Carney’s troubling silence on women and gender

By Jeanette Ashe, Policy Options

FILE: Prime Minister Mark Carney during a virtual call with the leaders for the coalition of the willing in room 414 at 80 Wellington in Ottawa on August 13, 2025. (Photo: Mark Carney/Facebook)

In his first mandate letter to cabinet in May, Mark Carney notably omitted any mention of women. Not a word was directed to gender, equity, equality, sex or “Gender-Based Analysis Plus” (GBA+).

Mandate letters serve as the prime minister’s “marching orders,” and this omission is more than symbolic. It signals a significant shift in government priorities and may weaken Canada’s claim to global-equality leadership.

Excluding these terms is a mistake.

Gender-equity gains are fragile, and government policies are rarely gender-neutral. The well-documented needs of women and gender-diverse people are less likely to be addressed if women’s rights, gender equality, and GBA+ have been removed from the federal agenda.

Leaving equality out of mandate letters, budgets, and speeches risks erasing decades of progress. But Carney can still change course, and the upcoming budget offers a pivotal opportunity for a reset.

Mandate letters are critical tools 

Mandate letters have been public since 2015. Ministers read them closely. They are tools for policy co-ordination, accountability, and priority setting, as scholars such as Kenny William Ie have noted.

Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s 2015 letter explicitly instructed her to introduce legislation adding gender identity to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. That work culminated in Bill C-16.

“Advancing transgender rights was one of my most significant accomplishments,” she told me in 2020. The clear directive in her mandate letter was critical to the outcome, she said.

A mandate letter alone does not guarantee action, but explicit commitments on gender equality can help drive concrete policy change. What is in mandate letters matters, and so does what’s missing from them.

The cost of omission

GBA+ is Canada’s intersectional gender-analysis tool. It has been in place since 2011, building on gender-based analysis introduced 30 years ago. It assesses how policies affect people differently through the lens of gender and other identity factors.

Its removal overlooks systemic and intersectional inequalities faced by women and gender-diverse groups. General policymaking cannot be relied on to address gender equality. Without explicit directives, gender considerations are often sidelined, as shown by decades of evidence in Canada and internationally.

Naming these priorities in mandate letters and budgets is a proven driver of concrete results.

Between 2015 and 2025, terms like women, gender, equity, equality, GBA+ and sex appeared over 100 times across mandate letters. They showed up across ministries, from Women and Gender Equality (WAGE, previously the Status of Women) to Finance, Employment, Indigenous Services, and Immigration.

In the “feminist-government” approach of the last decade, gender was integrated into cabinet decision-making, budgeting, trade, diplomacy, and security. GBA+ underpinned reforms such as gender-responsive budgeting, the LGBTQ2 Secretariat, $10-a-day childcare, and the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence.

Without explicit direction from the prime minister or sustained budget commitments, however, GBA+ risks being reduced to a hollow gesture. It’s troubling to see in its 30^th-anniversary year.

The stakes

Canada’s gender gaps remain wide: women earn 88 cents for every dollar men make. They hold just 31 per cent of seats in the House of Commons and occupy only 23 per cent of top corporate board positions. Violence against women, particularly Indigenous women and girls, remains a national crisis, with disparities even greater for women with intersecting identities.

Thirty years after signing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Canada has yet to fulfill its commitments on women’s equality in economic and political life. Mandate letters are not the only indicators of gender sensitivity, but they gauge where a government is headed.

Clear signs of retreat are already emerging.

Proposals to cut WAGE’s budget by 80 per cent, far deeper than the 15-per-cent cuts faced by other departments, have raised alarms. Women’s organizations, including the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, warn in a joint letter to Carney that such cuts would “gut the entire department,” dismantling essential programs and services.

Mark Carney’s cabinet sends the wrong message on gender equality

The painful lack of urgency to end violence against Indigenous women and girls

The federal election campaign has pushed women to the sidelines

Carney reversed earlier decisions to drop sex parity in cabinet and eliminate WAGE after strong opposition from women’s groups.

The retreat was reinforced by the May throne speech, which also made no mention of women or gender equality, focusing instead on the economy. In a global moment where reproductive rights and gender equality are under attack, deprioritizing them in Canada is both risky and economically short-sighted.

How to change course

The fall budget is Carney’s next opportunity to make a course change and set a gender-equity agenda. He has four options:

1. Embed gender equality in the budget by committing to a robust, published GBA+ review, implement a gender-results framework to track progress and outcomes, and safeguard WAGE funding.

2. Revise his mandate letter to require GBA+ in all policy and budget decisions.
3. Legislate gender parity in cabinet by amending the Ministries and Ministers of State Act to require at least 50 per cent women or gender-diverse ministers.
4. Strengthen accountability by requesting that the auditor general conduct a gender- and diversity-sensitive assessment of Parliament.

Fiscal discipline is one of Carney’s core themes. It aligns with gender equality, which can’t be treated like an optional add-on. It is fundamental to Canada’s economic and democratic health.

Carney’s leadership moment

The OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, promotes gender-sensitive budgeting because it boosts women’s workforce participation and overall economic productivity, and reduces inequality.

Closing gender gaps could add more than $100 billion to Canada’s GDP. The 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and GBA+ offers Carney the chance to lead on gender equality, as countries like Spain and Iceland have done by legislating cabinet gender parity.

Rather than preside over a retreat, he should place women and gender-diverse people at the centre of Canada’s agenda and pair that commitment with transparent, measurable action.

This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.