Submitted to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance August 1, 2024
Recommendations:
1. Increase the international assistance envelope by allocating an additional $650 million per year for the next three years to build on Canada’s leadership in supporting women’s rights and feminist movements globally and continue to grow the humanitarian assistance envelope to meet rising demand. Any further assistance to Ukraine should be additional to the existing aid envelope and not impede an increase of assistance to the rest of the world.
2. Establish a comprehensive fund dedicated to the rebuilding of Gaza to address humanitarian needs, restore infrastructure and support long-term development.
3. Scale up Canada’s contribution to fighting climate change globally by allocating $15.9 billion over five years for climate adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage in low- and middleincome countries that have done the least to cause the climate crisis.
4. Scale up international assistance funding for the neglected areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) to meet the targets outlined in Canada’s 10-year commitment to global health and rights.
5. Create an independent long-term Sustainability Fund for women’s and gender justice organizations in Canada, developed in consultation and collaboration with national feminist organizations.
6. Expand non-profit and publicly owned early learning and child care with an additional $7 billion over three years to the federal transfers to the provinces and territories under the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements.
7. Increase funding to raise the individual maximum amount of the Canada Disability Benefit. When combined with other federal and provincial/territorial programs, it should bring all people with disabilities up to a minimum income of $2,400 per month.
8. Allocate at least $600 million per year over the next four years in the implementation of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence to meaningfully address accountability and monitoring at scale. Commit adequate and steady funding to sustain women’s domestic violence and emergency shelters, and increase investment in community-based prevention work, anti-violence training and early interventions.
9. Ensure Canadian corporations pay their fair share of taxes by implementing an excess profits tax for companies in all sectors generating oversized profits. Eliminate all federal support to the fossil fuel industry, including tax expenditures like the carbon, capture, usage and storage (CCUS) tax credit and direct financial support from Export Development Canada and other federal agencies.
10. Introduce a permanent wealth tax on the richest Canadians immediately. This tax should be at least at 2% for wealth over $5 million, 3% for wealth over $50 million and 5% for wealth over $1 billion.
Canada’s Role in the World
International cooperation is a critical investment in creating a fairer and more stable world. Globally, Canada can uphold human rights and advance its national interests by helping people who have been forcibly displacement by conflict, hunger or persecution; strengthening health care systems, including sexual and reproductive health services to women, girls and gender-diverse people; and tackling climate change and responding to the increasingly frequent and severe climate-induced disasters. Everyone is more secure in a world that is more equal, more peaceful and with access to living wages and decent working conditions.
Extreme inequality, climate change and spiking food and energy prices have created a perfect storm for the world’s most vulnerable people. The UN reports that nearly 300 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid in 2024. In addition to the onslaught of extreme weather and climate change events, the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza has cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than a million people. Millions more of displaced people are struggling to survive in ongoing conflicts in other countries including Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan and Yemen. Women’s rights and the progress towards gender equity are threatened with every humanitarian crisis and disaster. Canada’s leadership in responding to humanitarian crises has never been so urgently needed.
With Canada’s $5.3 billion commitment to finance climate action internationally ending next year, Canada and other donor governments must make new five-year funding commitments under the Paris Agreement. Given the severity of the climate crisis and its accelerating pace, Canada should triple its climate finance commitment to reach $15.9 billion over the next five years. Public climate finance should be delivered in the form of grants, not loans, to avoid further indebting low- and middle-income countries.
Canada has made significant contributions to support sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) internationally and must continue to grow our role as a diplomatic leader and an important donor when these services and rights are threatened everywhere. The government will need to scale up funding to meet its $700 million commitment for sexual and reproductive health with a focus on the neglected areas of SRHR (i.e. access to safe abortion services, adolescent SRHR including comprehensive sex education, advocacy for SRHR, and accessible contraception) next year.
Budget 2025 should:
1. Increase the international assistance envelope by allocating an additional $650 million per year for the next three years to build on Canada’s leadership in supporting women’s rights and feminist movements globally and continuing to grow the humanitarian assistance envelope to meet rising demand. Any further assistance to Ukraine should be additional to the existing aid envelope and not impede an increase of assistance to the rest of the world.
2. Establish a comprehensive fund dedicated to the rebuilding of Gaza to address humanitarian needs, restore infrastructure and support long-term development.
3. Scale up Canada’s contribution to fighting climate change globally by allocating $15.9 billion over five years for climate adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage in low-income countries that have done the least to cause the climate crisis. The new climate finance package should integrate gender equality and women’s rights directly into its policy framework; and allocate 40% of funding to climate adaptation, 40% to mitigation and 20% to loss and damage.
4. Scale up funding for international programming in the neglected areas of SRHR to meet the targets outlined Canada’s 10-year commitment to global health and rights, and prioritize funding to support women’s rights and other civil society organizations.
Women’s Economic Justice
Millions of Canadians are struggling to pay their bills, put food on the table and afford a place to call home, with women and gender-diverse people bearing the brunt of this economic crisis. Budget 2025 must restore confidence that the federal government sees their struggles and has their backs. Tinkering around the edge of our wealth inequality crisis is not working. Canada needs bold new ideas for dismantling the structural barriers that keep people living in poverty and the rich getting lavishly richer.
With a growing and aging population, Canada’s ever-increasing care needs are an urgent risk that should be addressed. Since 2021, the government has made landmark investments in building a pan-Canadian child care system. More investment is needed, however, in order to make child care spaces accessible to all families and attract more care workers by guaranteeing decent wages and working conditions.
Federal efforts to reduce economic hardship for people with disabilities culminated in the new Canada Disability Benefit Act and the associated financial resources committed in the 2024 budget. However, the federal funding ceiling of $200 per month per person is far below what disability justice advocates have been expecting and demanding. Budget 2025 should include enhanced funding to ensure that the new federal benefit truly meets the needs of people with disability to pull themselves out of poverty.
The continued rise of a disturbing anti-gender and anti-rights movement, both in Canada and globally, threatens progress on reducing inequality. Misogynistic and transphobic narratives are gaining a foothold in several Canadian provinces. Canada needs a strengthened, well-resourced women’s rights movement to counter these forces and uphold human rights and feminist values. The $160 million commitment to the women’s program in last year’s budget was welcome but will expire in the next two years. Longer-term sustainable funding is needed to drive forward the equality agenda. In addition, the government should provide multi-year funding to implement its National Action Plan on Gender Based Violence, and ensure good alignment and integration with federal action on the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Budget 2025 should:
5. Create an independent long-term Sustainability Fund for women’s and gender justice organizations in Canada, developed in consultation and collaboration with national feminist organizations. Such a fund would provide stable, predictable core funding to women’s and gender justice organizations in their work to advance equality and achieve the realization of human rights across Canadian society.
6. Expand non-profit and publicly owned early learning and child care with an additional $7 billion over three years to the federal transfers to the provinces and territories under the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements. This will enable full implementation of competitive and equitable wage grids, along with improved benefits and working conditions for early childhood educators and other staff in each jurisdiction. The government should partner with child care workers and organizations to develop a workforce strategy for child care workers that ensures adequate compensation and dignified working conditions.
7. Increase funding to raise the individual maximum amount of the Canada Disability Benefit. When combined with other federal and provincial/territorial programs, it should bring all people with disabilities up to a minimum income of $2,400 per month.
8. Allocate at least $600 million per year over the next four years in the implementation of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence to meaningfully address accountability and monitoring at scale. Commit adequate and steady funding to sustain women’s domestic violence and emergency shelters, and increase investment in community-based prevention work, anti-violence training and early interventions.
Fair Taxation
Fair taxation is at the heart of reducing inequalities, as it provides governments with the resource base to invest in social protection and other social policies and programs to level the playing field for all. A comprehensive overhaul of the Canadian tax system is needed to curb growing inequality and generate more public revenues for urgently needed public services. While the federal government did take some steps this year towards improving tax fairness, it failed to tackle extreme wealth inequality by introducing a wealth tax, taxing excess corporate profits beyond the financial sector, and cracking down on tax avoidance.
Budget 2025 should:
9. Ensure Canadian corporations pay their fair share of taxes by implementing an excess profits tax for companies in all sectors generating oversized profits. In addition, the budget should eliminate all federal support to the fossil fuel industry, including tax expenditures like the carbon, capture, usage and storage (CCUS) tax credit and direct financial support from Export Development Canada.
10. Introduce a permanent wealth tax on the richest Canadians immediately. This tax should be at least at 2% for wealth over $5 million, 3% for wealth over $50 million and 5% for wealth over $1 billion.
Oxfam Canada consulted with women’s rights advocates, Indigenous women, organized labour and other humanitarian groups to develop these ten recommendations for Budget 2025. By embracing all ten actions outlined above in the next federal budget, Canadians will see their longstanding values of fairness and equity being put into action.
For more information on these recommendations, please contact Ian Thomson, Manager of Policy and Advocacy: info@oxfam.ca
Oxfam Canada acknowledges our office is located on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin First Nation. We recognize the longstanding relationship the Algonquin have with this territory that has been nurtured since time immemorial. We also pay respect to all First Nations, Métis, and Inuit on the lands that we now know as Canada. We acknowledge the historical and ongoing oppression and colonization of the people and the loss of culture and land. We recognize the valuable past, present, and future contributions of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit as customary keepers and defenders of this territory. We honour their culture, knowledge, leadership, and courage. As settlers, we recognize this first step in a long journey toward decolonization and move towards reconciliation.
We thank members of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation for their support in reviewing this text (September 2023).
