CRIAW-ICREF’s Initial Reaction to Budget 2025
Sustained WAGE funding vital to advancing women’s rights, but gaps remain in Budget 2025
Anishinaabe Territory/OTTAWA: Budget 2025’s inclusion of stable funding for the department of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) over the next five years is welcome news for national women’s rights organizations like the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW-ICREF) who are working to secure systemic change to advance women’s equality, economic security and safety.
Budget 2025 proposes predictable annual funding for WAGE of $132.1 million per year, which includes $76.5 million per year for the Women’s Program. The funding for WAGE represents a drop in annual spending from the current fiscal year. However, the promise to exempt WAGE from further cuts for five years provides national women’s rights organizations with important assurance they will continue to receive funding for their critical work of defending intersectional women’s rights. This work is even more important at a time when regressive movements and ideologies are threatening women’s equality and economic security.
More broadly, CRIAW-ICREF is alarmed by the lack of programs and measures aimed at mitigating the affordability crisis for low-income women and other marginalized groups. We are also concerned by the lack of new investments in programs such as child care, pharmacare and long-term care, and cuts to public sector employment. Research by CRIAW-ICREF notes that federal spending cuts disproportionately affect women and that the lack of funding to support communities deepens existing structural gendered and intersectional inequities. Sustained investments in public services and programs are crucial for building a strong and equitable Canada for all women, people, and for the generations to come.
There is much to unpack in Budget 2025. CRIAW-ICREF will continue to analyze the gendered, intersectional impacts of the commitments and omissions in this budget for women in all their diversity in Canada.
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For more information, contact: Jackie Neapole, Executive Director, CRIAW-ICREF
343-324-1927
About CRIAW-ICREF: Since 1976, CRIAW-ICREF has been researching and documenting the economic and social situation of women in Canada. It undertakes research, policy analysis and education on feminist intersectionality and GBA Plus to understand systems of power that create barriers to women’s equality in order to remove these barriers and redistribute power equitably. Using intersectional frameworks, CRIAW-ICREF has developed and undertaken a variety of important, ground-breaking research that is women centered. CRIAW-ICREF is a not for profit member-based organization. www.criaw-icref.ca