Question Period Note: Funding Overview

Overview of funding programs offered by Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE).

*Organizations working on the ground are instrumental in achieving meaningful and sustainable equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

*Women and Gender Equality Canada provides funding to organizations to support women and LGBTQ2 equality, and to address gender-based barriers across social, economic and political spheres. It puts particular emphasis on funding for Indigenous organizations working to advance the equality of Indigenous women, girls and LGBTQ2 people.

*The Women’s Program supports systemic change for women’s equality and the full participation of women in Canada’s democratic, social and economic life.

*The Gender-Based Violence Program provides funding for projects to develop and test promising practices to support survivors of gender-based violence and their families.

*The LGBTQ2 Community Capacity Fund aims to build stronger infrastructure and networks of LGBTQ2 community organizations to advance LGBTQ2 equality across Canada.

Historically, the Women’s Program has been the only federal Grants and Contributions program dedicated to advancing equality between men and women in Canada. In recent years, WAGE introduced new programs and funding streams to meet priority issues, as well as the legislated expanded mandate.

Women’s Program

The Women’s Program has ongoing annual funding totalling $19M. It has received additional funding in recent years to respond to emerging issues and address gaps:
o Capacity Building Fund: $100M over five years, starting in 2018-19, to increase capacity of women’s organizations and Indigenous organizations working to advance women’s equality.
o $160M over five years, starting in 2019-20, to enable further community action to tackle systemic barriers to women’s progress.
o Commemoration Fund: $10M over two years, starting in 2019-20, to support commemoration initiatives honouring the lives and legacies of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, including LGBTQ and Two Spirit people.

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Program

The GBV Program was established as part of It’s Time: Canada’s Strategy to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence, a whole-of-government horizontal initiative, led by WAGE.

The GBV Program was launched with $29.4M in funding over five years, starting in 2017-18, with ongoing annual funding of $6.2M. It was expanded with an additional $25.6M in funding over five years, starting in 2018-19, with an additional $6M a year on an ongoing basis.

Additionally, as part of the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking, led by Public Safety, WAGE received $10M over four years, starting in 2020-21, and $2M/ year ongoing to support promising prevention practices for vulnerable populations, as well as short-term continuum of care interventions for women, girls and LGBTQ2 survivors of human trafficking.

LGBTQ2 Community Capacity Fund

The first dedicated funding for LGBTQ2 organizations at the federal level, the LGBTQ2 Community Capacity Fund was launched with $20M over three years, starting in 2019-20, to build a stronger ecosystem of LGBTQ2 community organizations by supporting capacity-building and community-level work of LGBTQ2 organizations in Canada. This investment is time-limited.

An initial investment has been made in seven projects ($2M in funding) to build the initial infrastructure of existing or emerging LGBTQ2 organizations at the national level and to help develop the capacity of local and regional organizations.

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