In his first major move as Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney eliminated roughly a third of all cabinet positions, including the crucially important Minister of Women and Gender Equality. This decision marks a major setback for women’s rights in Canada at a time when these rights are under threat around the world.
Carney, sworn in as prime minister on Friday, has justified the trimmed-down cabinet as a “smaller, experienced cabinet” positioned to move fast and secure Canada’s economy in the face of US President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada and other threats.
But deprioritizing gender equality does not help Canada’s economy, and risks entrenching serious gendered harms. The gender wage gap and gendered poverty and inequality persist in Canada. Women and gender diverse workers also face disproportionately high levels of harassment and violence at work. Much work also remains for Canada to ensure and support sexual and reproductive health rights at home and abroad.
There was and will be federal healthcare funding that Trudeau is not attached to. It’s disingenuous to claim that the federal government has no tools available to achieve its goals if it so chose to make healthcare spending official policy. Historically, these things often start at the provincial level, but that doesn’t mean that they have to or that federal funding wouldn’t help a province already moving towards improving their existing system.
It’s not beyond them to invent a new program with specific funding requirements, they’ve done it many time. If voters are made more acutely aware that provinces are leaving money on the table due to corporate lobbying and partisanship while healthcare languishes and nurses exit the field, that could go very poorly for some Premiers (like Smith, whose administration is showing their ass in the middle of a healthcare spending scandal).