Over the past six months, our community – survivors, supporters, service providers, feminist organizations, and advocates came together in powerful ways to stop the proposed 80% cuts to Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE).
WAGE’s Role
WAGE is the federal body responsible for setting and supporting policy across gender equity, including leading the national strategy through the National Action Plan to end gender‑based violence and the 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan.
Additionally, WAGE supports systemic change: it advances promising practices, builds capacity for organizations like Salal, and leads national initiatives such as the National Action Plan to End Gender‑Based Violence.
Through these investments, it enables organizations to work on issues like prevention, research, structural reform and cross‑system coordination and the National Action Plan. The National Acton plan supports front‑line survivor services through transfer payments and plans led by the Provinces.
This Fall, our team at Salal travelled to Ottawa to meet with WAGE, where we spoke from the ground about our survivor-centred work and the urgent need for stable, accessible funding that reflects our day-to-day realities. We specifically highlighted our crisis line, calling attention to the fact that Provincial Crisis Lines currently fall outside the bi-lateral transfer payments that form part of the National Action Plan. We wanted to ensure that Salal’s line and the survivors who depend on it were represented in these national conversations.
While we have yet to understand if the Provincial lines will be supported in this new budget, all the advocacy, persistence and collective action over the past several months did see wins in Budget 2025. To everyone who raised their voice and stood with us, thank you.
The Wins
Let’s start with what we can celebrate. Budget 2025 includes approximately $660 million to advance gender equity, of which around $223 million over five years (with about $44 million ongoing annually) is earmarked for gender‑based violence initiatives, and another $54 million for the 2SLGBTQI+ sector. WAGE’s budget is better protected compared to many other departments, with a smaller “savings target.”
These figures matter. Predictable funding and multi‑year commitments signal that advocacy works.
The Silence That Speaks Volumes
Yet while the numbers are substantial, there are significant questions and red flags. The omission of explicit mention of sexual violence in the budget documentation is striking, especially for a government positioning this as a “generational” investment in safety.
Will sexual assault centres like ours be able to access the announced GBV funds? Will survivors of sexual violence see the benefit of these investments?
The budget reiterates collaboration with provinces and territories on the National Action Plan to End Gender‑Based Violence, but provides no new federal transfer funding beyond March 2027. Without a clear future commitment to sustained national coordination, how can we ensure every survivor has access to the organizations and the care they deserve?
Furthermore, even as the department’s mandate is to advance gender equity and system‑level change, WAGE’s own upcoming departmental plan shows planned spending falling from about $407 million in 2025‑26 to just $60 million in 2027‑28, driven by the end of time‑limited funding streams.
Why Language, Frame and Approach Matter
It’s also impossible to ignore the rhetoric in Minister Champagne’s budget speech. The language was nationalistic and, at times, quite patriarchal, full of imagery about “protecting sovereignty,” and “building strength.”
From an intersectional feminist perspective, we must ask: Who is this safety for, and what does it require?
We must resist the trap of equating “safety” with policing, surveillance and control—especially when the budget repeats language of “protecting sovereignty” and “building strength” without centering healing, connection, community or difference.
When policy is framed through dominance rather than care, social priorities risk being overshadowed. True safety is built through prevention, healing, equitable access to care, cultural relevance, and recognizing survivors as whole humans with agency. Not just as crime statistics to be processed.
In his budget speech, Minister François-Philippe Champagne did not mention Minister Rechie Valdez by name. That omission might appear minor, but through a feminist lens, it reveals whose leadership is acknowledged and valued—and whose work is rendered invisible. To truly shift the frame, we must continue investing in healing and community-based interventions grounded in tenderness, a belief in people’s capacity for change, and a commitment that goes beyond crisis response.
Missing Threads: Sexual & Reproductive Rights, Indigenous Justice
There is not only no mention of sexual violence, but also no visible investment in sexual and reproductive rights (bodily autonomy, contraception access, abortion care, reproductive health) in the budgeting documents. A feminist analysis recognizes that violence cannot be separated from autonomy, from reproductive justice, or from the systems that either support or restrict these rights.
The budget speaks of reconciliation and invokes the idea of “seven generations.” Yet it cuts funding to Indigenous programming. It also offers little clarity on how investments will support Indigenous-led healing or address the gendered, colonial, and racialized violence faced by Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ Peoples.
The 10‑year National Action Plan on GBV was built in part around Indigenous‑led approaches—but without clear dedicated funds, we risk falling short.
What This Means for Survivor‑Centred Services
For organizations like Salal, the implications of Budget 2025 are both hopeful and cautious.
On the hopeful side, the introduction of multi-year commitments signals the potential for long-term planning, organizational stability, expanded capacity, and sustained efforts toward systems change.
On the cautionary side, critical questions remain:
- Will the GBV-tagged funds meaningfully include sexual-violence-specific services?
- Will there be dedicated streams for racialized, Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQI+ survivors that provide culturally and contextually safe supports?
- What happens after March 2027, when the current federal commitments for the National Action Plan to End GBV expire? How will provinces and territories continue this work without stable federal support?
- Will the framing remain rooted in “law-and-order” responses, or will it shift toward relational, community-based models of healing and prevention?
At Salal, we hold that safety must never default to punishment, surveillance, or carceral systems. True safety is built through community, connection, and choice.
Looking Ahead: Our Commitment & Call to Action
At Salal, we are watching closely. We will share a more detailed breakdown of how these commitments, and the gaps within them, may affect our sector and the survivors we serve, as more information becomes available.
For now, we want to recognize what this moment represents: advocacy works. Collaboration matters. While there is still much to fight for, there is also much to celebrate in what our collective care and persistence have made possible.
We invite our community, supporters and partners to continue holding the government accountable and asking questions such as: Safe for whom? Safe how?
We will keep demanding:
- Dedicated funding for sexual-violence-specific organizations
- Investment in sexual and reproductive rights as central to gender justice
- Support for Indigenous-led healing and 2SLGBTQI+ led programs
- A long-term, sustainable National Action Plan beyond 2027
- A shift away from carceral responses toward community-led, trauma-informed, feminist, and restorative justice models
To everyone who has stood with us: survivors, frontline workers, advocates, donors, allies – thank you. Your voice matters. Together, we believe in a world where survivors are heard, supported and never forgotten in national priorities.
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