By Lauren Whitford
OTTAWA — Leaders of five national and regional Indigenous women’s organizations said Thursday that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget leaves Indigenous women out. The one measure aimed squarely at them, they said, deals with violence after it happens rather than preventing it.
“Budget 2026 represents a missed opportunity to make Indigenous women’s safety and healing a sustained national priority,” said Josie Nepinak, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, at a news conference on Parliament Hill, CBC News reported.
Nepinak was joined by Lisa Pigeau, director of intergovernmental relations for Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak; Rose Mary Cooper, former executive director of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada; Marjolaine Étienne, president of Quebec Native Women; and Cora McGuire-Cyrette, CEO of the Ontario Native Women’s Association, CBC reported.
What the budget includes
The budget, tabled Nov. 5 by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, provides $3.6 million to renew the Red Dress Alert pilot. The pilot was developed with Indigenous partners to help find Indigenous women and girls who go missing, CBC reported. The Canadian Press described the $3.6 million as the budget’s funding identified for Indigenous women, including money to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Nepinak said the funding is welcome and will save lives, but it “doesn’t fix or address all of the gaps that continue to exist.” She said the safety of Indigenous women must not depend on short-term funding cycles.
“We need sustained investment, clear accountability and a meaningful role for Indigenous women’s organizations in determining how these commitments will be implemented,” she said, according to CP. More needs to be done, she said, to ensure “Indigenous women are not an afterthought.”
McGuire-Cyrette said the pilot pays for the “aftermath of violence” rather than prevention. “We’re not seeing those upstream investments,” she said.
The government’s answer
Ottawa says the budget does more than the leaders acknowledge. Asked for comment, Crown-Indigenous Relations pointed CP to other funding, including for the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program and for community-led safety initiatives.
“Ensuring the safety of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people remains an urgent priority for our government, and Budget 2026 builds on significant recent progress in expanding supports and advancing solutions shaped and led by Indigenous communities,” a department spokesperson said.
More broadly, the budget pledges $50 billion over 10 years for Indigenous programs and services, including $32 billion over 10 years for First Nations housing and infrastructure, CBC reported. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami welcomed $575 million over five years for the Inuit Child First Initiative and its move to the new Inuit-led Pirutsiagutiit program. But it said it was “disappointed” by the lack of specific references to Inuit elsewhere in the document.
North, off-reserve and the resource economy
Cooper said the budget does not account for the dangers women face in northern and remote communities, and that Inuit women are not mentioned once in it. “For many Indigenous women, safety is a plane ride away,” she said. She noted that most communities in Inuit Nunangat can be reached only by air, and that 60% have no shelters or other safe spaces.
“When an Indigenous woman needs to flee violence, she often must leave her family, her language, her land and her whole surrounding,” Cooper said. “A model designed for seven cities does not work in small flying communities where food and housing costs weigh much more. One size does not fit all.”
McGuire-Cyrette said most of the budget’s Indigenous spending goes to on-reserve services. She cited a 2024 Ontario Native Women’s Association study finding that 83% of Indigenous women live off reserve, in rural and urban centres. “The budget is silent for the majority of urban Indigenous agencies,” she said. “If we’re not at the table, how can you work with us?”
She also tied the issue to Ottawa’s push to speed up major resource and infrastructure projects. “Canada is mobilizing billions to respond to economic threats and expand industries that put Indigenous women’s lives at risk,” she told CP. “And we have yet to see the same urgency in addressing the threats we face every day. Canada cannot be strong when we, as Indigenous women, remain unsafe.”
The record behind the demand
One in six Indigenous women has experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence, according to Statistics Canada, CBC reported. Indigenous women make up about 5% of women in Canada but were about 26% of women killed by an intimate partner in 2022, according to federal data cited by CBC.
The 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded that Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to go missing or be murdered than non-Indigenous women. It issued 231 Calls for Justice. Seven years later, CP reported, little progress has been made on implementing them.
“We need government to take up its responsibilities and act on the solutions that generations of Indigenous women have put forward over the last three decades,” McGuire-Cyrette said.
What comes next
Pigeau said the leaders spoke with Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty before the budget and have not yet asked to meet her since. They want to meet “all ministers that would be involved,” she said, because the issue is “beyond just one issue.” Nepinak said the groups had raised the same needs at a February conference Alty attended, but “it feels like it fell on deaf ears.”
The Chronicle is asking Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada how the Red Dress Alert renewal will be rolled out and whether additional prevention funding is planned. This story will be updated with any response.
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