Canada’s Cabinet ministers will prioritize climate change, reconciliation, and systemic inequities. Here are the details.

Each of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letters to his Cabinet ministers on Dec. 13 opens with a blunt, frank assessment of Canada’s most existential crises. 

The COVID-19 pandemic leads the pack (“Canadians…entrusted us to finish the fight against COVID-19”) but Trudeau weaves in the alarming effects of climate change (“…an existential threat”), the discovery of unmarked graves and burial sites at former residential schools (“…reconciliation cannot come without truth”), and Canada’s ongoing injustices (“…the profound systemic inequities and disparities that remain present in the core fabric of our society.”)

“Our platform lays out an ambitious agenda,” Trudeau writes. “While finishing the fight against the pandemic must remain our central focus, we must continue building a strong middle class and work towards a better future where everyone has a real and fair chance at success and no one is left behind.” 

Trudeau asks each of his Cabinet Ministers to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, incorporate the diverse views of Canadians, look at all public policies through a gender-based analysis plus, seek opportunities to fight climate change, and work respectfully with journalists and members of Canada’s Official Opposition. These letters represent Trudeau’s philosophy as Prime Minister, as well as the key items on his agenda for the length of his government’s time in office. 

Future of Good dove into several of the most critical mandate letters for Canada’s social impact sector. Here are the highlights:

Chrystia Freeland 

Role: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Acts as the second-most powerful member of Cabinet, next to the Prime Minister, and oversees the government’s budget. 

Highlights: 

• The Prime Minister’s instructions for Freeland include successfully passing legislation that offers temporary wage and rent support for several hard hit sectors of Canada’s economy: arts and culture, hospitality, and tourism.  
• She’ll also work closely with Economic Development Minister Mary Ng to set up a Futures Fund to support “local and regional economic diversification” in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador as part of Canada’s plans for a just transition away from fossil fuel production. 
• Alongside Women and Gender Equality Minister Marci Ien, Freeland is instructed to change the Income Tax Act to revoke the charitable status of anti-abortion organizations that provide “dishonest counselling to pregnant women about their rights and options”, a reference to so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centres’. These organizations often discourage abortion in favour of adoption. 

Sector impact: 

• Canada’s non-profit and charitable arts sector is incredibly hard-hit by revenue shortfalls. With the phase-out of the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERA) and Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), arts and culture organizations could benefit from new subsidies, especially as Omicron prompts new capacity limits for large venues. 
• Successful just transition initiatives require a tremendous amount of capital, engagement, and time to pivot a community away from fossil fuel dependency. Launching dedicated ‘Future Funds’ may mean more grants for non-profits and charities interested in this work. 
• Many ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ have charitable status — losing that would mean the end of tax receipts for donors. 

Carolyn Bennett

Role: Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health. Responsible for federal funding associated with healthcare undertaken by Canadian provinces and territories. 

Highlights:

• Develop a comprehensive, evidence-based national mental health plan that includes improved virtual services, a three-digit suicide prevention hotline, and a new fund for post-secondary student mental healthcare. 
• Advance a “comprehensive strategy to address comprehensive substance use in Canada, including harm reduction programs. However, despite Canada’s ongoing talks with Vancouver to decriminalize certain recreational drugs for personal use, the words “safe supply” or “decriminalization” are not mentioned anywhere in Bennett’s mandate letter. 
• Help the Minister of Indigenous Services Patty Hajdu establish an Indigenous-focused Mental Health and Wellness Strategy, including “culturally appropriate wraparound services for addiction and trauma, suicide and life promotion and the building of treatment services.” 

Sector impact: 

• Non-profits and charities are heavily involved in mental healthcare, especially around suicide prevention and outreach. Depression and anxiety rates will likely spike with the new arrival of Omicron and require dedicated mental health-related funding. 
• The same is true for the addiction field, but many non-profits and charities who work closely with drug users, such as supervised consumption sites, have been advocating for safe supply measures to address the decades-long harm of Canada’s war on drugs. The lack of any safe supply language means Canada’s staggeringly high opioid overdose death rate will continue. 
• Indigenous clients accessing mental health and addiction treatment often experience medical racism, as well as a disconnect with their care providers. Services rooted in Indigenous culture and practices will be better able to reach these clients, and break an intergenerational cycle of trauma. 

Harjit Sajjan

Role: Minister of International Development, as well as the Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada. Responsible for overseeing Canada’s overseas development, aid, and humanitarian spending. 

Highlights: 

• Implement the Feminist International Assistance Policy and focus on assisting the poorest, most vulnerable people around the world “through an intersectional, human rights-based feminist approach to address economic, political and social inequalities that prevent individuals from reaching their full potential.” 
• Boost Canada’s international development assistance every year until 2030 in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. 
• Develop climate finance strategies alongside the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to help developing countries adapt, mitigate, and survive climate emergencies. 

Sector impact:

• Focusing on women, girls, and LGBTQ communities around the world will improve the reach and impact of Canada’s foreign assistance policy — research has shown empowering women leads to better overall outcomes on development projects. 
• Canada leans heavily on its past reputation for humanitarian and development aid, while its recent performance lags behind other OECD countries. In order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, Canada will need to step up its international development assistance considerably. 
• Climate change is due to wreak havoc on Global South countries, either on its own or alongside other long standing issues such as conflicts and income inequality. Preventing these disasters will mean strengthening climate resilience. 

Patty Hajdu

Role: Minister of Indigenous Services, and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario. 

Highlights: 

• Eliminate all remaining long-term drinking water advisories on First Nations reserves and ensure there are long-term investments in place to prevent future ones. 
• Support Indigenous communities who want to search the sites of former residential schools, day schools, and Indian hospitals for buried children. 
• Work with Indigenous communities to “transition away from the Indian Act” and help reclaim their full jurisdiction over areas that matter to them, including the administration of justice, education, healthcare, taxation, policing, and child and family services. 

Sector impact:

• Water is a community’s single most precious resource. All other concerns, from educational funding to broadband access, are secondary if a community cannot drink the water from its taps. 
• Canada’s social impact sector, through churches and faith-based charities, contributed to the atrocities of the residential school system and subsequent abuses against Indigenous children. Undoing these wrongs is a critical component to reconciliation. 
• Self-determination by Indigenous communities will change their relationship to non-profits and charities established by outsiders, and Canada’s social impact sector will need to be ready to have conversations about the relationship between organizations and these communities. 

François-Philippe Champagne

Role: Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. Also responsible for overseeing Statistics Canada. 

Highlights: 

• Accelerate broadband delivery across Canada by implementing a “use it or lose it” approach to require companies that purchase broadband rights to meet installment promises, or risk losing their spectrum rights. 
• Help the President of Canada’s Treasury Board build a “whole-of-government approach” for improved disaggregated data collection and analysis. 

Sector impact:

• Broadband access is a huge equity issue for rural Canada, particularly remote Indigenous communities, at a time when our reliance on digital services is rising exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic’s public health restrictions. 
• Disaggregated data collection could be a critical tool for non-profits and charities to understand the extent to which social inequities play out in Canadian society (although it comes with its own challenges and pitfalls). 

Karina Gould

Role: Minister of Families, Children and Social Development. 

Highlights: 

• Continue establishing a Canada-wide childcare and early learning system by wrapping negotiations with all provinces and territories that haven’t yet signed onto the agreement. 
• Implement the Community Services Recovery Fund to help charities adapt as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• Fully implement Canada’s Social Finance Fund and launch the Social Innovation Advisory Council. 

Sector impact:

• Affordable childcare is one of the most critically important ways to give family caregivers, most of whom are women, the freedom to enter the workforce — and significantly reduce their likelihood of experiencing gender-based violence, working in low-wage jobs, and under-earning compared to their male counterparts. 
• Community services organizations are facing a demand spike and a revenue crunch. Offering a financial lifeline to these organizations will better help them serve Canadians at a time when another big wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is crashing across the country. 
• Social finance is another avenue to raise and deliver capital for social causes that are often underserved and in dire need of funds, while also providing returns for investors themselves. Launching a Canadian fund may bring greater awareness to the practice and foster an ecosystem that is capable of supporting and scaling social purpose organizations. 

Ahmed Hussen

Role: Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion

Highlights: 

• Invest in a Housing Accelerator Fund to help Canada’s largest cities build more homes through increased density, better zoning, and rapid development of empty or underused land. 
• “Swiftly move forward” on the Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund for Black-led and Black-serving community organizations. 
• Lead the development of the National Action Plan on Combatting Hate, including investments to support digital literacy and prevent radicalization to violence. 

Sector impact:

• Housing affordability is one of the major factors driving poverty in Canada’s largest cities, especially Vancouver and Toronto. Anti-poverty organizations have called for more and cheaper housing in these cities for decades. 
• Black-led and Black-serving organizations have received a tiny fraction of the dollars within Canada’s non-profit and charitable sector. The Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund may very well change those statistics and equip Black social impact leaders to drive change in their communities. 

Steven Guilebeault

Role: Minister of Environment and Climate Change

Highlights: 

• Canada’s first National Adaptation Strategy in 2022, “setting clear goals and indicators to measure progress and strengthen the business case for adaptation.” 
• Prioritize contaminated site clean-up in areas where Indigenous Peoples, racialized, and low-income Canadians live — in other words, environmental racism and discrimination. 
• Continue “Canadian leadership in international efforts to combat climate change.” 

Sector impact:

• Climate change adaptation is a major opportunity for social purpose organizations — the climate crisis affects every single social issue in Canada, from poverty to gender-based violence to housing insecurity. 
• Environmental racism is a long standing issue in Canadian communities, especially in First Nations reserves and the Maritimes’ historic Black towns. Correcting it requires not only awareness, but action, and the Canadian government seems willing to address the problem. 
• Climate change is the most critical humanitarian problem facing the world today, although Canada’s performance in addressing it is quite mixed. 

Marci Ien

Role: Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth

Highlights: 

• Sustain funding commitments to Canadian women’s organizations, with a particular focus on Indigenous women, disabled women, LGBTQ communities, and newcomer women. 
• Move forward on a 10-year National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence and start negotiating with provinces and territories within a year.
• Address violence against Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ people by accelerating the Federal Pathway to Address Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People.

Sector impact:

• Women and LGBTQ people have borne the brunt of COVID-19’s socio-economic impacts: job loss, gender-based violence, mental health concerns, and social isolation. Steady funding flows to non-profits and charities working on these issues is critical, especially with the start of the Omicron wave. 
• Gender-based violence was a severe problem in Canada before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it is endemic, and the solution requires everyone’s participation — from provincial governments to women’s shelters. 
• Indigenous women, girls, and nonbinary people are among the most likely people to be killed through gender-based violence — a result of Canada’s centuries-long systemic racism against Indigenous people.

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