Budget 2026 renews and increases funding for several programs under the “Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan,” while also committing new funding for Canada’s Black Justice Strategy.
The government’s broader Anti-Racism Strategy, while still active with prior funding, does not receive new dedicated support.
Here’s a look at how spending on gender and racial equity programs is allocated in this year’s budget.
LGBT, Gender Funding
The budget renews the “2SLGBTQI+ Project Stream,” originally announced in 2022, which provides funding to community organizations and Pride event security.
Budget 2025 provided $54.6 million over five years, starting in 2026–2027, plus $10.9 million annually thereafter, to “build the capacity” of LGBT organizations and networks and for Pride event security.
Budget 2026 provides $60 million over four years, starting in 2027–28, and $15 million annually thereafter to renew funding under the Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan, which supports community-based projects, public awareness, research and the “2SLGBTQI+ Secretariat” within Women and Gender Equality Canada.
Ottawa launched the 10-year National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence in 2022, allocating $539.3 million over five years to help provinces and territories expand services to prevent gender-based violence and support survivors. Budget 2026 notes that Ottawa announced $607.4 million over four years in July to renew the agreements with provinces and territories to support the plan.
Budget 2026 also renews the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Secretariat and the Red Dress Alert pilot, which aims to provide faster, more “culturally informed” public alerts when an “Indigenous woman, girl, Two-Spirit, or gender-diverse person” goes missing. Ottawa said indigenous women and girls experience disproportionately high rates of violence in Canada.
The budget also aims to advance the health and well-being of women, girls, and “gender-diverse people” by supporting projects through the Women’s Program that promote gender equality and help improve outcomes for women and girls.
Budget 2026 proposes $8 million over four years starting in 2027–2028 and $2 million per year after for the program, which it says helps support women entrepreneurs, increases women’s representation in leadership positions, and helps address gender-based violence.
Ottawa also pledges to improve access to menstrual products by providing $70 million over two years, beginning in 2027-28, to renew the Menstrual Equity Fund. The government says approximately 1.24 million “people who menstruate” in Canada live below the poverty line. The funding will provide free access to menstrual products and aims to support menstrual health education and awareness.
Ottawa is also renewing the National Women’s Health Research Initiative to support research that improves health access and outcomes for women, girls, trans, and “gender-diverse” people. The government says the initiative will help address gaps in women’s health research.
Canada’s Black Justice Strategy
One of the new funding commitments in Budget 2026 will provide $136.3 million over four years, starting in 2027-28, to implement Canada’s Black Justice Strategy.
The funding will support access to legal services, community-based rehabilitation and reintegration initiatives for black youth, services for victims of crime, employment programs for black youth, and research into repeat offending and disparities in the criminal justice system.
The funding will also support the delivery of “Impact of Race and Culture Assessments” and related training activities. These assessments are pre-sentencing reports that examine how poverty, racism, and an offender’s cultural background may have affected their life circumstances. Judges can consider the reports when determining what sentences to impose.
The budget says black Canadians face “systemic discrimination” and are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, including among victims of crime. The strategy says it aims to address these disparities by improving access to legal services, reducing involvement in the justice system, supporting rehabilitation and reintegration, and providing services tailored to black communities.
Of the proposed funding, $58.6 million would go to Justice Canada, $41.1 million to Public Safety Canada, and $20.8 million to Employment and Social Development Canada for youth employment programming. Correctional Service Canada is also named as a recipient, but the budget does not separately itemize its allocation.
Canadian Heritage’s Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Program is set to receive about $35.9 million in 2026-27, including $21.8 million the government is seeking in its latest supplementary spending estimates, compared with $37.3 million in the 2025-26 main estimates.
Other race-related allocations display smaller changes or stay the same; funding for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation stays at $12 million per year, while the federal Black Entrepreneurship Program’s Knowledge Hub and Loan Fund will see a slight decrease in funding contributions, falling from $15 million to $14.9 million.
