By Axing the WAGE Minister, Carney Puts at Risk Decades of Progress

For as long as I can remember, Canada has had a government body dedicated to advancing gender equality. In 1976, the federal government established Status of Women Canada, and in 2018, that work grew into Women and Gender Equality Canada, or WAGE. The department shaped policies, funded frontline services and ensured gender-based violence remained on the federal agenda.

Now, with Mark Carney’s decision to eliminate the minister for Women and Gender Equality, and house that portfolio under a wide-ranging cultural file with the heritage minister, Canada could face the unravelling of decades of progress on women’s rights and the prevention of male violence against women.

Carney’s move sends the wrong signal about 55 years of vital work. We need his clear commitment to restoring the WAGE minister in his cabinet if the Liberals win the election.

Canada’s gender equality framework took shape in 1970 when the Royal Commission on the Status of Women released its landmark report calling for a federal agency to oversee gender equity.

In 1971, the federal government established the Office of the Co-ordinator, Status of Women, within the Privy Council Office to implement the commission's recommendations.

In 1976, the work evolved into Status of Women Canada, a full departmental agency dedicated to advancing women’s rights, particularly economic empowerment, representation and preventing male violence against women.

Status of Women Canada funded shelters, research initiatives and advocacy groups. Since 2018, WAGE has been instrumental in funding the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, a multi-year strategy designed to address systemic violence against women and marginalized groups.

WAGE also led initiatives like Gender-Based Analysis Plus, or GBA+, ensuring federal policies considered the impacts on diverse genders.

The ministry has provided a crucial voice for survivors, service providers and feminist organizations. Now we face urgent questions about Canada’s commitment to gender justice.

A grim show of priorities

Carney’s WAGE decision is not just bureaucratic restructuring — it is a clear statement of what he considers important and what he does not.

The trade war started by U.S. president Donald Trump appears to have forced Carney to position himself as leader of a "war cabinet" that prioritizes financial markets, global instability and resource extraction management while sidelining social issues.

As the U.S. president fills the White House with men who are alleged sexual abusers, including one recent St. Patrick’s Day celebrant found guilty of rape, the Canadian federal government appears to have deemed it necessary to push gendered concerns aside as less important than "serious" issues like trade, defence and the economy.

Carney’s decision to add the gender equality portfolio to the broader "Canadian culture and identity, Parks Canada and Quebec lieutenant" ministry under heritage minister Steven Guilbeault exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of how gendered policies shape national prosperity.

By positioning gender equity as a niche issue and not foundational to Canada’s economic and social stability, one has to wonder if this country can be economically strong while women and gender-diverse people remain disproportionately underpaid, overworked and unsafe in their communities.

The elimination of a minister of WAGE looks like a calculated move to appeal to centrists and conservatives who have long dismissed gender equality policies as unnecessary identity politics.

While Trudeau’s feminist branding energized progressives, it also sparked a backlash from those who believed gender issues received too much attention. Carney may be attempting to avoid that polarization by signalling to a broader electorate that he will not prioritize feminist policy similarly.

Gender equity needs dedicated oversight

There is also a financial motive. WAGE funds programs ranging from gender-based violence prevention and survivor support to workplace equity initiatives. If Carney views gender equity as secondary, eliminating WAGE might seem like a way to cut government spending.

But this logic is flawed. Gender-based violence alone costs the Canadian economy billions each year in lost productivity, health care, and justice system expenses.

Investing in gender equality is not charity — it is sound economic policy.

Carney’s expertise in finance and economics prioritizes GDP, stock markets and trade deals as measures of success.

Feminist political economy, which recognizes the impact of unpaid labour, caregiving and systemic gender inequities, likely does not fit within his framework.

Over 300 feminist, anti-violence, and human rights organizations have condemned this decision, arguing that gender equality is not a cultural issue but a human rights and social justice imperative requiring dedicated oversight.

Assigning the gender equity portfolio to Guilbeault, a man with no clear mandate or structural resources to address systemic inequities, reinforces how little priority this government places on gender justice.

Why WAGE matters

Without a minister to explicitly champion WAGE, the future of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence remains uncertain.

Feminist, anti-violence, and gender justice organizations — who laid the groundwork for the plan through The Roadmap to a National Action Plan — pushed for a coordinated, survivor-centred approach to addressing gender-based violence across Canada.

The federal government committed to leading the plan and ensuring collaboration among provincial and territorial governments. Without a dedicated ministry overseeing its implementation, leadership and accountability are at risk.

Years of advocacy and policy gains are at stake.

Since the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, where a gunman murdered 14 women in an act of anti-feminist violence, mass killings targeting women have continued in Canada, underscoring the ongoing crisis of femicide.

Three devastating examples from the last decade demonstrate how crucial it is to continue working to address gender-based violence in Canada.

In 2015, Basil Borutski murdered Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam in Renfrew County, Ontario, a case that exposed the deadly consequences of intimate partner violence, particularly in rural communities. The Renfrew murders led to a public inquiry and a call for the province to formally declare intimate partner violence as an epidemic in the region.

In 2020, a gunman in Nova Scotia carried out a 13-hour rampage, killing 22 people, many of them women, in what became Canada’s largest mass shooting. Investigations later revealed that the shooter had a history of gender-based violence and a documented pattern of abusing women.

In 2022, Jeremy Skibicki murdered four Indigenous women — Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and an unidentified woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe (Buffalo Woman) — in Winnipeg, a brutal reminder of the racialized and gendered violence disproportionately affecting Indigenous women and girls.

These acts of femicide are not isolated incidents but part of a deeply rooted pattern of misogynistic violence in Canada.

We’re regressing. And there’s so much to lose

Despite national conversations about gender-based violence and the implementation of strategies like the National Action Plan on gender-based violence, systemic failures continue to leave women — especially those in rural, Indigenous, and marginalized communities — at risk.

The decision to drop the WAGE minister reflects a calculated bet that feminists and gender justice advocates will still vote for the governing party, despite its failure to prioritize women’s rights.

Political strategists assume that, faced with an opposition that poses an even greater threat to gender equality, feminists will engage in "lesser-evil" voting, holding their noses at the ballot box rather than risking a government that could be even more regressive.

Regardless of who is in charge in Ottawa, depriving WAGE of its own, dedicated champion in cabinet is a profoundly regressive move that threatens decades of feminist policy gains in Canada.

It conveys that gender equality and gender-based violence prevention are not priorities in the Canadian government.

Without a dedicated ministry, the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence risks stagnation, funding cuts and reduced accountability, putting countless survivors at risk.

Canadians must recognize what is at stake and demand that gender justice remains a central issue — not an afterthought.

This piece was changed in places on March 24, 2025 at 11 a.m. PT to make clear that the minister of WAGE has been eliminated while the government says the programs of WAGE are now the responsibility of the minister of culture, leaving open questions about their funding and fate.