NAWL’s Written Submission for the Pre-Budget Consultations in Advance of the 2024 Federal Budget

In September, the National Association of Women and the Law submitted a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance to share our recommendations to the Government of Canada for the next federal budget. 

In our submission, we underlined the fact that national women’s organizations have not been eligible for operational funding from the federal government since 1998, despite the fact that other organizations benefit from such funding. It is time to redress this inequity and to provide significant sustained support to Canada’s national women’s and equality-seeking organizations. 

With this in consideration, NAWL put forward four recommendations to the government: 

➡ Recommendation 1: That the government provide sustained operational funding to NAWL and other feminist organizations, in order to strongly support their critical role of advancing law reform that promotes and protects women’s substantive equality across economic, political and social spheres of Canadian society.   

➡ Recommendation 2: That the government’s implementation of the Women’s Program funding in Budget 2023 ($160 million over three years starting in 2023-24) dedicate a significant portion of these funds to three-year operational funding of national feminist organizations advancing systemic change.   

➡ Recommendation 3: That the government provide a further, minimum investment of $600 million over the next four years, in Canada’s National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence (NAP), for the development and implementation of the federal components, actions and responsibilities of the NAP.    

➡ Recommendation 4: That the government establish and fund an independent oversight body to act as an accountability mechanism to monitor and report on the implementation of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. 

Read NAWL’s submission here