared to 55.3 per cent of male workers. It is interesting to note that, despite the sizable increase in the number of men working in male-majority occupations (+39.6 per cent), the share of the total male workforce working in these fields declined by 1.4 percentage points.

The only occupational group that experienced sizable growth were those where women accounted for 60 to 80 per cent of positions. The share of women involved in these occupations increased by 7.6 percentage points, from 22.6 per cent to 30.2 per cent by 2024, a group that includes well-paid managerial, professional and technical occupations, described above. The expansion of professional occupations in social and community services, professional occupations in business, professional occupations in government services, and administrative and financial support occupations drove almost all of women’s employment growth over the 2019 to 2024 period—and was the largest contributor to men’s employment growth as well, accounting for half (49.3 per cent) of all gains.

Figure 2 illustrates the changes in the distribution of male and female workers by occupational group, arranged by the concentration of female workers. There has been a decrease in the share of women and men working in highly concentrated female occupations, those where over 80 per cent of the workers are female. But if we look at all occupations where women represent more than 60 per cent of all workers, there has been an overall increase in the proportion of women engaged in these fields, from 45.2 per cent in 2019 to 49.9 per cent in 2024, a total increase of 779,800 jobs. Men’s representation in these female-majority fields grew as well, from 12.1 per cent to 15.1 per cent (or 446,100 jobs). These trends speak to the ongoing shift in the occupation composition within all industries, from routine to non-routine jobs, boosting the numbers engaged in several traditionally female occupations fields in business, administration, education and health care.

Wages trends and the gender pay gap

What, then, has been the impact, if any, of current employment trends on women’s earnings? Have women’s employment gains translated into wage gains?

A sizable group of diverse female workers moved up the wage grid in the aftermath of the pandemic, as women took advantage of the surge of job vacancies in higher-paying industries in the tightest labour market in decades. While the average hourly wage among female employees increased substantially between 2019 and 2022, reaching $29.66 an hour, the surge in inflation was such that the real increase was a scant 21 cents. Low-wage workers—and even the women who had moved a step up the income ladder—could be forgiven for thinking that their immediate economic circumstances were not improving. After a decline in the rate of inflation between 2019 and 2020, the annual CPI index jumped by 3.4 per cent in 2021 and by another 6.8 per cent in 2022, significantly outpacing earnings growth among both women and men.

As the rate of inflation eased between 2022 and 2024, falling to 2.4 per cent, average wages picked up. In 2024, women’s average hourly wage reached $32.77 per hour, an increase of 4.7 per cent over 2022 after taking inflation into account. Men’s average wages also rose in lockstep, reaching $37.50 per hour in 2024. With all the ups and downs of the 2019-24 period, however, the gender wage gap moved little. In 2019, women earned 87 cents for each dollar men earned, and the same again in 2024.

Recent progress in the labour market has not translated into higher income for all women. Rising living costs for shelter and other essentials have been especially devastating for the millions who continue to work in industries hard hit during the pandemic. Many of the lowest-paid jobs eked out only marginal gains over the five years even as employment levels dwindled. The wages of all workers in sales and service occupations increased by a scant 0.4 per cent, while those in administrative and financial support occupations experienced a decline in their real wages of -1.4 per cent. The decline was even larger among female workers in this heavily feminized occupational group, reporting a drop of -2.3 per cent.

The future of precarious, low-waged, front-facing service work is important to consider in this context—and the millions of women who work in these occupations. Personal service employers did not change their business model in response to the pandemic. They remain the lowest-paid sectors in the Canadian economy, with some of the highest rates of part-time work and lowest rates of unionization, illustrating the very low value attached to care and personal service work. They are least likely to have access to employer-provided health insurance and other benefits, more likely to live in unaffordable housing, at great distances from their places of work, and least likely to have reliable access to community services and supports.²⁶ These industries may be shrinking in size, but the gap between these low-waged, precarious sectors and the rest of the economy is widening.

Another key trend in the wage data that stands out is the scale of the real wage pay cuts in the care economy. Female educators experienced a real decline in wages of -4.7 per cent between 2019 and 2024, while the wages of female health professionals and professionals in social and community services fell by -2.2 per cent and -2.3 per cent, respectively, over this period. Even as care workers battled the pandemic under terrible and demoralizing working conditions, their wages were eroding in value. In Ontario, for example, the wages of public sector workers, including frontline care economy workers, were capped at one per cent per year throughout the pandemic crisis period, provisions that were repealed after being confirmed as unconstitutional by the courts in 2024.²⁷

The cost-of-living crisis in 2022 set the stage for a series of high-profile strikes as workers fought to make up for years of real wage losses.²⁸ In Ontario, more than 55,000 education workers walked off the job in late 2022 as the provincial government attempted to impose a contract, passing legislation that would prohibit strike action by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, invoking the constitution’s notwithstanding clause to shield the law from a court challenge. The government agreed to repeal the bill in the face of staunch public opposition and the threat of a general strike. This, and other important settlements²⁹ in the public and private and public sectors, helped push up average wages between 2022 and 2024,³⁰ but, as these data show, care economy workers continue to lag.

The wage growth posted between 2019 and 2024 has been almost exclusively driven by gains among a specific group of workers in management, natural and applied sciences and business and finance. In 2024, women working specialized middle management, applied sciences (except engineering) and finance posted real wage increases over 2019 levels of 3.8 per cent, 4.1 per cent and 6.2 per cent, respectively. These three sectors together represented over one-third (34.5 per cent) of women’s total employment gains. Women working as professionals in law, a smaller number, also recorded wage gains of 5.8 per cent between 2019 and 2024. In 2024, all of these occupations commanded wages above the average hourly wage of all female workers ($32.77 per hour).

It is important to note that in the two highest paid occupational groups—management and natural and applied sciences—men’s wage gains outpaced women’s. For instance, the average hourly wage of men in specialized management occupations increased by 6.9 per cent between 2019 and 2024, after taking inflation into account—almost twice the rate of women (3.8 per cent). The difference in wage growth among men and women in senior management was even higher: 16.2 per cent versus 0.8 per cent. Male workers also did better in the natural and applied sciences (4.4 per cent versus 2.8 per cent). Even as women increased their presence in selected high-waged occupations, men maintained their advantage, as reflected in the widening of the wage gap in specialized middle management (89 per cent to 86.4 per cent) and natural and applied sciences (89.1 per cent to 87.7 per cent). The wage gap in senior management widened by an astonishing 11.2 percentage points over the five years (84.6 per cent falling to 73.4 per cent)³¹ because of the skyrocketing pay packets of the wealthiest CEOs.

This study provides additional evidence of continuing job polarization in the larger economy. It shows the patterns of female employment are not only tracking, but now influencing, the broader trends of polarization. Long-term shifts in the demand for work, from production to services, as well as the distribution of male and female workers across occupations, have opened up opportunities for women—and improved financial security for some, including women from historically marginalized groups.³² The changing demand in the labour market has helped to reduce vertical gender segregation in white-collar employment as women have pivoted from female-dominated clerical occupations impacted by emergent information technologies into more gender-integrated professional and managerial occupations that pay a better wage.

As Figure 4 shows, the proportion of female workers employed in the 10 top-paying occupations increased by 4.2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024, from 9.6 per cent to 13.8 per cent. Higher-waged women now comprise a larger segment of the total female workforce, roughly one in seven workers. At the same time, there has been no movement among the many more women at the bottom of the earnings ladder.³³ In 2024, 34.8 per cent of women worked in low-waged occupations, which was effectively unchanged from 2019 (35.2 per cent). Thus, while there was some movement at the top of the income scale in the aftermath of the pandemic, millions of women remain stuck in low-waged sectors, hugely vulnerable to the economic uncertainties of the current moment.

There was an even larger jump in the number of male workers moving into the top-paying occupations between 2019 and 2024 compared to female workers. The share of male employees working in the highest-paid occupations increased by 5.5 percentage points over this period, from 17.5 per cent to 22.9 per cent. But, unlike their female counterparts, the proportion of men working in the lowest-paid occupations declined from 29.3 per cent to 25.8 per cent over this period. The upshot is that women now make up a larger share of workers in the top group (33.2 per cent to 35 per cent) and in the bottom group (52 per cent to 54.7 per cent). These data speak to the size of the gender disparities that continue to exist and the scale of the challenge in the pursuit of economic justice.

The issue of gender segregation between and within occupational groups demands further attention—especially with a view to understanding the varied experiences of different groups of women. Single measures, such as the employment rate or gender wage gap, hide a diversity of experience across key demographics, such as age, educational attainment and family status, as well as by Indigenous status, immigration status, racialized status or disability status. For example, as Drolet and Amini (2023) find, Canadian-born women typically face smaller gender wage gaps compared to Indigenous and immigrant women. Improvements in human capital and changes within and between industry and occupation are important factors explaining gender wage differentials and changes over time, but their impact varies considerably between different groups. As they conclude, understanding gender differences “requires analysis from a number of different perspectives.”³⁴

Unpacking the ways in which sources of discrimination intersect and interact must remain a priority. There are well-established hierarchies within the labour market, characterized by gender disparities, as well as by race, immigration and ability. We see Canadian-born women, for example, being replaced by immigrant, and often racialized, women in the most devalued care and personal service work, such as custodial and food service roles.³⁵ Women’s persistently high representation in low-waged occupations, as this study finds, certainly suggests that the mechanisms that reproduce economic disadvantage for women have not been dislodged or disrupted by the pandemic.³⁶ The post-pandemic job recovery represented an opportunity to bridge the gender divide in the labour market. While the changing demand for labour—for non-routine, cognitive skills, in particular—has provided a runway to boost women’s representation in higher paid sectors of the economy, it has likewise continued to fuel job polarization within and between occupations and industries.

Conclusion: Missed opportunity

A decade ago, researchers and advocates were discussing whether the “gender revolution” had stalled and what was needed to reinvigorate the push for substantive change.³⁷ This question has taken on even greater urgency in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis period—against a backdrop of significant population growth, population aging, job polarization and the reorganization of work. The pandemic triggered a shake up of the labour market. It opened the door to higher incomes for a group of female workers, but it did not transform the deeply gendered division of paid and unpaid labour between men and women at home,³⁸ nor did it improve the working conditions of low-waged, precarious workers.³⁹ Temporary improvements brought in during the pandemic, including paid sick leave, wage top-ups and investments in training, have long since expired.⁴⁰

Female workers and other low-waged, precarious workers have been on an economic roller coaster for the last five years, hit hard by recurring public health closures, the exponential increase in unpaid labour, and then the surge in the cost-of-living in 2022 which ratcheted up financial pressures on households.⁴¹ Low-waged workers now confront greater uncertainty as the economy contracts in the face of the American trade war. Labour market growth has slowed in 2025 and unemployment has started to climb in export industries, impacting not only workers in steel, autos and lumber, but millions more in related service sectors.⁴² Young workers, students and recent graduates are bearing the greatest burden as companies scale back new hires and offer more part-time work, part of a trend that started to accelerate in 2024.⁴³ The large pullback in employment in sales and service occupations, and in industries such as retail and accommodation and food services, is an important part of the current picture for all low-waged households.

So, too, is the rapid evolution of AI technologies and advanced robotics—and their impacts on labour markets. The use of AI is now well advanced across the economy in manufacturing, health care, management, customer services, and construction, to name a few. Unlike past technology waves that targeted routine manual tasks, AI extends into cognitive work—analyzing data, recognizing patterns, and drawing conclusions. This puts even high-waged managerial, professional and technical occupations at risk of change, challenging long-held assumptions about their immunity to automation. Medhi and Morissette (2024) estimate that six in 10 workers are already working in roles that are highly exposed to AI, half of whom (roughly 4.2 million) work in jobs like journalism, programming or medical technology that may be wholly transformed and replaced.⁴⁴ In today’s labour market, heightened risk of job loss to automation is redefining what it means to be precarious.

It remains to be seen how the take up of AI in the world of work will play out. Al holds out great potential to enhance human capabilities, but the risks to human rights and health and safety are considerable,⁴⁵ as the integration of AI proceeds with few legislative or regulatory guardrails in Canada.⁴⁶ To date, Canadian business have been comparatively slow to implement AI technologies, lagging other G7 countries, but that is changing. Statistics Canada recently reported that 12.2 per cent of firms reported using AI in production and services in the second quarter of 2025, doubling in the space of a year, and a larger share (14.5 per cent) was planning to use AI in the next 12 months.⁴⁷ As the adoption of AI proceeds, its impact on workers will depend on their ability to access the tools, training, and infrastructure needed to adapt and to mobilize collectively to make their voices heard. As Tamayo and Petrelli (2025) argue, “[w]ithout targeted investment in education and reskilling—especially for those in low-income and marginalized communities—there is a risk that the augmentation gap will widen existing inequalities.”⁴⁸

The risk of widening inequalities is especially high among women who, compared to men, are both more likely to be engaged in roles with high automation potential (e.g., administration, logistics, data analysis) and those that offer substantial opportunities for job enhancement and upskilling if available and effectively leveraged (e.g., research, care, teaching).⁴⁹ Post-pandemic labour market changes in the occupational composition of the labour force, as documented here, have served to raise the stakes higher. As the AI juggernaut unfolds, will highly AI-exposed low-waged, marginalized workers have access to the resources needed to weather the storm? There is a great likelihood that the skills needed in an AI world will be fundamentally different from the skills needed today to secure a decent living.

This question is just as pressing for other vulnerable workers in the care economy and personal service occupations, including the growing ranks of gig workers staffing long-term care homes, tutoring students and taking care of the company books. How will the uptake of AI in its various forms influence the distribution of male and female workers across occupations and industries? What strategies are needed to prepare workers to navigate workplace change and to actively mitigate negative impacts—including the risk of widening inequalities not only between men and women, but across other cleavages in the labour market as well? As importantly, what systemic safeguards are necessary to protect the rights of workers and to help level the playing field in pursuit of decent jobs and a living wage?

Occupational segregation remains a critical barrier to women’s economic equality and well-being. It has been remarkably stable over many decades, despite rising levels of education and employment among women. Female workers have reduced their overrepresentation in clerical jobs and have made significant inroads in professional and technical occupations. Male workers have also expanded their representation in professional and technical occupations as their numbers in manufacturing and production jobs have steadily declined, all of which is working to reduce the level of occupational segregation in the labour market. But it is still the case that women continue to populate low-waged work in much greater numbers than men do. As an extensive body of research has found, women’s work tends to be more poorly paid in female-majority sectors precisely because the majority of workers are female; women’s work simply isn’t valued as highly as men’s.⁵⁰ The work done by marginalized women workers is valued even less, concentrated as they are in the most precarious and difficult jobs.⁵¹

Governments have a critical role to play in service of a more resilient and inclusive labour market and gender-just future—one where occupational segregation and earnings polarization do not limit women’s economic opportunities and financial security. The COVID-19 crisis illustrated both the shortcomings of existing policies and institutions and what’s possible with strong public leadership. The current moment demands public leadership to contain and reverse growing economic disparities in the labour market, which are at risk of widening further as the toll from the U.S. trade war mounts and the unregulated roll-out of AI proceeds. Governments should be working to facilitate and uphold the rights of all workers to decent work, to unionize, to bargain collectively and seek redress when their rights are not upheld. They should be working to bring wage rates into alignment with the actual cost of living, expanding access to labour protections for non-standard, precarious and temporary workers, and strengthening pay equity and pay transparency laws. They should be prioritizing investments in the care economy, enhancing the wages of essential care workers and improving their crushing working conditions. They should be working to modernize and strengthen existing social protections for workers and the education and training systems needed to navigate Canada’s polarized labour market, leveling the playing field for women and all marginalized workers. The pandemic recovery was a missed opportunity. The time for action is now.

Appendix: Average hourly wage by gender and occupation, 2024

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my colleagues at the CCPA and the external reviewers who kindly provided invaluable advice. My thanks as well to Trish Hennessy, Tim Scarth and the CCPA comms team who have transformed this report with their tremendous talents, at once making it more engaging and extending its reach and impact.

The post The widening gap: Gender segregation and job polarization in the post-pandemic labour market appeared first on CCPA.

Canadians are right to feel shocked about Venezuela and what it means for Canada’s future. But we should seriously question the wisdom of further doubling down on oil and gas through a new pipeline. This is just another example of Canadian elites opportunistically using a crisis to push an agenda they already held. 

President Trump was candid that Maduro’s arrest was about oil and only tangentially related to drugs or democracy. Some in Canada are concerned that a revitalization of Venezuelan heavy crude exports to the U.S. will undermine Canadian exports. 

While the situation in Venezuela is rapidly evolving, there is no imminent danger to Canada’s energy sector. Even if everything went “smoothly”—defined as no insurrection in Venezuela and a compliant government efficiently doing the U.S. government’s bidding—it will be many years before Venezuela’s oil production could be increased in a significant manner. 

To get there, U.S. corporations would need to pony up hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrade Venezuela’s infrastructure to bring those reserves to market. The outlook for oil demand a decade or more into the future is highly uncertain with many anticipating declining demand in the face of advancing cleaner technologies.

Any incremental production would go to U.S. refineries in the Gulf Coast, not the Midwest (near Chicago) where specialized refineries are already locked in to processing Canada’s heavy crude via pipeline. In 2025, 61 per cent of Canadian crude oil exports went to the Midwest compared to 14 per cent to the Gulf Coast, plus 17 per cent to other U.S. destinations and nine per cent outside the United States. 

Back in Canada, the notion that there is some legal or regulatory mechanism blocking energy development is incorrect. While many in Alberta blame former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his relatively modest actions to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, his government also oversaw a major increase in oil and gas production. 

For crude oil, production rose 34 per cent between 2015, when Trudeau was elected, to 2024, prior to his resignation. As Figure 1 shows, if anything, there is a slight acceleration from 2016 onwards. The only setback in 2020 was due to COVID-19 shutdowns, not federal climate policy. Gas production also jumped 21 per cent (not shown) over the same time period. At the end of June 2025, the new LNG Canada facility started shipping from Kitimat, BC.

Poilievre also seems to have forgotten the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, the bitumen pipeline that opened up in May 2024 and that cost the federal government $34 billion to build. The Trans Mountain system is still running at less than full capacity and additional capacity could be added, although a few more billion would need to be invested.

Because the tolls for oil shippers using Trans Mountain were set well before construction costs ballooned, the resulting revenue is not sufficient to recoup costs, amounting to an ongoing subsidy to the industry. Tom Gunton at Simon Fraser University estimates that “Canadian taxpayers could end up subsidizing oil shipments by between CAD 8.7 billion and CAD 18.8 billion, or up to CAD 1,255 per household, over the life of the project.”

Which brings us to the push for a new bitumen pipeline to the BC coast. The hold up is not Ottawa, which provided lavish gifts to the oil and gas industry in 2025. The Alberta-Canada MOU alone cleared away most of the Trudeau-era climate policy, including a proposed oil and gas cap, clean electricity regulations, anti-greenwashing legislation, and delayed implementation of regulations on methane for five years. 

The problem is that there is no private sector proponent for this new pipeline, likely to cost anywhere from $30 to 50 billion. Oil and gas corporations putting down massive sums of money need to be sure they will get an adequate return on their investment. Other much-hyped projects such as new LNG export terminals on the BC coast are similarly awaiting final investment decisions from companies. 

If Canada “must build” a new bitumen pipeline to the BC coast, the pressure will fall on the federal and Alberta governments to pay for some or all of the cost, and over the strong objections of the BC government and First Nations. The November 2025 Alberta-Canada MOU envisions First Nations as investors in the pipeline, but this would likely entail borrowing money from the federal government. 

In the bigger picture, the push for a new pipeline is building for the previous century, not the 21st century. Sadly, Canadian elites have abandoned climate action and green industrial strategy—even after a horrible wildfire season last summer, and new flooding events in BC.

Over the past couple decades, Canada has reverted to being an exporter of “staples” with a big emphasis on oil and gas (Figure 2). The Trump administration is further encouraging this shift with its tariffs on automobile, steel and aluminum exports. 

Canadian politicians have used this moment to push even more mining and oil and gas projects as the country’s primary response. The federal government and Prime Minister Carney need to hold the line by not providing more public subsidies to the oil and gas industry. 

Instead, Canada needs to develop a comprehensive economic strategy that adds value to our resources through advanced manufacturing and technology, and rises to the challenge of the unfolding climate emergency.

The post A new pipeline is the wrong response to the U.S. takeover of Venezuela  appeared first on CCPA.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is under pressure to clarify his government’s position on the illegal abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, or subsequent U.S. threats to Mexican and Colombian sovereignty, or President Trump’s lustful plans to annex Greenland, one way or another.

On Tuesday, Canada did not join France, Italy, Spain and Poland in asserting “only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations.” The PM claimed to stand with these countries but highlighted “our closest partnership is with the United States.”

Is this walking softly to avoid inflaming U.S. tensions, as Liberal MP Hedy Fry suggested, or simple alignment, at least in Venezuela? Canada has wanted Maduro gone for years. The Trudeau government, alongside Europe, supported vicious and illegal U.S. sanctions while backing the actual narco-trafficking regime of Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras—who Trump just granted a presidential pardon in December.

Whatever the Carney government’s intentions, fears or strategies with respect to Trump, it may be difficult to disentangle this week’s dramatic events from the CUSMA review.

Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela is outrageous, but it follows a common U.S. script. A similar play for Greenland would set in motion events that would render another trade negotiation with the U.S. pointless, if it is not already. 

That said, Greenland is still uninvaded and the U.S. is still expecting Canada and Mexico to go through the first CUSMA six-year review. With Canada-U.S. and Mexico-U.S. trade talks set to begin this month, and a possible Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s tariffs this week, it’s a good time to consider some of the possible outcomes.

What should we expect? There are several likely scenarios, ranging from a negotiating stalemate to various forms of compromise or conflict to Trump withdrawing from CUSMA to, in the extreme, Canada withdrawing normal relations with the United States. While some of these scenarios are more likely than others, none can be ruled out.

Before getting to those scenarios, the following table reminds us of what the U.S. government is currently demanding of its neighbours. These action items, many of them drawn from business and labour submissions to the U.S. government on the CUSMA review, come from United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s opening statement in December to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees. 

The specific demands of Canada and Mexico should be fairly straightforward and are more extensive for Mexico. The third column contains politically loaded, more open-ended proposals for aligning North American policy around investment and export screening, forced labour controls, mineral extraction, tariffs and domestic content quotas that the U.S. administration will want to favour U.S. firms. 

According to Greer, the ease of the CUSMA review will depend on Mexico and Canada agreeing to all of these proposals. The following scenarios differ based on how rigid or flexible the Trump administration is prepared to be on that point. The outcomes depend on how Canada and Mexico react.

Scenario 1: Stalemate

Earlier this week, the Eurasia Group released a report of top 10 risks to the world in 2026. The USMCA review was one of them, albeit in relatively low ninth place, due to the political risk of continued trade and investment uncertainty. 

By the group’s reckoning, there is no chance of the CUSMA review concluding this year. Instead, they see the agreement slouching along like a “zombie,” while the Trump administration pushes for maximum geoeconomic concessions from its northern and southern neighbours, either jointly or in bilateral conversations.

“Canada already scrapped its digital services tax. Mexico is imposing tariffs on China. Both are cracking down on fentanyl flows. Washington gave up nothing in return,” write Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan in their report. “Why lock into an agreement when the current approach keeps delivering for the U.S. president? Neither Canada nor Mexico can afford to walk away.”

According to the group, this scenario weighs heavily on Canada and Mexico, with little impact on the U.S. outside the auto sector. Ontario’s manufacturing sector sputters, putting political pressure on the Ford government, the federal government’s “Buy Canadian” policies and big infrastructure projects can’t fill the hole of the U.S. market, and unrelated sectors “risk becoming collateral damage.”

While the Sheinbaum government in Mexico may want a quick deal, the group proposes, the Carney government appears ready for a longer fight. This is probably true, at the moment, but it does not follow that it will stay true once negotiations commence this month. 

It’s also possible we will see a stalemate in which negotiations take longer than expected or are purposely kicked down the road—without the continued hostility assumed in the Eurasia Group report. The downside of this scenario is that it would leave the worst tariffs on Canadian industrial products in place, threatening the viability of those industries in the short term. 

Alternately, the U.S. administration may have reasons to choose economic stability over constant attack mode in North America. Though the stalemate/zombie scenario has many adherents—including, to a point, the CCPA in our submission to the government on the CUSMA review—internal factors in the United States may counteract Trump’s belligerent habits.

Scenario 2: U.S. compromise

We learned this week that U.S. manufacturing activity continues to contract and hit a 14-month low in December. This is partly due to Trump’s tariffs on manufacturing inputs weighing on profits, leading firms to draw down inventory rather than invest in new production. This is dragging on employment growth across a number of sectors including construction, warehousing and manufacturing. 

Public approval of Trump’s handling of the economy continues to drop as cost-of-living concerns persist. Furthermore, as early as this Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule against all or parts of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs put in place under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This isn’t a sure thing, but U.S. customs officials have been figuring out how to pay back importers affected by the global tariffs to this point and the administration has a “Plan B” to substitute in comparable tariffs.

All of this is happening months before a U.S. midterm election in which the Republicans are widely expected to lose the House of Representatives. Should the Trump administration continue to feel pressure to lower consumer costs, or face scrutiny over economic underperformance, or simply want to ensure Congress has no say in the CUSMA review, it may settle for less than what it advertised through Greer’s presentations in December.

In this scenario, Canada and Mexico give ground on some U.S. demands but avoid the anticipated Trump chokehold. For example, Canada could adjust the way it distributes tariff rate quota for dairy imports (to give a little more import quota to retailers), adjust or pause aspects of the Online News Act, and put U.S. alcohol back on store shelves. 

The three countries may also, in this scenario, jointly agree to raise North American content requirements for tariff-free treatment within and outside the automotive sector. Some form of enhanced cooperation on industrial supply chains for “critical” minerals is imaginable, though here the Venezuelan example—the U.S. taking what it wants—is not encouraging. 

I’m not advocating that Canada should concede on any of these points. In fact, I think it would be very unfortunate to. However, this would seem to be the lowest-friction option, failing which we’re back to stalemate, or worse, a bigger cave-in to U.S. demands. 

Scenario 3: Capitulation

A third plausible scenario blends the first two—a combination of a maximalist, take-it-or-leave-it proposal from Trump via Greer and rapid acquiescence from Canada and/or Mexico. In this case, Canada, and possibly Mexico, take a huge hit in the sovereignty and national pride department just to keep CUSMA ticking. 

Canada’s big business lobby favours this scenario. There has been a steady trickle of pointless or self-serving opinion pieces recently saying Trump’s pressure on dairy supply management will do this country good. Even the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation in the U.S. can see this is nonsense.

“[M]ore dairy is produced in the state of Wisconsin than there is in all of Canada,” said Andrew Hale of the foundation in a recent National Post article. “Are we really gonna upend (CUSMA) over milk and cheese?” 

Capitulation on dairy, procurement, the Online News Act, and potentially poisonous limitations on Canada’s independent foreign and trade policy would also appear to go against the Prime Minister’s intentions to hold off for a good deal. I still wouldn’t rule it out. 

Canada and the U.S. are aligned on the desire to expand fossil fuel production and mining through incentives and deregulation. The Ford government in Ontario has advertised its desire for more U.S. involvement in provincial resource development in its Fortress Am-Can. Then, of course, there is the precedent of the Canadian government backing down early by lowering reciprocal tariffs and cancelling the digital services tax.

A final note on capitulation: it’s possible the Trump administration would try to bring investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS—a system of private tribunals in which corporations and investors can directly sue governments for lost profits) back into CUSMA, as proposed by several influential business lobbies in the United States including the National Mining Association. Whatever former deputy prime ministers have said about the evils of ISDS, Canada would probably eagerly accept this proposal.

In her 2025 Freshfields lecture on NAFTA’s role in the development and evolution of ISDS, former Canadian government trade lawyer Meg Kinnear—now a high-priced arbitrator on investor-state disputes against Turkmenistan, Ukraine and the Philippines—excitedly considers the possibility of a re-entry of ISDS into CUSMA. Canada just signed a NAFTA-like investment treaty with the United Arab Emirates, a monarchical dictatorship reasonable people consider brutal.

Recent U.S. actions in Latin America should scare Canada and Mexico away from this idea. Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and appropriation of the country’s oil fields is a kind of investment arbitration enforcement action—the seizure of assets in lieu of payment by the Maduro government for a litany of extremely expensive recent ISDS losses, including several from Canadian mining companies. 

Canada typically pays its ISDS awards, even the blatantly unjust ones, but why increase the risk of future invasion in the event we come to our senses and exit the ISDS racket completely? 

Scenario 4: CUSMA termination

Similar to the last scenario, Trump could easily decide he’s done with CUSMA, terminate the agreement and pursue bilateral deals with Mexico and Canada. USTR Greer has hinted at this option several times in the past two months. 

In this case, Trump uses the maximum pressure of potentially high tariffs across much or all of Canada’s exports to extract a Malaysia, South Korea or EU-style deal focused on increased Canadian investment in the U.S. and and formal geoeconomic alignment on things like supply chain security, Chinese investment, etc. In return, the U.S. lowers but does not entirely remove tariffs on Canadian imports. 

Does Canada have any leverage in this scenario to get a better deal than other countries have from the Trump administration? Yes, but leverage is only as good as your willingness to use it. Canada’s oil card is less valuable after the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and may have prompted a similar response from American neocons were we to seriously threaten U.S. supplies. Matching Trump’s “national security” tariffs on metals and other goods could be helpful by compounding cost pressures on U.S. manufacturing at a moment of weakness.

The goal in such a move would be to come to agreement quickly with the Trump administration. But this is not Canada’s only hope. It is not true that a CUSMA termination would leave us without a trade deal with the United States, for example. The WTO agreements, which mirrored NAFTA, still bind both countries. In fact, Canada was more likely to bring trade disputes against the U.S. to the WTO than the NAFTA or CUSMA dispute settlement procedures. 

Also, until recently, few North American firms bothered to get certified as CUSMA-compliant—to profit from zero tariff rates—because the WTO most-favoured nation rates were so low. That said, most Canadian firms have now become CUSMA compliant to avoid Trump’s fentanyl and border tariffs, which has limited the damage of the trade war outside of sectors facing higher national security tariffs (automotive, lumber, steel, aluminum, etc.).

The end result of a bilateral negotiation outside of CUSMA would probably be a non-enforceable (for Canada) arrangement involving baseline tariffs on most exports, some kind of commitment to invest in the U.S. or buy U.S. goods (e.g., defence), an import quota regime for steel, aluminum and automotive products, and closer alignment on Trump’s foreign policy—for as long as the Trump administration exists, that is.

Uncertain futures 

The above scenarios assume Canada is reacting to circumstances out of its control. This is only true in the extreme case. A U.S. annexation of Greenland would compel the Carney government to sever normal relations with the aggressor United States. The CUSMA review simply wouldn’t happen in this context. Annexation of Canada is still a real possibility, however faint we may hope it is.

“I don’t think they’re musings, I think he’s got a view about who we are and what we’re all about, that is that he can run the country better than us,” said former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae in a recent discussion of Trump’s 51st state threats. “I think we all just sort of shake our heads with a sense of amazement, but we have to go beyond just that amazement and then recognize that this guy is for real, and the real is not pretty or legal.”

Outside of this extreme scenario, we have options. Canadians worried and angry about Trump’s brazen violation of state sovereignty in Venezuela and his police terrorism within the United States may ask why we would negotiate anything with the increasingly fascistic White House. Why don’t we walk away from CUSMA? 

It is a reasonable question and, depending on how the review goes, a reasonable choice. It’s a question too big for the Prime Minister and his close advisors alone to answer. 

The post Countdown to the CUSMA review appeared first on CCPA.

The move was outrageous for many reasons, and not even the first time the United States had sanctioned an ICC chief prosecutor. Khan’s predecessor was also in Trump’s crosshairs when she opened an investigation into crimes in Afghanistan, where the actions of the United States would not be excluded. 

The sanctions on Khan hampered the work of the court, and he found that not only were his UK bank accounts frozen, but he also lost access to his Microsoft email address. He ended up switching to Swiss privacy-focused provider Proton Mail. While it has not made the same impact in Canada, the news about Khan losing his access to Microsoft services quickly rippled through the halls of power across Europe when it was revealed in May.

The withdrawal of service showed European lawmakers how vulnerable their access to the technologies they rely on not just in their personal lives, but to run governments and key institutions. They were also facing escalating pressure from the Trump administration and the billionaires of Silicon Valley to roll back their world-leading tech regulations, and U.S. Vice President JD Vance showed up on the continent a week after Khan was sanctioned to lecture Europe about its values, approach to free speech, and attempts to exclude the neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany from political power.

Microsoft tried to distance itself from the controversy, but even its spokesperson admitted there had been a “disconnection of [the court’s] sanctioned official.” The company didn’t help its case when Microsoft France’s director of public and legal affairs told the French Senate under oath in June that it “cannot guarantee” it would be able to deny requests from the Trump administration for data stored on its servers within the European Union.

As European lawmakers grew increasingly concerned about a U.S. digital “kill switch” and the security of the cloud services supplied by major U.S. companies they’d come to rely on, one thing was clear: they were not nearly as sovereign as they previously believed, and their dependence on U.S. tech had to be addressed.

Rolling back tech regulation

Canada is not immune from these vulnerabilities. Due to our geographic proximity to and greater dependence on the United States, they are arguably even more present as Canadians reassess our relationship with our neighbour to the south. We have already seen how effectively the United States can apply pressure to Canada in the tech domain and beyond.

If we look at Europe, the pressure from U.S. tech executives like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg or Apple CEO Tim Cook is much more apparent. The chief executives and company spokespeople regularly single out European regulations causing them commercial headaches. In Canada, that pressure is still there; the executives just don’t often speak out publicly. The more vocal opposition is outsourced to domestic tech leaders and our own coterie of commentators that echo narratives beneficial to the big U.S. tech giants.

Over the past couple years, we saw a concerted campaign by Canadian tech executives, aligned with the right-wing politics their counterparts in Silicon Valley adopted, begin to openly push a political program in their interests, often paired with explicit support for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party. However, since Mark Carney replaced Justin Trudeau at the helm of the Liberal Party, they’ve embraced the central banker-in-chief. He’s committed to attracting investment above all else, and that means he’s much more open to their policy demands.

As a result, we’ve seen a rapid erosion in the government’s efforts to rein in U.S. tech companies. Since April, planned AI regulations have been put on ice, along with the Online harms bill that sought to address harmful behaviour in online spaces. That was in spite of concretely seeing how those platforms are used by bad actors to sow division within society as wildfires spread across the country again this past summer. In parts of the country, local politicians had to directly respond to disinformation spreading online that people desperate for updates were falling for.

In June, another pillar in the Trudeau government’s attempt to regulate the tech industry fell when Donald Trump walked away from trade negotiations, saying he would only return once the Canadian government repealed its digital services tax. Executives like Zuckerberg have lobbied Trump to try to kill those taxes in countries around the world. Late on the Sunday night before the tax was supposed to come into effect, Carney and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced it would be sacrificed so talks could continue. Months later, a comprehensive deal with the United States remains elusive.

It can be easy to believe that all this pressure is a product of the way Trump’s return to office emboldened U.S. tech companies, but it’s simply brought a longstanding process out into the open. The U.S. government has long recognized how much it benefits from ensuring other countries are dependent on products and services made by companies in its jurisdiction. For years, it used trade negotiations to insert clauses in agreements that limit foreign governments’ ability to regulate its tech companies and has used its diplomats to apply pressure in other ways.

For example, CUSMA contains measures that constrain the authority of the Canadian government to regulate the tech industry. The agreement limits the ability to regulate cross-border data flows, to force companies to reveal their source code, to discriminate between foreign and domestic tech firms, or to expect them to store data on Canadians within our borders. On top of that, U.S. officials under the Biden administration regularly pressured the government when it moved forward with tech regulations, including with the streaming bill and digital services tax. The Online News Act is the latest to find itself in U.S. crosshairs.

Protecting the global market share and curtailing attempts to rein in U.S. tech companies is bipartisan policy in the United States. They may occasionally get angry at certain domestic consequences of the tech products they depend on, but Democrats and Republicans alike are not very concerned about how those issues play out beyond the country’s borders. Ensuring other countries depend on U.S. tech companies not only increases U.S. power, but also provides it with ample economic benefits.

The consequences of dependence

Political developments in the 1980s and 1990s played a key role in shaping the dominant position the United States holds today. In the late 1980s, then Senator Al Gore recognized that technology and power were inseparable. In a speech to the senate, he declared that “the nation which most completely assimilates high-performance computing into its economy will very likely emerge as the dominant intellectual, economic, and technological force in the next century.”

Gore and President Bill Clinton were intent on ensuring the United States reaped the gains of the emerging internet. What started as a military and academic project had already begun to be commercialized, and in 1995, they completed the handover of the public infrastructure to the private sector. U.S. companies got a head start on building the businesses that would dominate the digital economy, and much easier access to capital to rapidly scale domestically and later internationally.

In those years, the model of the internet was established—and the private sector was firmly in charge. There were debates about carving out a “public lane” on the “information superhighway,” but those efforts were ultimately defeated. 

The U.S. government used its influence to push for telecom deregulation and the removal of trade barriers around the world, aiding its companies to move into international markets. Tech advocacy groups assisted in their own way by crafting a narrative that the internet was inherently liberatory and any attempts by governments to restrict the expansion of digital services, platforms, and the companies that run them was an inherent breach of their citizens’ rights. Over time, U.S. companies rode the wave to global dominance, and as they took over new markets, domestic competitors were acquired or simply failed in face of the pressure.

Our dependence on U.S. tech has long been a problem, just one that many people in power did not want to touch because of how it would anger the United States. Even proposing basic tech regulations prompted rebukes from the U.S. government and threatened the prospect of investment from those digital colonizers. But that dependence left us without the tools to get a handle on key avenues for communication and commerce.

As U.S. tech companies fought to roll back workers’ rights in the gig economy and beyond, allowed false information to spread across social media platforms, decimated the funding model for journalism, and had countless other negative social impacts, the Canadian government was limited in its ability to respond. All the while, as more Canadians—both individuals and companies—became dependent on U.S. digital services, the profits were siphoned back to the United States, fueling a growing economic divide that has prompted economists to start sounding the alarm.

Reclaiming digital sovereignty

There is one thing we can say for Trump’s attacks on Canada: they have finally given us the space to speak openly and honestly about many of the ways the U.S.-Canada relationship has not been working for us for a very long time—and the digital dimension of our lopsided economic integration is a massive part of that. If Canada is to regain greater autonomy over its affairs and build a better society, we must get serious about reclaiming our digital sovereignty.

Since Trump’s return to office, governments have been ramping up defence spending to ensure they can defend themselves in a world where the United States is no longer a security guarantor and possibly even a security threat. That same seriousness should be given to digital technology.

As our European allies have found first hand, our dependence on U.S. companies for cloud services creates a severe vulnerability, where the U.S. government can request whatever data it wants or can even shut off our access at a moment’s notice. During the election campaign, Carney said he would be reassessing public cloud contracts going to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. More recently, when he announced the first batch of nation-building projects, the prime minister called out the need for a sovereign cloud. He is taking steps in the right direction, but the devil will be in the details.

Our ambition cannot stop there though. In far too many cases, our governments, universities, schools, and other public institutions—not to mention private businesses—are run on Microsoft or Google services. Now is the perfect time to get governments off Microsoft 365 and schools off Google Classroom by properly resourcing a new public agency or Crown corporation dedicated to building technology in the public interest.

European state, local, and even departments of national governments are already taking the initiative to move in that direction. There are ample open-source tools already out there that could be adapted to those institutional use cases, with a mandate to work in close collaboration with public institutions to ensure their new suite of digital services properly meets their unique needs. Governments could even think about bringing tech development closer to communities, building on a model not dissimilar to public libraries.

We have an opportunity to think bigger and to challenge those fundamental assumptions that were crafted in the 1990s to convince us digital technology had to be left to the private sector. For three decades, the goal of tech development has not been to improve our lives or to serve the public good, but rather to maximize shareholder value and to increase the power of the companies that control it. It’s that nature of digital technology that is at the root of so many of the social harms that the tech oligopoly have saddled us with in recent years. We need to recognize that was a choice, and we can choose to take a different path.

But we must also be aware of the pitfalls ahead. Some Canadian tech executives that, until recently, were pushing for a Conservative government are embracing a program of digital sovereignty as well, but it is explicitly not one that centres the public good. Instead, they’re pushing the government to continue pulling back on regulations, while deploying billions through public procurement, incentives, and subsidies to flood into their businesses. They want to hold onto the Silicon Valley model and the harms that it’s created, but better cash in on it for themselves. They want to join the digital colonizers rather than bring them down.

The post Every data centre is a U.S. military base appeared first on CCPA.

It had been a years-long battle. Starting in 1972, the union had been encouraging the public to boycott the then-new postal code system, because the workers managing the new automated sorting system inside warehouses were paid significantly less than previous hand-sorters. 

As former CUPW leader Jean-Claude Parrot outlined in his memoir My Union, My Life, this new article provided a clear definition of technological change, required management to provide advanced notice, and protected the jobs of workers subjected to the change. 

The words in the contract were not enough, though. Almost immediately after signing, management began implementing a flurry of new technological changes and ignoring the language of the agreement they had signed—even arguing before labour tribunals that they had the right to ignore it. Before long, postal workers were walking off the job in wildcat strikes across the country. Eventually, the two sides reached something of an agreement, and postal workers won a number of imperfect protections. 

It was, Parrot writes, a time when policy-makers and employers were pushing technological changes harder than ever before. Initially, they sold it as a dream—technological change would allow for greater leisure time and less work. The economy would be more efficient, and all would move together into a future of common abundance. What they got instead was low-wage automated tasks and new workplace surveillance technologies like Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in postal warehouses. 

Their employers said that they were simply opposed to technological advancement, clinging to the past. They were enemies of progress—they were, in other words, Luddites.

Today, that term is generally used as a pejorative for someone who has an irrational fear of technological development, or even of the very concept of “progress,” which boosters so often use as a stand-in for technology. It’s a term that is being used more frequently these days, as tech oligarchs attempt to roll out new “artificial intelligence” systems in workplaces, communities, and institutions across the world. 

The Canadian government, for its part, is “all in” on AI development, according to newly minted Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Evan Solomon. Despite deep and brutal cuts across public services, the 2025 federal budget dedicates over $1 billion in new funding to develop AI infrastructure over the next five years. A significant chunk of that will presumably go towards rolling out those systems within government in order to “streamline” operations and enable the promised layoffs and cash savings.

Public sector unions will, of course, oppose these measures, which will eliminate good jobs and worsen the quality of public services. For their opposition, they will likely be called Luddites—opponents of progress.

But that argument fundamentally misunderstands what the workers’ movement fights for with regard to technological development—as well as what the actual Luddites stood for.

Breaking the machines

In the early 1800s, there was a name on the lips of every mill owner in England and Wales: Ned Ludd. 

Over the course of over a decade (peaking in 1811-12, when attacks were near daily), hundreds of textile mills had been subject to attacks by mobs of masked individuals who broke into mills to destroy machines in the night, sometimes clashing with local sheriffs and security forces in the process. 

The people engaged in the attacks were skilled textile workers who were seeing their lives upended by the arrival of the new industrial weaving machines. Those machines helped convert their skilled and relatively well-paid work into cheap, unskilled, industrial piecework, with the low wages that came along with it. 

Whenever they destroyed a mill, they signed their action under the name of their supposed leader, Ned Ludd—an imaginary figure who, legend had it, smashed two knitting frames after having been lashed with a whip by his boss for being idle. The movement of machine breakers the legend inspired called themselves Luddites.

Despite the way that the term “Luddite” is used today, those workers were not simple technophobes fighting a doomed battle against inevitable progress. “Their revolt was not against machines in themselves, but against the industrial society that threatened their established ways of life, and of which machines were the chief weapon,” writes Gavin Mueller, author of Breaking Things at Work, which frames Luddism as an enduring part of the workers’ movement.

“To say they fought against machines makes about as much sense as saying a boxer fights against fists.”

The Luddites’ actions, Mueller argues, took place in an era when the nature of work was undergoing a profound shift—from production occurring via small artisans towards the mass industrial model that still dominates today. Because the Luddites’ rebellion occurred during this transition period, workers were not yet organized as a class, and did not have the capacity to engage in modern industrial action like strikes and collective bargaining. So, rather, they engaged in coordinated acts of sabotage. They were engaged in what historian Eric Hobsbawm calls “collective bargaining by riot.” 

The Luddites were one of the earliest and most explosive flashpoints where workers were explicitly organized against exploitation-increasing technologies. They were also one of the clearest, because of their near-exclusive and deliberate targeting of the machines themselves. But resistance to management technologies has been a longstanding and permanent feature of labour relations under capitalism. 

Whether the early machines of industrial mass production, the technology that enabled the automation wave in the 1970s and 80s, or today’s digital “AI” technologies, workers have consistently turned technological change into a terrain of struggle, both inside and outside the workplace.

Scientific management, then and now

Organizing Foodora couriers in Toronto was no easy task. The food delivery app—similar to others like Doordash, Uber Eats, and JustEat—had workers all across Toronto, without a single worksite or any way for the workers to be in contact with one another. The company, like so many other “gig economy” operations, also classified its couriers as “independent contractors” rather than workers, which prevented them from legally forming a union under the Ontario labour code. 

The couriers were “managed” by the app on their phones, rather than by a human manager. They would sign up for schedule blocks and then be assigned work based on the automated functioning of the app’s algorithm, which also included various types of productivity-scoring measures that were invisible to the workers but had major impacts on the types of jobs that they were offered. 

That type of management is known as “algorithmic management,” a term that scholars initially coined to describe the labour model of Uber and Lyft before applying it to other “gig economy” operations.

At its most basic, algorithmic management refers to the automation of certain supervisory and management tasks. In the case of food courier operations, such as Foodora, that means the dispatch worker. As Callum Cant writes in Riding for Deliveroo, a memoir about organizing gig couriers at the UK-based gig courier operation, the app serves as an automated dispatcher, removing the need for that type of human labour. The app also serves as a disciplinary agent, much like a human manager does by punishing workers who work slowly and rewarding productivity. All of this is done in a way that is deliberately made to keep workers isolated from one another.

Gig economy operations typically describe themselves as technology companies, as if the “innovation” that they produce is primarily technological in nature. They present themselves as being driven by inventiveness and innovation. But they aren’t inventing new products—taxis existed before Uber, just as food delivery existed before Foodora. The primary innovation that these companies are engaged in is administrative and managerial.

Algorithmic management—of which the coming wave of workplace AI should be considered an extension—is the latest in a long line of managerial science innovations whose primary goal is to extract more value from labour. Beginning with Frederick Taylor, the American engineer credited with creating the principles of scientific management, the entire discipline of management has been primarily concerned with how to “rationalize” the labour force in order to extract the most profit from each unit of labour.

“Taylorism,” as it came to be known, went about that in two principle ways—through work intensification and de-skilling of skilled labour. Later “innovations” in management science, such as Henry Ford’s assembly line system and Toyota’s system of “lean production”, continued that process. Algorithmic management has amplified it further.

Workers, of course, have the opposite interests, which is why the technology that enables these changes often becomes such an important flashpoint in workplace struggles. 

Foodora workers—backed by none other than the Canadian Union of Postal Workers—won their union drive in 2020, after an Ontario labour tribunal found that they had been illegally misclassified as independent contractors. Some of the primary animating factors in the success of the drive were a desire to have greater say over the application’s algorithmic management on issues like shift distribution. Foodora shut down its Canadian operations shortly afterwards, and had to pay a significant sum of money to the workers whose union it had busted.

Technology is built in the image of its owners

In 1971, the recently elected socialist government of Chile embarked on a new and unprecedented project: it was going to create a network of computers that could talk to one another. They were going to create the internet, or at least something like it.

Project Cybersyn, as it was called, built on the growing discipline of cybernetics. The vision, as outlined by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski in their history of economic planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart, was to connect computers on factory floors across the country to each other and to the State Development Corporation, in order to facilitate economic planning. Chile’s president, Salvadore Allende, hoped that it could be used by worker-owned workplaces to coordinate democratizing the economy. 

It all came to an end when U.S.-backed elements of the military, led by Augusto Pinochet, overthrew the government and installed a brutal military dictatorship in 1973, which enjoyed full U.S. support until its fall in 1988. Project Cybersyn was consigned to be a footnote in history.

The world certainly would look different today if Chile’s mission—to create the technology of democratic socialist economic planning—had succeeded. Instead, the field of technological advancement is dominated by capitalist firms looking to use technological advances to squeeze ever-increasing profits out of workers, consumers, and the natural world.

Technology works in the interest of its owners. Until working people hold democratic control over the development and deployment of technology, it will continue to be a force to accelerate the exploitation of workers and further the interests of bosses. It’s no surprise, then, that workers continue to be animated by the spirit of Ned Ludd.

The post Reviving Ned Ludd appeared first on CCPA.

The idea that a country wants to have agency over its technology systems is understandable. But let’s take care not to confuse this desire with anything resembling progressive politics. To achieve a progressive digital sovereignty requires investment, work, and power shifting beyond anything current and past governments have shown the stomach for. 

The chaos of the moment will not be the last in a line of upheavals, including an evolving relationship with our southern neighbour. In this context, we should be making all possible efforts to refuse tech policy that installs more rigid and stale colonial nationalism directly into our infrastructure, creating an ever more brittle culture. What’s needed is a pluralistic and adaptive tech policy paradigm focused on localization, openness, repair, and maintenance. A paradigm that prioritizes investments in the people around the tech, not the tech itself.  

This paradigm includes pragmatic acceptance of the current state—and use—of digital infrastructures in both public and private sectors. Consider three parts of this landscape: legacy infrastructures, the public sector data environment, and digital public infrastructure.  

Legacy Infrastructures

Legacy infrastructures, in both the public and private sectors, are complex, deeply built out, and enmeshed. These are decades-old sets of investments in large, highly used, and hardened systems—from telecommunications to software to databases, many of which are not Canadian. These are, generally, monolithic systems, in engineering shorthand. From a technical angle, these aren’t the types of systems you change unless you must. In the public sector context, legacy systems are underfunded, taken for granted, and ill-maintained.

The idea that we must have Canadian versions of these systems is non-viable. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to replicate existing capacities, many of which are as banal as case management systems. Databases. These systems have been over-engineered, to our detriment. And while there is likely some value in understanding how to reorganize them in incremental ways, it would be a major work effort.

Much of our digital environment is like capital expenditures in decades past—things like highways or factories. The pieces aren’t easily movable, and it would be folly to build them twice. There is, however, work to be done to build on top of and around them—but the dependencies will remain. Interdependence is not something that we can eliminate. There are hard constraints on the marginal value of investing public monies in managing these engineering realities differently. 

The public sector data environment

Next, turn to the public sector and its approach to data management. Recently, federal leaders have made announcements that signal desire to apply artificial intelligence to public service operations at all orders of government. There is, however (and thankfully), a wide gap between the realities of the public sector data environment, both federally, provincially, and at the local level, and the idea that major productivity gains are around the corner via automation. 

Government-held data is subject to a range of regulations and conditions. At the operational level, there are still workflows that depend on manual extraction and copying from system to system. Beyond these technical frictions, there are also political, administrative, and legal ones—federalism, public sector culture, organizational design, and engineering constraints. These factors generally combine and conspire to stop anything from happening too quickly in public service reform. Which is a good thing. 

Meanwhile, the federal government recently awarded a company named Cohere some type of access to our public data systems through a memorandum of understanding. The announcements about the endeavour are vague: improving public service operations and expanding commercial opportunities, with an emphasis on the value of supporting a Canadian company. There are numerous reasons why we can’t run any old commercial product through a public sector data environment, but whether it’s Canadian or not, we have to reorganize this discussion into one about labour rather than one about domestic innovation. 

Most of the computational infrastructure in government bureaucracies manages banal tasks. Politicians’ recent enthusiasm to push public sector automation is driven by a longstanding political interest in efficiency. The question for policy here, as ever, is what, exactly, should be subject to automation, and why.  One could argue that having more data scientists on hand is a better adaptive approach for long-term public benefit than any automated tooling. 

Digital public infrastructure

Finally, there is the matter of digital public infrastructure. This is a useful site for more attention in our digital sovereignty conversations. There is a track of digital public infrastructure work currently underway by the federal government, one that requires immense amounts of inter-departmental coordination. The three core parts of a digital public infrastructure program, as per the 2023 G20 multilateral consensus and guiding principles on digital public infrastructure, are: digital identity, digital payments, and data exchange systems. 

Digital public infrastructure requires careful development, public engagement, and ongoing investments in maintenance to ensure issues related to democratic legitimacy, consent, accessibility, and surveillance are addressed. This program must also always include parallel investments in analogue systems for equity and redundancy purposes, as well as be optional rather than mandatory in its use. 

Investment in digital public infrastructure is one approach to ensure that the increased focus on digital sovereignty does more than enrich a small number of Canadian tech firms—a handful of which are well-situated to receive billions of dollars in public money.

Digital public infrastructure helps create the conditions for more place-based innovation policy and effort, outcomes that build on the federal government’s commitment to deliver universal high-speed internet access by 2030.  This approach offers an alternative to the extractive shape of data centre placement politics—a political economy we should be running away from, not towards. It also encourages us to use best-of-class technology, as per international standards. 

A digital industrial strategy

The real world of digital sovereignty should be about investing in people over products. Digital anything is secondary to primary responsibilities of reconciliation, repair, and equity in service delivery and procurement. 

The path we’re on instead is techno-solutionism: the cheapest, straightest line governments can choose towards efficiency and savings, and the most impoverished innovation strategy possible for a young country with every opportunity to do differently. 

The post A digital infrastructure plan appeared first on CCPA.

However, this pursuit of seamless digital trade has often come at the cost of digital sovereignty. In our quest to facilitate international trade, Canada agreed to rules that compromise our ability to fully control and regulate our digital landscape. These agreements, while beneficial for trade, limit Canada’s ability to protect our data, enforce privacy standards, and consider local economic interests. 

Large tech firms in the U.S. and elsewhere can decide how social media operates, how disinformation spreads, and who can access our data if it is stored in an international data centre. None of that is sovereign. 

The path to regaining governance capacity over our digital world is long. We need to impose current and new rules on large digital platforms. We also need to gain the right to hold platforms accountable in the first place. 

The United States shields digital platforms from liability for third-party content through Section 230 of the Communications Act (1996). Canada enshrined something similar into CUSMA in 2018. This means that, while Canada could implement its own law that would hold digital platforms liable for hate speech published by a third party on its platform, only companies not subject to cross-border CUSMA rules would be required to follow it. 

Canada hasn’t been absent from the digital sovereignty fight. The current moment in Canada’s economic history requires us to become more savvy about our digital trade agenda and rebuild the ability to regulate international digital companies operating inside Canada. A core challenge to reclaiming sovereignty is that we’ve tied our hands through successive trade deals.  

The digital chapter in CUSMA (Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement) may be the most egregious, but the CETA (EU–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) and even the new Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement restrict the ability of the Canadian government to regulate certain aspects of our digital economy in the public interest. 

Under CUSMA’s digital trade chapter, Canada promised not to pass rules that treat American or Mexican digital products—such as apps, e-books, online games, streaming content and connected software—worse than a similar Canadian digital product. That means Canada can’t develop a law or regulation that explicitly boosts made-in-Canada apps through higher rankings, lower fees or taxes foreign digital products more heavily, as these would likely fail the non-discrimination test. One exception to this rule is for defence-related purchases. 

We’re also barred from requiring that data collected by foreign companies be processed and stored locally—that means that even if Canada builds a true sovereign cloud, the country will not be able to require digital giants based in the United States to use it. 

CUSMA bars us from requiring transparency from any digital provider regarding their source code or algorithms—bye-bye social media and AI safety. We cannot restrict the cross-border transfer of information by electronic means unless it is necessary to achieve a legitimate public policy objective. And once data has crossed the border, it is no longer subject to Canada’s laws, including privacy laws. 

Like CUSMA, the CEPA and CETA require that suppliers from their countries are treated no less favourably than Canadian firms—making “buy Canadian” more difficult to achieve. 

The CETA agreement also made it more difficult for financial regulators and supervisors to act or react to changing markets by designing laws or regulations to curb undesirable market behaviour or outcomes. 

The U.S.’s CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data), which is not a trade agreement, allows U.S. authorities to gather American companies to disclose data, including e-mail and other electronic communication, documents stored on a cloud and non-content data.

Canada has spent numerous legislative sessions trying to assert some form of sovereignty over the markets digital conglomerates operate in. The Online Streaming Act, the Online News Act and the Online Harms Act are all recent, high-profile examples of the federal government trying to exert autonomy and control over our digital world, with one hand tied behind their back. 

Meta and Google had different approaches to undermining the Online News Act, but undermine they did—Google by negotiating a lower price tag in exchange for its agreement to pay, and Meta by blocking Canadian news from its apps entirely. 

TikTok was banned from all federal government devices and the company was forced to close its Canada office. That hasn’t changed the fact that the data TikTok collects from Canadians travels across borders and can be accessed under the rules of whatever country the data is stored in. The move may have given the public the illusion of action but deeper questions about what was achieved remain. 

Achieving full digital sovereignty requires multiple infrastructures and rules layered on top of each other.

In September, 70 individuals and national organizations published an open letter listing 14 recommendations that, together, can help build digital sovereignty. They range from introducing a new and improved online harms act and reconsidering the cancellation of the digital services tax to establishing a national observatory for digital governance and building the capacity of the public service to govern the digital marketplace.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has mentioned a sovereign cloud, with a plan to build data centres across the country. In their election platform, the Liberals promised to regulate AI and to unlock its full potential. That’s not possible without digital sovereignty. 

All of these efforts will absolutely help us build sovereign digital infrastructure. But without renegotiating trade rules, any company operating in Canada will have the ability to opt out of most regulations the government sets. 

If we don’t have control over what digital tech companies are and are not allowed to do with our data or how they are or are not allowed to manipulate us, then they will always be in charge and we will always be subordinate. 

Right now they decide what information is delivered to our feeds, how disinformation is allowed to spread and whether or not kids are at risk of being addicted to technology. In the United States, they can be made to share our data with authorities. They decide how e-commerce businesses and large companies are ranked in apps, what books are recommended for us to read and what job advertisements Canadians see. 

With the right digital alternatives in place, Canadians could choose to avoid the extractive, manipulative architecture that puts all of our privacy and sovereignty at risk. But those other options will always be available if we’re not allowed to kick them out, or require them to operate by our rules. 

Canada needs our sovereignty back. Getting it will require rewriting trade rules. 

The post The trade war goes digital appeared first on CCPA.

By the numbers summary

• By 9:23 a.m. on January 2 Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs had already made what the average worker will make all year.
• CEOs are enjoying another year of smashed records:
  • Highest paid CEO in Canadian history: $205.5 million for Shopify’s CEO.
  • Highest average pay for the top 100 Canadian CEOs: $16.2 million.
  • Highest “minimum wage” for a CEO to get on the highest-paid list: $7.2 million.
  • Biggest gap between CEO pay and average workers’ pay: 248 times.
• Since 2020, CEO pay is up by 49 per cent and workers’ pay is up by 15 per cent. Compare that to the cost of living:
  • Beef is up by 39 per cent, chicken is up by 27 per cent, bacon is up by 29 per cent, and pasta is up by 47 per cent.
  • Rent is up by 26 per cent, home ownership is up by 29 per cent, utilities are up 23 per cent.
• Corporate profits now exceed $600 billion a year, well above pre-pandemic levels:
  • CEO pay now comprises of 84 per cent bonuses—bonuses that are based on corporate profits.

Soaring to even greater heights

The average pay of the 100 highest -paid CEOs in Canada soared to a new record in 2024 of $16.2 million. This bested the previous record, which was set in 2022, of $14.9 million for the highest-paid S&P/TSX composite CEOs.

CEO pay can be strongly influenced by extreme pay packages for those at the very top of the list. The highest-paid CEO in 2024 became the highest-paid CEO in Canadian history, making $205.5 million—for Shopify’s CEO. Over the 19 years that the CCPA has been tracking CEO compensation, we’ve never recorded a single year compensation package that high. The former highest-paid CEO was Valeant Pharmaceuticals’ CEO in 2015, who was paid $182.9 million.

The “minimum wage” required to get on the top 100 list also hit an all-time high in 2024, at $7.2 million—beating the previous record of $6.9 million from 2023.

For context, today’s highest-paid CEOs are paid more than double what they were paid in the late 2000s. CEOs used to be able to make it on the highest-paid 100 list by making a “meagre” $3 million. Now it takes over $7 million. The average workers’ wages have only gone up by half that proportion over the same period.

Average workers’ wages and CEO wages do go up over time, often to keep up with rising prices. Seeing new pay highs year after year isn’t nearly as concerning as the widening ratio of CEO pay to average workers’ pay: it hit a new all-time high. Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs now make, on average, 248 times more than the average worker in Canada. This beat the previous record of 246 times set in 2022.

In 2024, the average worker took home $65,548, which is up by almost $3,000 from the previous year. By comparison, average highest-paid CEO compensation went up by $3 million since the previous year—widening the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay.

It’s challenging to represent massive disparities like a CEO making 248 times more than the average worker. Sometimes representing this in terms of time can help: the highest-paid CEOs made $7,812 an hour in 2024, equivalent to making $130 every minute of every working day.

If we assume both average workers and CEOs get paid vacation, then it takes just over eight hours on the first weekday of the New Year for Canada’s highest-paid CEOs to make what the average worker will make all year: $65,548. By 9:23 a.m. on January 2, the highest-paid CEOs already make what will take the average worker to make all year.

If we look back in time, CEOs made around 170 times more than the average worker in 2008. In the late 1990s, the ratio was 104 times.¹ The data is somewhat less certain in the 1980s, as the gaps were much smaller and weren’t tracked in as much detail, but it was likely in the 40 to 50 times range.

CEOs have always been paid more than the average worker, but the gap has grown five times larger over the past four decades.

Inflation is easy to absorb, with a $5 million raise

Affordability is on everyone’s mind, thanks to the explosion in prices starting in 2021. The cost of everything has shot up, making it harder for Canadians to afford the basics. This certainly means squeezed family budgets, but it also means much worse consequences—like record-high demand for food banks² and unhoused populations camping out in parks with no affordable places to live.

In 2020, just before inflation reared its head, average worker pay stood at $57,024. As of 2024, it had increased to $65,548—a 15 per cent hike ($8,500) over those four years. Over the same period, the highest-paid CEO average compensation rose from $10.9 million to $16.2 million—a 49 per cent pay spike ($5.2 million) over those same four years.

The average price of goods and services that Canadians buy went up by 18 per cent between January 2020 and January 2025.³ Since workers’ pay went up by only 15 per cent over that period, it means that workers took an effective three per cent pay cut. Their pay went up, but the prices on everything they buy went up faster, so they ended up worse off by the end of 2024.

Over that same period, the cost of food in grocery stores went up by 22 per cent, well more than the 15 per cent pay raise the average worker got. Price spikes were worse for some more specific food items: the price of pasta went up by 47 per cent, just shy of the 49 per cent increase in CEO pay over this period. The price of beef went up by 39 per cent and eggs are 35 per cent more expensive than they were in 2020. These prices rose twice as fast as average worker pay, although still less than the CEOs’ pay increases. Bacon and chicken prices both rose by just under 30 per cent, or double the raises received by the average worker.

The biggest expense for Canadians—housing—has become more expensive as well. Not by as much as food, but they are a much bigger part of a household’s budget, so smaller increases have a bigger dollar impact. Often people believe food bank utilization is due to high food prices. They don’t help, but it’s usually high housing costs that make workers prioritize paying rent over buying food and, therefore, end up at a food bank at month’s end.

For the third of Canadians who rent, having wages go up by 15 per cent and rent go up by 26 per cent is going to put real pressure on any budget. CEOs, who probably aren’t renting, saw their compensation go up twice as high as rent. That luxury suite is just getting cheaper.

As interest rates rose, it also squeezed homeowners as their costs—mostly mortgage interest payments—rose by 29 per cent since 2020. The raise for the average worker over that period was only half that amount. In addition to basic housing costs, the cost of utilities jumped by 23 per cent, further squeezing household budgets. For CEOs whose pay rose by 49 per cent since 2020, covering these increased costs would not be a burden.

CEO pay bonused to the moon

CEO compensation isn’t like regular workers’ pay. Average Canadian workers receive a wage or a salary and that is their compensation. If they’re lucky, they might receive a pension or some sort of RRSP matching. But a wage or salary is how average workers are paid, with only a small proportion of workers who are paid mostly in bonuses, like sales commissions, for example.

CEOs are paid almost entirely in bonuses. In 2024, 84.3 per cent of CEO compensation was based on bonuses, a record-high proportion. These bonuses are called things like “performance-based pay” or “variable pay”, although that is a bit of a misnomer because these bonuses only go up and rarely down, as we’ll see.

The actual salaries that the highest-paid CEOs receive have been falling, in inflation-adjusted terms, since 2017. They now stand at roughly the same place as they did in 2009 and 2010. It isn’t uncommon for CEOs to take a salary of one dollar since this isn’t where the money is made anyway—it’s all on the bonuses side.

The reason why CEO pay is rising is higher bonuses, not higher salaries. The bonuses span three broad categories of compensation: cash bonuses, getting paid in shares (instead of money) and stock options. These types of pay are called “performance based” in that you get them if the company or the executive meets certain goals, like a particular share price or revenue growth or the completion of a particular project.

Hypothetically, if you don’t meet your goals, you don’t get the bonus, but that’s not how it usually works in the real world. COVID-19 was a great example of this in action because it was an event that hit all sectors of corporate Canada. The second and third quarters of 2020 were terrible for corporate profits. As a result, many bonus-based goals were missed.

You’d think this would mean no bonuses in corporate Canada, but you’d be wrong. Half of the CEOs on the 100 highest paid list that year either just changed their goals, after the fact, to exclude those quarters in some way, or they received government bailouts—or both. It’s a game of when things are bad it’s not the CEO’s fault, so they get their bonus anyway and if things go well, it’s all the CEO’s doing and it ends in a huge pay day. Therefore, these bonuses aren’t at risk in a meaningful way, they are one-way bonuses only: up.

Even the form of bonuses has changed over time, to reduce the risk of CEOs getting nothing when the stock price falls. Stock options, for example, have given way to the direct awarding of stocks.

If a stock price declines too much, the stock option will be worth nothing, even if a CEO hits the milestones he needs to (and I do mean “he”, as we’ll see below). To extract the value from a stock option, CEOs must put the money up to buy the stock at the pre-set sweetheart price, although usually only for a few days before selling it again for a profit.

The direct award of shares instead of stock options further de-risks the CEO. Even if the share price declines, the shares are still worth plenty (as long as they don’t decline to zero). Also, a CEO doesn’t have to come up with the cash to buy the stock, it is directly awarded. The stock option deduction, a tax loophole that allowed CEOs to pay half the tax on stock option profits, was limited in 2021, further reducing its attractiveness.

Direct cash bonuses, as a proportion of overall pay, have been on a downward trajectory. The value of these don’t change with stock price, they are generally tied to performance in some way. There is a premise that a CEO’s interests should be “aligned” with those of shareholders, meaning CEOs do what boosts share price above all else. This has led to more share awards, rather than cash bonuses, over the past decades in Canada.

Inflation dollars go somewhere: record profits and CEO pay

It’s been a great couple of years for Canadian corporate profits. Prior to the pandemic, corporations were bringing in roughly $400 billion a year in pre-tax profits. After the pandemic, this jumped to a new level—$600 billion. In 2024, it stood at $630 billion. The present level isn’t quite as high as in 2022, when inflation was at its peak and profits hit $668 billion.

It’s worth remembering that the extra dollars Canadians are paying for higher prices goes somewhere: corporate profits.

Those corporate profits and their derivatives, like revenues and share prices, are the basis for CEO bonuses. While 2024 was the last full year of corporate profit data, the first three quarters of 2025 were the best so far in Canadian history—despite tariffs and a negative second quarter of GDP growth.

The amount that companies retain of their revenue after they’ve paid their expenses, their net pre-tax profit margins, tell a similar story. The margins in 2024 were not quite as high as in 2021 or 2022, when inflation was roaring, but they were still far higher than at anytime before the pandemic.

Inflation continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for the corporate sector and, by extension, the CEOs whose bonuses are tied to their profits.

Five per cent of highest-paid CEOs are now women

This year, a “shocking” five of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in Canada are women. This is the highest number we’ve ever seen. In previous years, the count has, at most, been four women.

Although the general Canadian labour market hit 40 per cent of women in 1980 and is now at 47 per cent of women in 2024,⁴ Canadian CEOs finally comprised five per cent of women in 2024. It is baby steps to gender equality on Bay Street.

This year, the number of women in the 100 highest-paid CEO list has managed to tie the number of men named “Scott”, at five apiece and, in a first, the number women on this list beat the number of men named “John”, which there are only four.

Unfortunately, the highest-paid female CEOs still get paid only 73 per cent of what their male counterparts got paid.

Solutions

In 2024, the federal government proposed perhaps what would have been one of the most expensive tax changes for CEOs in decades: a higher capital gains inclusion rate. Profits made from selling capital, like company shares, would be taxed slightly more like regular wages, but would still receive a substantial rebate. This would only have applied for those making more than $250,000 in profits from stocks in a single year. This would certainly have included CEOs. They end up as massive shareholder in their companies due to being paid in shares. Selling those shares at a profit generally yields substantial capital gains and would have resulted in higher taxes for CEOs.

Unfortunately, this tax change was not implemented. Misperceptions about the potential overlap on this tax change into other areas, like the sale of a family cottage or of a small business, killed the proposal.

Fortunately, another proposed change—taxing stock options with profits over $250,000 like working income—was implemented in 2021. Previously, being paid in stock options also came with a 50 per cent off coupon on your taxes. This was eliminated in 2021 for those making over $250,000 on stock options, in a given year. Those making less than that threshold still receive their tax-off coupon, but this sort of measure would have resulted in CEOs paying tax slightly more like wage earners.

Millionaire’s tax

Despite some wins and some losses on the road to fairer CEO compensation, other possibilities are still available. Perhaps the most appealing of which is a millionaire’s tax, where anyone making over a million dollars would pay a slightly higher tax rate on every dollar over that millionaire mark. This would apply to all the CEOs on our list: they all made, at minimum, $7.2 million. It would have no impact on anyone who didn’t bring in a million dollars a year.

Tax rates on Canada’s richest are close to all-time lows. In the 1950s and 1960s, the top marginal combined income tax rates on the highest-paid workers were just below 80 per cent.⁵ Today, combined federal and provincial top marginal income tax rates are closer to 50 per cent, depending on the province, with Quebec and Ontario slightly above and Alberta slightly below.

The basis of Canada’s progressive income tax system is simple: if we need extra income to pay for critical services like health care, it’s best to draw from those for whom an extra dollar doesn’t hold the same value. For a family living in poverty, a dollar is worth far more than for someone making $16.2 million a year. In the past, those at the very top were required to pay a lot more towards the public services that we all enjoy. In the 1950s and 1960s, income inequality was also much lower.

Wealth tax

Fairer taxation of capital gains was meant to target people like CEOs who are regularly going to make profits of over $250,000 on stock trades in a year. Capital gains are a well-established part of the income tax system; the 2024 proposal would have simply changed one of the rates involved in calculating the taxes owed on them. While the wealthiest are far more likely to profit from more than $250,000 a year in stock trades, changing the tax rate on capital gains isn’t a wealth tax.

There is a much more direct mechanism to impact wealth taxation: create a wealth tax. A wealth tax should apply only to the very wealthy: those with at least $10 million in net assets. If we do so, the rate can be quite low, amounting to only a few percentage points. Setting a wealth tax for those with assets worth more than $10 million, at one per cent a year, and rising to three per cent a year for those with over $100 million in assets could raise over $20 billion a year.⁶ That’s enough to fully fund both our national child care plan and eliminate wait times in emergency rooms.

There is no reasonable need for a single person to have $10 million, much less $100 million, in net worth. The returns on wealth that size are generally much more than one to three per cent a year, meaning Canada’s wealthy would keep getting wealthier, just not quite as quickly. A wealth tax asks the wealthiest for a slightly lower rate of return (but still let’s them get even richer) so everyone else can have the basics.

As noted above, most CEO compensation is now paid in shares, not cash. As a result, they end up becoming huge shareholders in their companies. Combine that with them making $16 million a year vs the average worker, at $65,500 a year, and income inequality results in even bigger wealth inequality.

We can, and should, be taking action on income and wealth inequality in Canada. There has been halting progress on this file. It’s time to take more concrete steps.

Methodology

Data for this report is compiled from the companies’ disclosure of pay for their Named Executive Officers (NEO) in proxy circulars or management information circulars. There were 222 companies on the S&P/TSX composite index as of June 2024, although only 212 companies published circulars and pay disclosures. Proxy circulars from those 212 companies were reviewed, with the highest-paid CEOs included in the top 100 list.

The report considers CEOs of the overall company but also includes the CEOs of subsidiaries who are NEOs. It may also include executive chairs, a position that oversees the CEO. It will also include retired CEOs who are NEOs. The list does not include chief operating or chief financial officers, of which there are many who would otherwise have made the top 100 list.

In some cases, CEOs might work for two different companies on the S&P/TSX composite. If one of those companies holds a controlling stake in the other, then the consolidated pay across both companies is used. If a CEO has moved to a different company, then the entries remain separated.

The dataset starts in 2008. Prior to that, stock options were often valued at exercise, not at award (as they were in 2008 and afterwards). As such, direct comparison of CEO pay prior to 2008 might just as easily reflect the difference in valuation and timing of stock options as any underlying change in compensation.

Companies often report executive pay in U.S. dollars. In these cases, amounts are converted into Canadian dollars at a rate of 1.3698, as per the Bank of Canada’s average annual exchange rates in 2024.⁷ Annual worker pay is obtained from the Survey of Employment Payroll and Hours weekly average industrial aggregate wage, including overtime.⁸ This figure is multiplied by 52 weeks to obtain an average annual worker’s wage. Unless otherwise specified if the report refers to workers’ wages, this is what it is referring to.

The conversion of CEO pay to a daily figure assumes 260 working days in a year (i.e. 52 weeks × five days). This assumes that CEOs and workers have paid statutory holidays, as required by law. Hours are derived assuming an eight-hour day running from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Erin McIntosh for her work in data compilation for this report.

The post Living the high life: A record-breaking year for CEO pay in Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Personally, I’ve enjoyed Mark Carney’s speeches and interviews this year. He’s an excellent communicator who represents Canada to the world with a steady grace and calm. In contrast to the bombast of President Trump, Carney’s demeanor is forged out of a central banker’s desire to cultivate confidence among domestic and foreign investors, and the financial markets. He’s clearly a smart man with an impressive resume and global network of contacts. In the current moment, we could do a lot worse.

Like many, I tried to give Carney the benefit of the doubt, and I enjoyed the term “elbows up” as an election rallying cry for the nation. Yet, in practice, the Carney government is implementing a fairly conservative agenda of deregulation, public sector downsizing, tax cuts, boosting defence and championing resource megaprojects. Carney’s resurrected Liberals have set out an economic agenda with a big push on fossil fuels and mining, while rolling back nearly a decade of modest progress on climate action along the way.

What happened to “elbows up”?

Under Carney’s stewardship, the Liberals promised a new trade accord with Trump shortly after the election, but a couple deadlines came and passed without a deal. In hindsight, the deal we got was to sacrifice the implementation of the Digital Sales Tax in exchange for Trump confirming that Canadian exports that qualify under the Canada U.S. Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) would maintain duty free status. In October, Trump pulled the plug on the negotiations, ostensibly due to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s viral ad featuring Ronald Reagan expounding the alleged virtues of free trade.  

The CUSMA is up for review in 2026 and all three countries have begun various internal consultations. The United States will likely seek major concessions from Canada, and it’s hard to know what the federal government would be prepared to give up in order to achieve a deal with the United States that could be broken at any moment. However much corporate Canada wants to turn the page back to 2024, no deal is better than a bad deal. 

In lieu of “elbows up,” the federal government has switched its emphasis towards deregulation and accelerated resource megaprojects. The first salvos of this came about when PM Carney invoked the misleading rhetoric of “one Canadian economy, not thirteen” to make big claims about so-called inter-provincial trade barriers. We’ve heard this story before: from time to time, Canadian politicians will raise allegedly massive barriers to internal trade as an issue, so that they can paint themselves as the ones slaying the dragon.

In fact, the vast majority of goods, services, investments and people move seamlessly across provincial borders; only a few areas like alcohol and some food processing have bona fide restrictions. Stuart Trew and I have probed this issue and we find the potential gains from removal of the few remaining barriers to be vastly overstated. The notion that removing barriers would lead to more than $200 billion in economic benefits is, quite simply, preposterous. In practice, “removing barriers” typically means reducing capacity to pursue legitimate public interest objectives, such as environmental regulation, consumer protection and workplace health and safety.

The One Canadian Economy Act, passed at the end of June, merely removes most federal exceptions to the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, the 2017 deal that reaffirmed that Canada is already one economy (this is also in the Constitution). At the federal level, there were no restrictions that undermined interprovincial trade in any event. But eliminating federal exceptions could prove to be problematic in the future in areas such as coastal fisheries management (see our full analysis here).

The Act then shifts to the real issue at hand: fast-tracking federal approvals of fossil fuel  megaprojects, now elevated to “major projects” in the “national interest.” Using the trade threat from the U.S. as cover, the federal government conferred upon itself sweeping new executive powers to exempt environmentally destructive projects from public processes and regulatory oversight through its new Major Projects Office. 

Resource megaprojects

The first tranche of major projects, announced in September, focused mostly on old-school resource projects rather than bold infrastructure investments, like an east-west clean electricity grid, that would tie the country closer together. A second round of major projects announced in November reinforced this pattern. As of December 2025, the major projects list includes:

• Two liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in BC
• Five mining projects across the country
• A major new transmission line in northern BC (to support LNG and mining)
• Nuclear power in Ontario
• Hydro power in Nunavut
• Port expansion in Montreal

The big action is in BC and focuses primarily on a foundation of LNG and mining supported by new electric power from BC Hydro. At this point, federal and BC priorities diverge. This was made clear with the announcement of plans for a new bitumen pipeline as part of the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), announced in late November.

The BC government and most First Nations have opposed the construction of a new bitumen pipeline from Alberta to the North Coast of BC. Such a pipeline through BC (Enbridge’s Northern Gateway) was strongly opposed in the early 2010s, and was taken off the table by the Trudeau government in order to pursue the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion. The resulting nationalization of the expansion went notoriously over-budget at $34 billion.

The MOU links federal support of the bitumen pipeline to commitments to the Pathways carbon capture project—a pipe dream of the oil and gas industry (see detailed analysis here). As such, it’s not obvious that these two megaprojects will happen at all. There is no private sector proponent for the pipeline, but it’s possible that the Alberta government steps in to build the pipeline itself. It is also not clear how much public support the federal and Alberta governments are willing to provide to make this all happen.

The economics of such projects is sketchy at best in light of the ongoing renewable energy transition happening worldwide. What global demand looks like a decade from now is highly uncertain but many observers feel that oil demand will be in decline around the mid-2030s. Pipeline projects could also move in the other direction: a revival of the Energy East pipeline from Alberta to Ontario or Quebec, and/or the upgraded Keystone XL pipeline to the United States.

In the short term, the real effect of the MOU is to gut federal climate and energy regulations developed over the past few years. Should a pipeline be built to BC, the feds would end a tanker ban on the North Coast. The newly developed federal Clean Electricity Regulations will be dropped for Alberta—and presumably other provinces too, given the precedent. Alberta gets a five-year delay in implementing federal regulations on the greenhouse gas methane. And corporate advertising from the oil and gas industry will no longer need to be limited to making factual claims due to the scrapping of federal anti-greenwashing legislation.

Federal budget

The gap between the rhetoric and reality of theMark Carney government was also evident in the federal budget, tabled in early November. Well before the actual budget, Carney had already rolled back the modest tax increase planned for capital gains (which would only have affected a handful of wealthy households) as well as scrapped the federal consumer carbon pricing framework (which was the central plank in the government’s climate action plan).

Heading into the November budget, the big talk was about “generational investments” in housing and infrastructure, but on closer inspection there was fairly little new money for such investments. Carney’s government has been pushing Build Canada Homes, a promising initiative, but its budget allocation is fairly small. BCH is, at best, a pilot program that will start on only 4,000 new homes some time in 2026. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer revealed that “federal planned spending on housing programs is set to decline 56 per cent, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29. This decline is driven by the expiry of funding for existing programs and cuts set out in Budget 2025, offset in part by the launch of Build Canada Homes.”

While defence receivedgets a big boost from the budget, and federal transfers to the provinces and individuals have been maintained, other federal departmental spending will face austerity in the short term. A number of other neoliberal reforms were repackaged as inducements to investment to “boost productivity and competitiveness.”

The federal budget’s cuts include a target of 40,000 fewer federal civil service jobs by year three of the fiscal plan. Exactly how department-level cuts will be implemented was not clearly stated, but as a CCPA analysis notes, these cuts will likely entail the winding down over the next few years of existing programs that would otherwise be renewed. Both the nature of programs cut and reduction in the number of civil servants that back them will have a disproportionate impact on women, racialized groups and Indigenous people.

This human sacrifice appears to have appeased Bay Street, perhaps not surprising given the prime minister’s central banking CV. A lot of eyes were on the bottom line of the federal deficit but ultimately a higher nominal deficit that merely maintains the federal debt relative to GDP was not something that financial markets seemed to care a whole lot about.

The federal government still has substantial fiscal capacity to make big generational investments that might inspire and unite the country. Instead, the budget reinforced the same strategy discussed above, emphasizing oil and gas and mining and resource projects, while shedding green industrial strategies associated with an energy transition off of fossil fuels.

What’s next in 2026?

All things considered, Canada has weathered the Trump trade storm reasonably well, with acute tariff challenges in forestry, steel and automobiles met by modest federal support for affected companies and workers. But stresses are accumulating and 2026 is likely to include new attacks on Canadian manufacturing sectors from the Trump administration. How the federal government addresses the ongoing negative impact in key manufacturing sectors will be a key determinant of its success in 2026.

This means living up to the rhetoric of “elbows up.” Canada is going to need to bolster its sectoral and industrial strategies and pivot to policies aimed at domestic strength and sovereignty. But it also means investing in and strengthening the care economy and other public services and infrastructure that bind Canadians together and improve ordinary people’s standard of living. The end of the era of free trade with the U.S. is not necessarily a negative, but the moment must be met with a much more deliberate and strategic approach on the part of Carney and the federal government.

The post 2025 was Canada’s year of Mark Carney: What have we learned about his economic policy agenda? appeared first on CCPA.

Buy Canada is not so much a single policy, but rather multiple overlapping ones. It starts with the Buy Canadian Procurement Policy Framework, which establishes Buy Canada’s goals and applicability. Beneath this framework are two active policies: first, the Policy on Prioritizing Canadian Supplier and Canadian Content in Strategic Federal Procurements (which prioritizes Canadian suppliers and content for major strategic purchases) and then  the Policy on Prioritizing Canadian Materials in Federal Procurement (which aims to source Canadian aluminum, steel and wood in major construction and defence contracts). 

Two other policies are anticipated later in 2026: an updated Reciprocal Procurement Policy and a new Small Business Procurement Program. 

Buy Canadian now joins a set of provincial Buy Local efforts, including the recently announced Buy Ontario. But while Buy Canadian shares the same goal as its provincial equivalents, it is distinct in its approach. Here, there are some welcome positives, administrative challenges, and notable scoping and coverage problems.

Good: Origin and detail

When it was first announced, there were concerns that a Buy Canadian policy would be undermined by an “origin loophole.” That is, Buy Canadian only works if its definition of a “Canadian supplier” excludes middleman vendors who subcontract work abroad. On the face of it, the vast majority of federal contract value goes to suppliers with Canadian addresses. But, it is unclear how much work is actually completed by Canadians with Canadian materials. 

To their credit, the federal government actually has a comprehensive definition of origin. Under the policies, a Canadian supplier must file taxes in Canada, have a domestic address with employees (or at least “conducts day-to-day business activities in Canada”), and “not subcontract work to non-Canadian suppliers or individuals.” It further clarifies that each member within a joint venture must be Canadian.

This definition of “origin” directly addresses the loophole. It will be much harder for foreign firms to indirectly claim contract value. The joint ventures restriction also minimizes international free-riding through a domestic counterpart. There may still be room for slight adjustments, especially for unionized labour and emissions targets, but this definition is arguably better than what Ontario has offered.

Another strength to these policies is its prescriptive content: the policies are specific in their suggested methodologies and data collection. While the federal government does not currently collect sufficient data on sourcing, it appears the Canadian Content Attestation Form could fill that gap. Both policies contain language around monitoring and enforcement, which will be sorely needed if these initiatives are to succeed.

Bad: Administrative overload

These strengths notwithstanding, there are still red flags. While the policy’s definition of origin is more comprehensive than a worst-case scenario, it is still vague. In particular, what counts as too much subcontracting? Public Services and Procurement Canada has itself argued subcontracting is normal in some sectors like IT. The policy anticipates contracting entities will collect enough information to make that judgment. This ambiguity will lead to inconsistencies and information heap on procurement officers.

This is in tension with a critical advantage of most Buy Local policies: they are meant to be administratively simple. Rather than create complicated assessment methodologies, we could limit competition to suppliers we deem to have an intrinsic benefit. The Buy Canadian policy does not do this. Instead, it largely insists on a weighted advantage up to 25 per cent (or points). Here, we are not limiting competition. In fact, suppliers “of an applicable trading partner” can still participate in procurement covered by Buy Canadian.

Our international trade commitments are to blame. Those agreements guarantee that non-Canadian companies can access our public procurement, with a few exceptions. The federal government is aiming to avoid infringing upon those commitments, though they may encounter pushback regardless. The policies themselves employ language around “national security” and “strategic procurement” presumably to stave off a potential dispute.

Of course, this assumes the federal government actually puts the Buy Canadian policy into practice routinely. Under the policy, there are five exception conditions, which could be abused. This includes a best value exception “where application of the Policy is expected to result in a cost increase of 25 per cent or more above current market rates.” The federal government may only tolerate so much of a price increase. But, again, we must establish “current market rates” first.  

Ugly: Scope and application

Buy Canadian’s coverage is worse than its administrative challenges. When it was first announced, we were told “the Government will introduce new measures to make sure that Canadian suppliers, and their products are prioritized in all federal spending” (emphasis added). This was an ambitious promise. Today, it remains unfilled.

The new policies are only applicable above a set contract value within specific sectors for specific entities. To break that down, the floor for the two new policies is $25 million. This will drop to $5 million later. Anything below the floor in contract value is not covered by the policy,  which is then further minimized to “strategic procurements.” For the Buy Canadian supplier policy, this includes select commodities in defence and security, health and pharma, infrastructure and transport, ICT, and consumer and industrial goods/materials. For the sourcing policy, we are focused on defence and construction. In brief, we are only talking about a subset of federal public procurement.

The policy trims this subset  even further. Under the framework policy, Buy Canadian (to date) only applies to ” Schedules I, I.1, II of the Financial Administration Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. F-11.” Many critical and resourced Crown corporations, like the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, are in Schedule III and are therefore omitted.

In fairness, this is only the first phase of Buy Canadian. Later, the federal government intends to introduce its Small Business Procurement Program (SBPP). Here, the government seeks to create “mandatory set-asides where feasible” for small businesses. Set-asides limit supplier participation by select criteria. The “where feasible” is, however, doing a lot of heavy lifting. No such exception was included in CETA, which severely undercuts any potential set-aside.

Altogether, the rhetoric of Buy Canadian has not yet been matched in practice. Its scoping and applicability limitations are especially consequential. But there is both merit in the idea and in some of its policy design. The next phases will need to expand Buy Canadian’s coverage and close administrative gaps to succeed. 

The post Buy Canadian Policy: The good, the bad and the ugly appeared first on CCPA.

Wrapped in the political boosterism of Canada becoming an “energy superpower,” at the highest level, the MOU is for mutual support of a new bitumen pipeline from Alberta (over the BC government’s objections) to the West Coast, paired with the oil industry’s Pathways Alliance CO2 Transportation Network and Storage Hub Project. 

Up close, this plan is more than an environmental or climate disaster. It simply does not make economic sense and would require massive capital costs that the industry itself does not want to pay. 

Pipe dreams

Currently, there is no private sector proponent proposing to spend $30-50 billion on a new pipeline. The Alberta government itself is identified as a proponent and may commit provincial funds. The MOU also fancies First Nations stepping up to take equity stakes (likely through federal loans). 

We can only hope that the federal government does not repeat the blank cheque exercise of the TMX pipeline at a staggering cost over-run of $34 billion. That pipeline was the result of the last time the feds tried to woo Alberta in exchange for signing on to climate action plans.

Indeed, a new bitumen pipeline to the coast would be a massive step in the wrong direction. In addition to incremental emissions from oil and gas production in Canada, the combustion of exported fuels in importing jurisdictions would represent hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions. 

The costs of a new bitumen pipeline are more than the capital costs of its construction. Building it over several mountain ranges to the coast will inevitably cause environmental disturbances to local ecosystems. And once built the threat of spills on land or off the BC coast will loom over every shipment of diluted bitumen. 

Burying the evidence?

Pathways is billed as a $16.5 billion investment in a pipeline network and underground storage. Based on an investment tax credit of 37.5 per cent, the feds have already committed billions should it go forward. Additional 12 per cent tax credits from the Alberta government would push public subsidies to about half of the total capital cost.

However, Pathways does not include the actual carbon capture that would need to happen at member companies’ own production sites. This would run to many billions more in capital expenditure, with federal subsidies of 50 per cent available as an investment tax credit. Federal subsidies for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) in recent years have also come through the Canada Growth Fund and Canada Infrastructure Bank.

For all of that cost, Pathways would capture only a modest 10-12 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 per year as a first phase. By comparison, the Alberta oil sands pumped 86 Mt into the atmosphere in 2023 and the oil and gas industry as a whole 154 Mt. 

Even worse, the MOU commits the federal government to extending CCUS tax credits to “enhanced oil recovery”, which uses the CO2 not for long-term storage but to boost well pressure to extract more from older wells. 

On the demand side, the world is changing fast. The economics of renewables are much more favourable for Asian countries, which also makes them less dependent on imported fossil fuels. Many are projecting global demand for oil to drop, or at least peak, around 2035. And Alberta remains a high cost producer of heavy oil in that competition.

Killing climate and energy regulations

The real action of the MOU is to immediately clear the slate of climate and energy regulations facing the industry that were introduced in the Justin Trudeau era. These include not moving forward with a proposed oil and gas emissions cap and a five-year delay (to 2035) of regulations on methane emissions.

While the MOU makes reference to the federal and Alberta governments continuing to support net zero emissions by 2050, this is clearly disingenuous. There is no plan that Canada will get even close to that even after the slippery “net zero” language which is code for loopholes that enable business as usual. 

If anything, the MOU muddies the waters of the public conversation by eliminating the recent anti-greenwashing legislation that required companies to demonstrate that their claims are factually correct. Expect more deceptive advertising in favour of fossil fuel expansion as a result.

Some have argued that the MOU commits Alberta to the federal industrial carbon pricing schedule of increases to 2030, but this battle was already won at the Supreme Court. The federal government already has an enforceable “backstop” or minimum carbon price, so Alberta is just agreeing to obey the law of the land. Commitments to discussions of an industrial carbon price pathway after 2030 are not worth much. If anything, the industrial carbon pricing system is way too lenient in the name of “competitiveness” with oil and gas companies paying only a teeny $6 per tonne of emissions.

Electricity features in the MOU in some problematic ways. The MOU exempts Alberta from federal Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) that were finalized a year ago. The regulations are imperfect but have a core objective of achieving a net zero grid by 2050. They don’t even take effect until 2035 but were to be an organizing framework to guide provincial electricity investments. 

Alberta has the most polluting electricity system in Canada, and the province was to be the source of about 60 per cent of the emissions reductions from the CER. Now, we can expect other provinces like Saskatchewan to follow Alberta and withdraw from the regulations. 

Nuclear power also figures into the long-term vision of the MOU, providing power for industry and carbon capture, but also data centres for artificial intelligence. Again, there’s not much of a real plan here, nor any sense of what public subsidies might be required to pay for new nuclear generation. The MOU speaks to new transmission lines connecting electricity grids from Alberta to BC and Saskatchewan, which could be a positive development but needs to be part of a more coherent vision for energy and resources in Western Canada.

Assessing the “grand bargain”

The industry has been on a winning streak all year, starting with the One Canadian Economy Act, passed in the summer. The key feature of the legislation was the creation of the federal Major Projects Office, with a mandate to accelerate projects deemed in “the national interest” by bypassing regulatory reviews. So far, it’s mostly a list of mining and oil and gas projects.

While the MOU speaks about consulting First Nations, it falls well short of the language of free, prior and informed consent. Instead, the MOU seeks to bring in First Nations as equity partners to cleanse these projects–likely through federal loans that could put indigenous people on the hook if these projects fail to unfold as planned due to cost over-runs or changes in energy markets.

On the surface, the MOU is a grand bargain that ends a political battle between the feds and Alberta. But with opposition in BC and terrible economics, there’s a strong likelihood those pipelines never get built. Nonetheless, by killing climate and energy regulations, the MOU must have the oil and gas industry feeling like a kid on Christmas Day. 

Marc Lee is a Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 

The post The Alberta-Canada MOU is an early Christmas present for the oil and gas industry appeared first on CCPA.

But there is little substance to such claims.

If we compare the operating costs of postal services around the world, we see that Canada Post’s operating costs are actually well below the average among its peers. This is particularly impressive given the unique challenge of Canada’s vast geography.

And if we track long-term changes in spending and revenue among these other international postal services, we see that spending cuts are a self-defeating strategy for attaining financial sustainability. Reductions in operating costs are strongly associated with falling revenues. Usually, the drop in revenue cancels out what is “gained” through the spending cut, leaving company finances worse off than before.

If we are indeed in a new age of nation-building projects, we ought to reject an approach based on counter-productive cuts. Instead, we should favour bold investments to open up new streams of revenue for Canada Post in sectors like banking or telecommunications, while enhancing its role in public service provision. 

A global dataset of Canada’s peer postal services

To compare the cost of operating Canada Post with those of similar postal services, we created an international dataset for the designated postal operators of 20 peer countries, including Canada.

This dataset combines information from the annual reports of designated postal operators with the latest postal statistics available from the Universal Postal Union’s (UPU) Postal Statistics Database (2023).  

All of these postal services have some form of Universal Service Obligation (USO), meaning that they are required to provide a reliable and affordable mail service to all or nearly all citizens, though the specifics of that obligation vary between countries.

Our main measure for comparing costs is total spending on core postal activities, namely the delivery of letter-mail and parcels. In many countries, the USO extends only to traditional letter-mail, but others also cover small parcel delivery. Even where parcels are not included in the USO, they share much of the same core delivery network with letter-mail. Therefore both categories have been included in total spending.

To facilitate fair comparison, we endeavoured to get as close as possible to isolating spending only on the core operations of a postal service, meaning letter-mail and parcel delivery. Spending on other activities like banking and spending by subsidiary companies is excluded wherever possible.

All financial data has been converted into Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.

Canada Post’s operating costs are very competitive among peers

Canada Post spends less per resident

How do Canada Post’s operating costs stack up against comparable postal services? To make a fair comparison across countries, we need to take cost drivers for postal systems into account such as the number of people a postal network  serves. The more people a postal service has to cover, the higher the total cost and revenue potential it has. 

In the chart below, we can see the population-adjusted operating costs of the postal service in each country in 2023. Across the group, the average operating cost was $252 per resident—about 70 cents  per person for each day of the year. 

Canada Post’s operating costs of $198 per person—about 54 cents per person per day—fell below the group average by a healthy margin. On a per-person basis, Canada Post’s total spending on operations was 22 per cent lower than the average among peers.