Submission to the 2026 Federal Budget
Meaningful, collaborative investment is needed across the social safety net to address poverty in Canada.
Submitted to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance as part of the federal pre-budget consultations for 2026
Sent by Chantelle Spicer and Sacia Burton on behalf of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition
Given the intersectional, complex nature of poverty as a structure in Canada, our submission to the 2027 Federal Budget calls for meaningful investment across the social safety net and collaboration between all levels of government.
Summary of recommendations:
Ensuring the Right to Housing in Canada
Investment in Intra- and Inter-provincial transit
Ensuring Quality of Life for Indigenous Peoples On-reserve
Making Essentials More Affordable
Take Measures to Build Income Equity
Support Life-affirming Immigration and Refugee Agencies
Collaboration for Adequate Rates of Social Assistance Across Canada
Ensuring the Right to Housing in Canada
We call not just for status quo investment but aggressive intervention into the market response to the financialization of housing through social housing along the spectrum of housing needs, including supportive housing, multi-stage transitional housing, co-operative housing, and rent-geared-to-income units including shelter rate. According to both international and our own federal law, the Federal Government should be utilizing the maximum amount of its available resources to address housing, as is laid out in the definition of progressive realization of the right to housing.
Along with our partners at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, we call for improved coordination across all levels of government through a Canadian Housing Accord. This will reflect the overlapping and intersecting jurisdiction of housing responsibility, as well as allow for coordination across related social safety net issues like healthcare and social assistance programs.
Re-invest fully in social housing across the spectrum of housing needs across the country - a system that has been gradually degraded since the 1990s. The government must build and protect a continuum of affordable, shelter-rate, non-market housing that offers a flexible range of supports and respects the choice and autonomy of residents to transition into safe, permanent housing to ensure housing for households that the market can’t and won’t serve.
Through Build Canada Homes, we call for a minimum of 50,000 units per year across the non-market housing spectrum.
Through the renewal of the National Housing Strategy Act, the Canadian Government should extend the Homelessness Reduction Innovation Fund for another $50 million over 3 years.
Improve the Canada Housing Benefit as a targeted, income-based housing safety net to stabilize households at times of transition.
The BC PRC supports Maytree’s proposed Canada Housing Benefit System that creates an integrated income support through all levels of government to develop a national housing benefit standard that promotes consistency and advances the right to housing across Canada. A 2023 poll from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness shows Canadians overwhelmingly support a new benefit to increase rent-support for low-income people.
Investment in Intra- and Inter-provincial transit
Transit connects to many of the Government's goals for addressing public safety, climate change, poverty, and accessibility. Transportation - including transit - is one of the largest expenses for households alongside housing and food. Further, transportation is a significant contributor to GHG emissions pollution that continues to hamper Government’s targets for emissions reductions. Investment in public transit to limit cars on the road is a key policy move to close the gap on our emissions targets. Further it is a key aspect of public safety, especially for Indigenous women as identified in by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Work with provincial governments to expand affordable, accessible, and convenient inter- and intra-provincial public transit networks, including long-distance and light passenger rail, bus networks, and cycling infrastructure
Alongside our members at BC Climate Emergency Campaign we call for the federal government to reallocate infrastructure funds from highway expansion to public transit and active transportation. This will reduce pollution and improve affordability and human health.
Ensure that the Build Communities Strong Fund for local infrastructure prioritizes public transit over highway expansion.
We echo the calls from National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that the government must establish adequate plans and funding for safe and affordable transit and transportation services and infrastructure for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people living in remote or rural communities.
Ensuring Quality of Life for Indigenous Peoples On-reserve
Poverty is a structure and experience brought to the lands now known as Canada. This does not mean times were not difficult across Indigenous territories prior to colonization, but that Indigenous communities and nations had resource sharing and distribution built into their governance and cultures. Under colonization, Indigenous communities on reserve disproportionately experience high rates of poverty. In BC, rates of child poverty on reserve is also high, with BC’s First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society reported that 14% of children were living in poverty - while on reserves this is more than double the provincial rate. Indigenous people on-reserve experience many forms of poverty beyond income, including lack of access to clean drinking water, safe and reliable transit, and digital connectivity. In 2021, the Federal government at the time promised to end all long-term drinking water advisories by 2021. After $4.6 billion in water spending, 40 advisories remain. In 2025 alone, 11 new advisories were added, and only three were lifted. Nearly half have been in place for more than a decade.
Income Supports
The Assembly of First Nations recommends that Canada must increase IA rates to provide a livable income that is responsive to First Nations realities. Canada must take immediate steps to amend the policy authority away from being tied to provincial and territorial rates and towards needs-based funding and rates.
In a report on Indigenous peoples and income supports in BC, it was recommended that the federal and provincial governments work together to create a cross-government Indigenous poverty reduction strategy with a decolonizing, anti-racist framework with actionable goals, recommendations, and timelines, and with a framework for accountability. This report further recommended creating a moving off-reserve program to address payment lag periods to prevent people from being without support payments for months.
Improve system navigation by integrating in-community and outside-community support programs by negotiating a formal agreement between the province and the federal government. An example of this exists in Ontario, where Income Assistance on-reserve, including case management and pre-employment services, is delivered through the provincial Ontario Works program, with funding reimbursement from ISC.
Access to Basic Services and Infrastructure
Invest in the full supply chain for clean drinking water for reserves from sourcing, abstraction, treatment, testing, storage, transmission and distribution.
As part of nation-building efforts, begin investing toward the $5.2 billion estimated by the Assembly of First Nations to close the gap on digital connectivity for reserves by 2030.
Regarding housing, Indigenous people are nearly three times more likely to live in dwellings needing major repairs. The Auditor General reported in 2024 that 80 per cent of First Nations housing needs remain unmet, with only seven years left until the government’s 2030 deadline.
Given that housing cannot be built without developable land and adequate public infrastructure, the government of Canada must work with Indigenous peoples and nations to return lands.
Make urgent, accessible, and meaningful investments in housing renovation and repairs for on- and off-reserve Indigenous housing through Build Canada Homes.
Making Essentials More Affordable
Every Canadian resident deserves access to the essentials they need to live, including food, medication, and childcare. When people have greater access to life’s essentials, there is benefit not only to individuals and households, but the economy as a whole.
Food
Rising costs of food have Canadians skipping meals, record visits to foodbanks year after year, and people failing to meet their nutritional needs. Oligopolies in the Canadian grocery market stifle competition and gift corporations free rein to prioritize profit over access to essentials. These few grocery company owners raked in record profits early in the pandemic and continue to profit off of global instability. With about 80% of sales controlled by five major chains, including Loblaw, Empire and Metro, these grocery stores made around twice as much as their pre-pandemic profits in the first two quarters of 2022.
We support calls from the Canadian Labour Congress to institute national price caps on essential goods (i.e. vegetables, fruits, grains/ bread/ cereals, canned goods, meat, and dairy) in an effort to mitigate corporate price gouging and stabilize food prices.
Institute progressive corporate taxation measures on grocery conglomerates and reinvest the tax revenue into food security programs.
Make permanent and strengthen the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit to provide adequate financial support to adults 18 to 64 with low and modest incomes.
Pharmacare
Ensuring that Canadians have access to life-saving medication and treatment is a key part of a nation-building agenda. At a time when people across Canada are already struggling with the rising cost of living, access to essential medication should not become another financial burden families are forced to carry alone. The passage of pharmacare legislation last year represented a historic step toward building a stronger and fairer public healthcare system. Continuing to expand investment in Pharmacare is a part of your promise as Government made at the September 2025 Liberal caucus meeting, when Prime Minister Carney had promised to expand pharmacare to all Canadians “as quickly and as equitably as possible.” Canadians expect you to honour that commitment.
Continue to fund existing agreements with provinces and territories for medical coverage in perpetuity, while creating new agreements on the same medication coverage across the country to ensure nationwide access to contraceptives, menopause medications, and diabetes-related medications and supplies.
We support the National Pharmacare Committee in their call to build upon the Canada Health Act to quickly advance new legislation to explicitly recognize the right to essential medicines and to fully funding a list of essential medicines through existing processes, such as provincial and territorial health cards.
Childcare
Major federal investments are being made in skilled trades and nation-building projects across the country. Accessible child care ensures that all families – especially women – are able to participate in this economic vision. There is strongevidence that investing in child care actually supports economic growth: early learning centres are job creators, enable female workforce participation, and contribute to our GDP.
Make equitable funding allocations for child care program training and better support this gendered workforce, while providing increased opportunities for affordable childcare
Provide a top-up for funding to provinces and territories to ensure financial infrastructure for expanding affordable childcare.
Take Measures to Address Income Inequality Through the Tax System
The Federal Government’s goal of reducing poverty nationwide by 50% will only happen through concerted, intersectional policy responses that must include funding poverty reduction programs through implementing a progressive wealth tax and meaningful corporate tax reform.
While more and more families are struggling to put food on the table, wealth concentration in the wealthiest of Canadian families has continued to skyrocket. The wealthiest 1% of Canadian families (169,000 families) owned 22.7% of household wealth in 2023, up from 19.3% in 1999 — an increase of $3 trillion in total over that period. Reducing wealth inequality is essential to preserving democratic systems and maintaining a decent standard of living for everyone who calls Canada home.
Reallocate OAS distribution from retired couples with incomes over $100,000 to social services that raise individuals and families out of poverty
Institute higher taxes on individuals capital income and high-end wealth. As noted by BC Policy Solution’s report on wealth accumulation, to prevent further wealth concentration, we should implement a wealth tax targeted at the ultra-wealthy. It is estimated that an annual tax of 1% on net wealth above $10 million (affecting just 0.6% of families), 2% above $50 million, and 3% above $100 million would raise an estimated $39 billion in its first year alone (rising in subsequent years) and could raise $495 billion over ten years.
Use these funds to reinstate the federal top-up and transfer program to provincial and territorial governments for social assistance programs to make programs of the social safety net livable and lift people out of deep poverty.
Support life-affirming immigration and refugee agencies
Despite the federal government’s recent moves to limit immigration and refugees, settlement agencies continue to offer a lifeline to thousands who have arrived in recent years. Agencies offering ongoing support and connection to community resources required dedicated federal funding to sustain their crucial operations. Due to ongoing systemic racism and discrimination, LGBTQI+ refugees in particular require additional levels of assistance and support to ensure they can access the community and cultural services they need to live a dignified life in Canada.
Fully restore funding that was cut from vital settlement programs in 2025, which has negatively impacted vital community service providers in their ability to deliver youth, language, employment, and women’s services.
Provide dedicated, multi-year federal funding to the Rainbow Refugee Assistance Partnership (RRAP), stewarded by Rainbow Refugee Society and enabling over 25 communities across Canada to sponsor LGBTQI+ refugees, to support its national implementation, including coordination, intake and triage systems, training, and sponsorship support infrastructure, and to enable an increase in resettlement spaces and equitable access across Canada.
Collaboration for Adequate Rates of Social Assistance Across Canada
The government’s own National Advisory Council on Poverty has repeatedly (from 2020-2025) asked the federal government to introduce legislation to better leverage Canada Social Transfer payments to provinces to ensure that social assistance rates in each jurisdiction meet a higher percentage of the Market Basket Measure poverty line. Since the dismantling of the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) in the mid-1990s, income support for those living in poverty and unable to secure employment has become unlivable, especially given rates of inflation and cost-of-living for basic needs.
We call for a collaborative approach to ensuring a good quality of life for every Canadian as a part of nation-building efforts being invested in by the Federal Government. Working with provinces, the federal government should:
define a minimum income standard for working-age adults through the MBM;
provide targeted transfers or credits to ensure it is met; and
recommit to achieving the largely abandoned goal of a 50% reduction in poverty by 2030.
Further, we call for reform to the Disability Tax Credit (DTC), which has become Canada’s primary gateway to disability support. No government program should be so burdensome that it gives rise to a for-profit industry of “promoters” devoted solely to providing navigation support, yet this describes the DTC today. An overhaul is long overdue.
Replace the restrictive DTC disability definition with a new broader definition and grant automatic DTC eligibility to individuals receiving disability benefits through social assistance.
Increase funding for the Disability Benefit Navigation program, which funds not-for-profit community-based organizations to help people access the Disability Tax Credit, the Canada Disability Benefit, and other provincial and territorial disability benefits.
