One of the two themes of this year’s provincial budget, tabled by Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy on March 23, was “Working For You.” However, YWCA Ontario, a coalition of 10 YWCAs across the province, remains unclear about who the budget is actually working for – because unfortunately, it is not for women, girls and gender-diverse people.
While “corporation” appears 38 times and “business” 104 times in the budget, the word “women” is only mentioned four times. Indeed, the Ontario government seems to take women less seriously with each passing year: women were mentioned 27 times in 2021, eight in 2022, and down to a record low this year. The word “girls” and the word “poverty” were only used once in the 2023 budget, and the word “gender” does not appear whatsoever.
Without this critical gender lens being applied to the province’s spending, it is not surprising that this budget falls woefully short of addressing the needs of women, girls and gender-diverse people in Ontario.
Though there are some encouraging moments in the budget, including long-called-for investments in the Ontario Northland transit system – a move that helps ensure women and Indigenous people can move safely through the Northern region – as well as base funding for the mental health and addictions subsector and the Black Youth Action Plan, this budget largely leaves women and girls behind.
Despite making history as the largest budget ever tabled in Ontario at $204.7 billion, this budget spends billions more on infrastructure, corporate tax breaks and subsidizing hydro bills than it does on addressing the grave economic and social disparities which intensified during the pandemic. Specifically, it fails to address the fact that women, girls and gender diverse individuals bear the brunt of those disparities. A historic amount of spending is meaningless when those investments are not being used to help the people who need it most.
YWCA Ontario’s analysis of the budget based on the recommendations we outlined in our pre-budget submission can be found below: