Most of Canada’s trade agreements have so-called “cultural exemption” clauses. The reasoning is simple: given the dominance of U.S. and other foreign cultural works, Canada must have policies and programs to encourage the creation, production and distribution of Canadian stories, music, arts and culture, even if those policies run counter to the principles of absolute free trade. 

Canada’s policies are not exclusionary: Canadians continue to enjoy cultural expressions from everywhere. But we must ensure that, in the plethora of cultural production, high-quality Canadian choices are available, in every genre. As some of our existing policies would otherwise be contrary to  trade obligations—particularly the so-called “most-favoured nation” provisions, which mandate equal treatment of goods regardless of their country of origin. Canada has fought to secure and maintain a cultural exemption in virtually every trade and investment agreement.

On June 3, the government issued a policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the body which regulates broadcasting and telecommunications in Canada. The government ordered the CRTC to remove its pending requirement for streaming services (primarily U.S.) to contribute between five and 15  per cent of their Canadian revenues to Canadian content. While the CRTC is an arms-length agency, it is likely to comply with the policy direction. Concurrently, the government announced it would provide $600 million annually to support Canadian music and audiovisual productions, including Indigenous, French, and equity-deserving communities. The government argues the funding support is essentially equivalent to the levy on steaming services. 

There are major problems with the new government approach.

Structural cultural policy measures are durable, and they are protected by cultural exemptions in agreements like the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Examples include content quotas, priority placement, and spending requirements on key players, including broadcasters, cable companies and others. While direct subsidy of domestic producers is permitted under trade and investment agreements, government grants are notoriously fickle, and subject to political whim. Next year’s budget will certainly have different priorities. 

It is ludicrous for the government to contend that streamers will simply increase the subscription fees of Canadian viewers in response to the CRTC requirement. First, it is a competitive field. Second, several European countries and others have similar measures. Third, streamers currently produce, acquire and show high-quality works that attract global audiences, and they must continue to do so. The CRTC requirement would simply ensure a small share of their Canadian revenues would be devoted to Canadian content, a small fraction of their inventory. It is estimated Netflix is spending $20 billion annually on content. 

This is a difficult time for Canada’s recorded media industries. According to the Canadian Media Producers Association’s Profile 2025 report, Canadian film and television content production declined by 2.2 percent, a second consecutive year of decline. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, for their part, commissioned the Broadcasting in Canada 2025 report, which found that the dominance of streaming services has caused a structural crisis in the Canadian broadcasting industry. Streaming services now dominate advertising revenues. In the past few years, total internet-based advertising in Canada rose from $0.56 billion to $17.7 billion, while broadcaster advertising revenues fell from $3.0 billion to $2.6 billion. 

As a consequence of these challenges, the CRTC also adjusted the regulatory framework for traditional broadcasters and lowered their obligations. Traditional broadcasters making more than $25 million annually will contribute 25 per cent of their annual revenues to support Canadian content. This is down from current requirements ranging from 30-45 percent, but still higher than the CRTC requirement for foreign streaming servicers. Broadcasters making less than $25 million will be exempt from these contributions, the same threshold applies to streamers. 

The Canadian recorded media industry (music, television, radio, theatres and online) is struggling in this age of streamers and AI. The government’s June 3 decision will hasten its demise. 

The post Will CanCon die with the Online Streaming Act? appeared first on CCPA.

The federal government is likely to introduce legislation with new restrictions or bans on youth AI use, as Manitoba has already signalled an intention to do. Federal policymakers should consider a more ambitious approach. 

At present, tech corporations continue prioritizing profits over users. Social media platforms rely on opaque algorithms to maximize engagement, often specifically targeting young people. TikTok recently paid out a settlement in order to evade a trial in relation to just such targeted addictive product design. 

Newer AI tools add further risks: tailored targeting; deepfake harassment, including Non-Consensual Intimate Image (NCII) abuse; and other forms of AI video, audio, and image manipulation intended to humiliate, threaten, defame, or impersonate others. Recent incidents, including the Tumbler Ridge shooting, have also intensified concerns about “AI psychosis” and the role of systems like ChatGPT play in helping and potentially encouraging people who are already unwell to become more antisocial, plan and execute crimes, and even commit suicide. 

Further, recent research finds that while AI tools used by students “superficially improve writing” they simultaneously “constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas—what we call creative thinking.” This will likely have lasting effects on young people.

For young people who have only ever known digital-centric social lives and AI chatbots that can complete homework in minutes, these issues are particularly salient. Their reality depends on understanding and working with these tools while navigating the perverse incentives that keep them glued to their devices.

In lack of other forms of motivated behavioural development, a ban in the present context will likely face similar responses as have been seen elsewhere. In Australia, for example, social norms and the fear of missing out have resulted in young people using everything from fake mustaches through video game characters and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent the local ban. Additionally, both researchers and youth themselves note that social media and AI fit centrally into modern life, so not having access leaves the same groups unprepared when they do come of age to legally access such tools. Further, a ban might actually increase the amount of information (for example biometric, or government identification) that platforms collect and use for their own profit-motivated purposes. Having studied Australia’s attempt, the UK government has resolved “to focus on prohibiting addictive features for under-16s, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and location sharing” instead of an outright ban.

Developments

In a first major Canadian attempt to address youth safety on social media and in relation to AI systems, Wab Kinew’s Manitoba government announced a ban on social media and AI chatbots for people under 16. Though details have yet to be fully revealed, the idea has also entered discussions around the Carney government’s reintroduction of the federal Online Harms Act (OHA), formerly proposed as Bill C-63. In parallel, the Alberta Teachers’ Association recently voted in opposition to AI in classrooms even as the province partners with a private company to do just that, and most provinces have implemented some form of cellphone restriction in K–12 schools, with Ontario being the latest to consider “a near-total ban on cellphones at school”. Public support for youth social media bans has been gaining momentum since Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation “caught the attention of regulators and world leaders and fueled momentum for phone bans and laws governing children’s use of social media around the world.” In Canada, a May 2026 Léger poll found that “83 per cent of Canadians are concerned about the potential negative impact of social media on children and teenagers, [… additionally] 81 per cent say the same about AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot.” Yet this framing often excludes the group most directly concerned: young people themselves.

The most substantial international review of youth perspectives comes from UNICEF’s April 2026 report, Children’s Best Interests in Digital Policy and Practice. Specific to Canada, we also have the GEN(Z)AI Policy Recommendations for AI and Online Harms Governance in Canada report. Both reports emphasize that without youth input policy will miss the harms as they are actually experienced. The UNICEF report shows that many young people internalize responsibility for overuse, yet do not want heavy-handed limits or surveillance; they want platforms regulated more effectively. Additionally, the GEN(Z)AI report argues that digital governance cannot remain fragmented because users experience AI systems, platform design, data practices, and harmful content as one integrated online environment.

Taken together, the GEN(Z)AI and UNICEF reports point to a complementary agenda: clearer consent processes, transparent labelling of AI-generated content, stronger reporting and redress mechanisms, and safety-by-design obligations backed by meaningful oversight.  Read together, they support a framework that combines enforceable platform accountability with a child-rights-based approach.

The GEN(Z)AI age-assurance recommendations are especially useful. In brief, they call for: 

• A standardized age-verification system for generative AI access built around an anonymized digital token; 
• Tighter regulation of sensitive age-assurance data, including time-limited storage, audits, and safeguards against model-training leakage; 
• Safety-by-design obligations for AI platforms accessible to children, including in educational settings;
• Broader measures to reduce exposure to harmful design and content, such as digital safety reporting, watermarking of AI-generated media, and limits on sycophantic chatbot behaviour.

A non-policy-based approach comes from the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), which advocates household measures because screen time and device use often replace “other activities needed for healthy growth and development and negatively impacting emotional and social well-being.” Their recommendations include zero screen time for children younger than two; less than an hour per day for ages two to five; limiting older children to one hour during school days and three hours on weekends; avoiding screens after 7 PM and for at least one hour before bed; and caregiver presence while young children use digital media. The Association also suggests modelling healthy screen behaviour and scheduling “whole family, regular screen-free time.”

Experiments in regulation

Canada could also consider adopting something like the UK Information Commissioner’s Age Appropriate Design Code, which notes various ways to establish the age of a user and provides “guidance on key considerations relevant at different ages” by bracketing out five distinct groups up to age 17.

Concerns should also be situated in a broader social context. As noted by Statistics Canada, Canadians in 2026 are facing weaker labour market conditions and higher grocery prices. The Canadian government has noted that “for many Canadians, money worries are the greatest source of stress [… and that] More than one-third (35 per cent) of people living in Canada report trouble sleeping, nearly a third (32 per cent) experience family conflict or tension, and three in ten (30 per cent) say money-related worries make it difficult to focus at work or school.” Further, there is “a direct link between financial stress, parental conflict, parenting and, ultimately, child well-being.” 

This is paired with the persistence of weak public infrastructure—limited transit, child care deserts, scarce green space, unreliable services, and underfunded social supports—which can deepen inequality, increase isolation, and weaken community ties. Isolation, in turn, creates openings for extremist recruitment, including through social media and online gaming. Addressing online harms therefore also requires long-term investment in public infrastructure, both physical and digital.

Ethan Zuckerman argued that the economics of chatbots must move away from monetized attention and that policymakers must confront the ways existing social media makes it possible to be awful to one another.

One proposal  in Greece is to reduce anonymity online by requiring that platforms verify accounts correspond to real people. Whether wise or not, it is another example of governments reaching for structural rather than purely individual solutions to digital toxicity; in Canada, a similar approach could help address foreign interference campaigns. A recent article notes that “Pavlos Marinakis, the deputy prime minister, clarified that the intention is not to abolish pseudonyms but to ensure that every profile corresponds to a real person. He did not, however, rule out extending such measures to the wider internet—including signed online articles.” 

Another potential part of this mix is localized community-centric social networks. Max Peacock, a contributor to Commons Fabric, argues that while such projects are unlikely to replace the dopamine-driven time pits of larger platforms, they can still help local groups engage civically and find community, thereby addressing social isolation.

Peacock also sees room for public platforms and open-source projects, noting Taiwan’s use of Polis “to cluster opinions and promote bridge-building across diverse communities”.

Niki Harris, founder and director of The Future Brief, is similarly skeptical that major platforms can simply be replaced and again stresses the importance of consulting young people about policies that shape their daily lives.

Harris favours regulating big tech through safe-by-design standards, restrictions on harmful marketing practices, and stronger media literacy. She also notes growing interest in apps such as Third Space, which are oriented around spontaneous in-person meetups rather than endless scrolling. Even where such alternatives remain limited, they suggest that platform design can be directed toward connection rather than compulsion.

Matt Hatfield, OpenMedia’s executive director, presses the point that the young people who are off social media in Australia right now, due to the local ban, might not be the ones most vulnerable to online harms and that “even if they’re off [the major platforms] they’re still on Discord, they’re still on Roblox, they’re still in all these other spaces.” He adds that something still needs to be done, since a model of “individual responsibility alone is totally inadequate.” Even if international agreements such as CUSMA complicate matters, he argues Canada still needs significant platform regulation, especially amid growing tensions around digital sovereignty. 

Reflecting on Commons Fabric, Hatfield also noted, similarly to Harris, that “pushing against people’s predispositions is a very hard game.” And maybe that, “the more important point is that without interoperability none of it is going anywhere, we need to have a mandated ability to cross post across platforms or we’ll never escape the monopolistic platforms.”

On AI, Hatfield notes that millions of people already use bots in therapist-like ways, and that this is unlikely to change anytime soon. The policy challenge, then, is to balance safety with privacy, much as therapists operate under both reporting obligations and strong duties of confidentiality.

Another promising idea comes from abroad. Daniel Thorp, co-founder and current president of the University of Ottawa Digital Policy Association, points to China’s move against overly anthropomorphized AI chatbots. The policy matters because the more users treat AI systems as social others rather than tools, the more likely those systems are to displace human relationships—as noted by Damon Beres in the Atlantic, “you don’t need to be lonely or obsessive for the bots to interpose themselves between you and the people around you, providing on-demand conversation, affirmation, and advice that only other humans had previously provided.” Therefore, measures that regularly reinforce the machine nature of chatbots as tools could help reduce unhealthy attachment.

A more contentious idea from China is influencer credentialing: requiring people who give professional advice online to verify that they actually hold relevant qualifications. A Canadian version, at least for clearly regulated subject areas, could help curb misinformation and make it harder for online fraudsters—from fake financial gurus to other opportunists—to prey on users. Like limits on AI anthropomorphism, this would benefit not only youth but the online public more broadly and deserves consideration either within a renewed OHA or in later legislation.

What next?

With scant details Canada’s federal AI for All strategy aims to “modernize consumer privacy legislation”, introduce new online safety laws, invest $50 million into a Canadian AI Safety Institute, and “create a National AI Literacy Initiative that will offer entry-level AI training accessible to all Canadians.” This all sounds good, but at present, it’s just one document and a press release. We need to make sure that some form of federal legislation like the OHA is implemented in Canada. If it includes a social media and AI ban, that measure should be tied to clear, measurable design standards that platforms must meet before any moratorium is lifted. As Helen Hayes and Taylor Owen have argued, those standards should include limits on algorithmic amplification of harmful content, the removal of compulsive features such as infinite scroll and autoplay, user-controlled moderation settings with safe defaults, and regular independent audits of recommendation systems. Policymakers should also consider how limits on AI anthropomorphism and some form of credentialing for professional advice fit into a broader Canadian framework.

Assuming the federal government is serious about online harms, it should also invest more substantially in both physical and digital infrastructure. Youth need safe public places to gather, and they need online spaces that are not organized around extraction and compulsion. Small community projects such as Commons Fabric will not displace the large platforms, but they can widen the field of alternatives—especially if paired with interoperability or cross-platform posting requirements and perhaps a larger public-interest project using tools such as Polis. Reducing social isolation would also weaken the conditions in which violent and hate-based groups recruit. In an atomized age, online spaces that help people build supportive networks without amplifying harmful content are not peripheral; they are essential.

Finally, the federal government should also do more to support families directly. Recent school cellphone restrictions across much of Canada are a step in the right direction, but they are not enough on their own, especially when children can still encounter harmful or weakly moderated environments through platforms and games such as Roblox. Parents should be granted practical guidance on age-specific screen use, drawing on the Canadian Psychological Association’s recommendations, while media literacy education is expanded in schools. That support should sit within a broader public-interest strategy that recognizes screen overuse and online harms are intensified by social conditions: when families face time poverty, limited childcare, poor work-life balance, poorly funded social programming, and too few safe public places for young people to gather offline, platforms fill the gap. 

In that sense, Kinew is right to connect online harms to corporate profiteering and wider democratic pressures, but the strongest response would be multifaceted and coordinated nationally rather than left to provinces and individual households alone.

The post Will banning youth from AI and social media actually help the “anxious generation?” appeared first on CCPA.

Workload has increased in response to international factors and policy choices 

In addition to global and macroeconomic factors making life harder—like higher oil prices and U.S. trade tariffs—many provincial policies have created pressure on social services, including weakening rent controls, keeping the minimum wage low, closing supervised drug consumption sites, and consistently underfunding public schools and hospitals.

Adam King, a professor of Labour Studies at the University of Manitoba, explains that the stakes of these labour actions extend beyond wages. “Decades of underfunding and chronic staffing shortages have pushed the sector to a breaking point,” he says. “Programs are closing. Waitlists are growing. Violence and burnout are rising.”

The Ontario government responded with less, not more funding

As of 2026, the richest province in the country spends $2,889 less per capita on programs than the national average, and the provincial government is doing nothing to reverse this trend. On the contrary, our analysis of the 2026 Budget shows that the province is set to continue underfunding key programs. 

At the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCS), as of last October, funding was set to decline by 0.5 per cent between 2024-25 and 2027-2018, whereas it needed to increase by 4.2 per cent to maintain current service levels—in other words, a nearly five per cent funding cut over three years. 

To make matters worse, wages are not keeping up

Between 2018 and 2025, the average hourly wage of Ontario workers in the social assistance sector (NAICS 624), which includes social sector and community workers, increased by 22.1 per cent, against an accumulated inflation of 22.7 per cent. They earn less today than they did in 2018.

In the same period, the average hourly wage in Ontario’s social assistance sector, 22.1 per cent, also fell behind the national average increase for the sector (excluding Ontario), 27.2 per cent, and the average increase across all sectors in Ontario, 33.9 per cent.

An inter-provincial comparison shows wages are deteriorating relative to other parts of Canada.

Between 2018 and 2025, average wage increases in Ontario’s social assistance sector (22.1 per cent), were lower than in all provinces but two: Alberta (13 per cent) and Newfoundland (21.8 per cent). The increase in Ontario lagged considerably behind the increases in British Columbia (36.7 per cent) and Quebec (36.5 per cent).

The burden is falling mostly on women, racialized, low-income workers 

The outcome of low and falling wages is that a large share of workers providing social and community services are living in poverty themselves.

In Ontario, 18 per cent of workers in the social assistance sector have incomes which are only two-thirds of the median income in Ontario, which is the technical definition of poverty.

Women are grossly overrepresented in this work. They make up 87 per cent of Ontario’s social service workforce, one-third of whom are racialized.

No surprise there. 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. 

Women’s work is more poorly paid precisely because the majority of workers are women. It simply isn’t valued as highly as “traditional” male work.

The message from the Ontario government: social service workers don’t matter 

The Ontario government seems completely dismissive of both the workers in the sector and the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians they support and care for on a daily basis. 

How else to explain the downloading of responsibilities onto underfunded community agencies? How else to explain the imposition of Bill 124 back in 2019, which capped annual wage increases at one per cent for three years during a cost-of-living crisis? How else to explain the refusal of the government to fund court-ordered redress for workers in the community sector when Bill 124 was ruled unconstitutional and repealed?

OPSEU’s “Worth Fighting For” campaign is calling on the government to stop the service cuts and lay-offs—and to provide adequate and stable funding to the agencies and workers holding communities together. Essential social services cannot operate on low wages, goodwill and a smile. 

Austerity is a political choice. Workers are banding together to make their case. They’ve had enough. They deserve our support.

The post Why are Ontario social and community service workers striking? appeared first on CCPA.

I’d like to thank the Committee for their invitation to speak to Bill C-30. I’d like to confine my remarks today to airport privatization, gas tax cut and a proposed oil & gas surtax and the impacts of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review.

Airport privatization

Bill C-30 set out important precursors to possible airport privatization by instructing airport authorities to assess the value of their airports. Why do this unless the government is planning a sell-off? Privatizing airports is a dangerous road. It takes a public, non-profit service and turns it into a private monopoly designed to squeeze passengers for profit.

We should be encouraging markets where they make sense. We have multiple airlines, and we should push them to compete more. That helps consumers. But you don’t have multiple major airports competing per city—usually, there’s just one. There is no market here and so no market forces that can improve efficiency through competition.

A single airport is a natural monopoly. If it’s a non-profit, then by design it doesn’t chase monopoly profits. If we sell it to a private company, that company will use the monopoly power to rake in monopoly profits for its investors.

To make matters worse, the spring update suggests the federal government might actually lower the rent it receives if it sells airports to new for-profit owners. That would be a direct handout to pad corporate bottom lines, with zero benefit to passengers. I’d encourage senators to reconsiders selling off our public assets—likely at fire-sale prices—just so private businesses can cash in at flyers’ expense.

Oil and Gas excess profits tax

The gas tax cut that will run through September will cost the federal government $2.4 billion. While the Iran war is terrible news for consumers, they’ve paid an extra $3.3 billion at the pump. But its great news for the oil and gas sector with high oil prices fueling outrageous profits there. Our internal oil and gas profit model been tracking these gains. Since the start of the Iran war in March, the oil & gas sector has already made $12 billion more in profits than they would have without the war.

In fact, over the course of this very one hour session, oil & gas raked in $10 million in excess profits.  At current price levels, Oil & Gas corporations will make over $70 billion in excess profits this year alone.

I’d encourage this committee to consider an excess profits tax on that sector. We have very recent experience with an excess profits tax, it was called the Canada Recovery Dividend and it taxed excess profits from the banking sector that they made during the pandemic reopening. If we were to apply a similarly designed excess profits tax on oil & gas it would raise $1 billion a month for federal government. Given the pain at the pump, I’d ask you to consider the excess profits tax we implemented during the Second World War. There excess profits were taxed at 75 per cent. Such an approach would raise $4 billion a month for the federal government. These revenues could be used to help more Canadians get off of gasoline and oil all together with better support for heat pumps, charging stations and EV car subsidies.

“Comprehensive Expenditure Review” Cuts

I’d like to conclude with some of the impacts of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review in the two departments I’ve examined in some detail: Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada as well as Global Affairs. As you’ll recall the Comprehensive Expenditure Review was meant to find efficiencies at departments or close programs that weren’t being used.  This is anything but what happened at the two departments I examined in detail. 

At IRCC, the cuts weren’t about efficiencies at all, they were just good old fashioned service cuts and cost downloading. The costs of a housing program for asylum seekers was downloaded to the cities. A quarter billion a year in preventive health care was cut for refugees and settlement services to help new Canadians get jobs and learn English or French was cut by a third of a billion dollars, even as we accept more economic migrants.

When it comes to Global Affairs, it was Canadian Prime Minister Lester B Pearson who famously challenged wealthy nations like Canada to commit 0.7 per cent of their economic output to international aid. Unfortunately, funding cuts at Global Affairs are about to plunge our development assistance spending back to 1964 levels. The CER cuts dismantle Pearson’s legacy, we need to remember that most of Canada’s international goals cannot be achieved through military means.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your questions

The post Bill C-30: Privatizing airports and letting oil companies profit off the Iran war appeared first on CCPA.

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.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but one closer to home probably feels better. For years, local favourite Salisbury House has been the chosen vendor for Winnipeg-owned golf courses. This month the City went against local tastes and chose Aramark, an American-owned company, for the job.

When our public entities buy local, they create jobs, provide economic stability and improve responsiveness to the public. In this uncertain global climate, “buying local” is not a gimmick but a necessity. Up until recently, this philosophy was persuasive.

Mayor Scott Gillingham has, however, reversed course on a Buy Local policy. Following staff feedback, the mayor claims the policy would violate trade obligations. He is both right and wrong.

While there are limits in Canadian trade deals to buying local, they are not determinative. Not only can Winnipeg establish a Buy Local policy, the City would be at a disadvantage if it does not.

The City of Winnipeg has public procurement obligations in three key trade deals: the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union, the internal Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) and the smaller New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA).

These agreements prohibit Winnipeg from discriminating against European or out-of-province firms when spending money on covered purchases of goods, services or construction projects. In plain language, Winnipeg cannot favour its own suppliers at the expense of either European, Canadian or Western Canadian suppliers. 

These agreements also stop Winnipeg, in most circumstances, from setting aside some contracts for small or women-owned businesses or requiring winning bidders to contribute to local economic development. 

As onerous as these terms are, there are still ways for Winnipeg to implement a Buy Local policy. 

First, these trade-related procurement rules only apply to certain purchases. Smaller purchases are not covered, which means Winnipeg can do what it wants.

Second, these agreements require equal treatment for covered suppliers. This includes European and other Canadian companies, not companies from the United States.

Third, while Winnipeg cannot explicitly favour local firms on tenders above the trade agreements’ low spending thresholds, they can favour suppliers with other intrinsic characteristics. For example, the city could give preference to unionized workplaces, co-operatives, or certified sustainable or fair-trade goods and services.  

Indeed, the City’s Sustainable Procurement plan is commendable for its thoughtful engagement with ecological, economic and social barriers. It is especially effective in communicating the value and potential for Indigenous and social enterprise set-asides. 

If the City can do this, why can’t it favour local suppliers or at least bar American vendors? It can. Other Canadian jurisdictions are showing how simple such a policy can be.

For example, Brampton, Ontario introduced a Made in Canada policy that blocks American suppliers from its purchases. The municipality of North Vancouver is similarly building on its current Buy Local policy to consider ways to exclude U.S. suppliers.

Canadian provinces are also introducing Buy Local policies despite having more cumbersome procurement obligations in trade agreements.

Last year, Manitoba introduced a Buy Canadian Act that favoured local suppliers ineligible purchases. Here, Canadian suppliers are favoured whenever possible. The government has also banned American bidders, though there are some inconsistencies.

Ontario recently legislated a Buy Ontario Act. Their approach has been to favour Ontarian suppliers first and, when the CFTA is applicable, Canadian suppliers next. Quebec and New Brunswick have done the same.

Even the federal government, whose public spending is more restricted in trade deals than any other jurisdiction, has created a Buy Canadian Policy. This policy favours Canadian suppliers, content and materials within major strategic purchases.

The federal government also has an Interim Reciprocal Procurement Policy that eliminates suppliers from countries without commensurate access. This would include U.S. companies like Aramark, despite its Mississauga headquarters in Canada.

In brief, Winnipeg would be in good company with a Buy Local policy. Ideally, this policy would bar American suppliers, advantage local and Canadian suppliers for low-value purchases, and require community benefits for major strategic purchases. 

In fact without such a policy, Winnipeg’s local businesses could needlessly miss out on lucrative opportunities while others eat their lunch.

Noah Fry is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University. Stuart Trew is a senior trade researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The post Winnipeg can (and should) buy local 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.

In early 2025, Beare fired the democratically elected board over a policy dispute regarding the district’s controversial school police liaison officer program. The board had decided to abolish the police liaison program as part of a broader rethink of the roles of police officers in schools—much to the chagrin of the Victoria Police Department, who, text messages later revealed, coordinated with the provincial government in the leadup to the school board’s dismissal.

In firing the elected school board officials, the current provincial government became the first in British Columbia history to dismiss an elected school board over a policy disagreement. That should concern anyone who values democratic governance and local accountability.

Now, after months of turmoil and significant expense to taxpayers—during which Greater Victoria residents were denied democratic representation in their school district—the government has reversed that decision because it failed to timely disclose troubling text messages between an associate deputy minister and an assistant police chief, as required through the legal process undertaken by the fired trustees to challenge their dismissal. 

Those messages included a variety of insulting and derogatory comments about the chair of the school board, Nicole Duncan, as well as insults directed towards other members of the board. The government claims that their failure to disclose those text messages to the court was an “administrative error.”

This entire affair raises serious questions about why the minister chose to fire the democratically elected board in the first place, and about the nature of the communications between senior ministry staff and police officials.

Taxpayers have now been left footing the bill for an extraordinary series of avoidable costs, including the government appointment of Sherri Bell, who replaced the elected school board, in addition to contract costs for special advisor Kevin Godden (who was appointed to help the board develop a “safety plan” prior to their dismissal,) retroactive compensation owed to the fired trustees; and extensive legal expenses, including those incurred by the dismissed board members themselves.

None of these costs would have arisen had the minister exercised sound judgment in the first place and respected the trustees’ democratic role in setting policy for their district.

There are also serious unanswered questions about how this process unfolded behind closed doors, particularly regarding the involvement of senior ministry officials and the Victoria Police Department.

Meanwhile, students continue to lose programs and supports.

In a particularly galling move, the provincial government-appointed trustee (following the board’s dismissal) approved a substantial raise for the superintendent of schools while simultaneously cutting student services and programs. At a time when districts across British Columbia are struggling to preserve music programs, learning supports, and classroom resources, this sends exactly the wrong message about government priorities.

This situation reflects a broader and increasingly troubling pattern within the Ministry of Education and Child Care: political intervention taking precedence over collaboration, transparency, and respect for local democratic governance.

Like governments at all levels, school boards are not perfect. They make difficult decisions, and sometimes unpopular ones. But elected trustees are accountable to the communities that elect them. Overriding democratic outcomes because the provincial government disagrees with a board’s policy direction sets a dangerous precedent.

These actions have damaged public confidence in democratic governance. Trustees, families, and students have been caught in the crossfire. Precious education dollars have been diverted from classrooms, with students ultimately paying the price.

The government owes the public a full accounting of how this happened, how much it cost, and what safeguards will be put in place to ensure it never happens again.

The trustees should never have been fired. But after this debacle, perhaps someone at the provincial level should be held accountable.

The post Why is the BC government targeting Victoria’s elected school board? 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.