Women and Gender Equality Canada announced up to $41.5 million in grants on Friday to “advance equality for 2SLGBTQI+ communities across Canada and address the rise in hate.”
The funding will go to 106 projects led by LGBTQ2S+ organizations with the aim of bridging gaps in healthcare, addressing discrimination and developing knowledge and tools to support communities. The money is part of the larger 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan, announced by the federal government in 2022.
The announcement comes amid heightened tensions around queer and trans rights along with bodily autonomy overall.
Multiple Canadian provinces have sought to, among other things, limit gender-affirming care and require parental consent for pronoun or name changes at schools. Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada who, based on the most recent polls, is favoured to win the next federal election away from the Liberals, has denied the existence of trans and non-binary people, stating that he is “not aware” of more than two genders in a recent interview. He has previously called for banning trans women from so-called “women’s spaces,” and opposes gender-affirming care for trans children.
In the U.S., President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order citing federal recognition of only two genders–male and female. Another Trump order signed earlier this week seeks to end gender-affirming medical treatments for people under the age of 19.
Many queer organizations have expressed concern about what will happen to government funding for their programs if Poilievre does indeed become the next prime minister of Canada.
Lisa Hepfner, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, echoed that after Friday’s announcement.
“That’s why the community needs to organize and get out and knock on doors now,” she says. “I don’t know if we will even have a department that is related to gender equality or a department that is concerned with women. I think that’s all on the table, and that’s all at risk and we all have to fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
While the federal government has the ability to provide one-time or short-term funding to many initiatives, it is up to provincial governments to provide more sustained funding, Hepfner noted.
“We give money to the provinces for healthcare, for example, and they decide where those dollars are spent. We don’t have full authority to decide how all tax dollars are spent,” she says.
Pink Triangle Press (PTP), Xtra’s parent company, is one of the organizations receiving money as part of Friday’s announcement. It will be used for the company’s recently announced “one-stop destination” for 2SLGBTQIA+ coverage, which will focus on creating accessible queer and trans health information in both English and French.
“We are right now seeing the swell of a conservative backlash to trans access to healthcare, as well as queer and trans sex education,” says David Walberg, PTP’s executive director and CEO. “The need for accurate and accessible information is urgent.”
Ziya Jones, managing editor of health at PTP, says Xtra readers have been asking for an increased focus on health for quite some time.
“It was a big priority for us because we know that our audience has consistently told us that they are interested in getting more credible health information geared towards LGBTQ2S+ people,” they say. “We know that’s an area that is underserved. Queer and trans people still struggle to get reliable health information that is geared towards them. So this grant will allow us to create more of that than we were doing at Xtra already.”
Hepfner, a former journalist herself, appreciates the importance of community-focused journalism. “I think it’s absolutely important that we fund journalism across the country,” she says.
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