Ottawa was the setting Wednesday for an urgent call to action, as leaders of prominent Indigenous women's organizations gathered to warn that critical programs addressing missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and gender diverse people — known as MMIWG2S+ — are at risk of losing their federal funding.
A Crisis of Continuity
The news conference brought together representatives from multiple national Indigenous women's organizations who delivered a pointed message to the federal government: short-term, project-based funding is not enough. Without a commitment to sustained, multi-year funding, the programs built to respond to one of Canada's most pressing human rights crises could collapse entirely.
The organizations present emphasized that these are not abstract policy concerns — they are life-or-death services. Programs funded under the MMIWG2S+ umbrella include crisis supports, family navigation services, healing programs, and community-based safety networks for Indigenous women and gender-diverse people across the country.
Why This Moment Matters
The warning comes at a politically sensitive time. With a federal election recently concluded and a new government taking shape, Indigenous leaders are anxious about whether commitments made under previous administrations will carry forward. Many of the programs at risk were established in direct response to the 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which found that the violence against Indigenous women and girls amounts to genocide.
The organizations stressed that years of relationship-building, community trust, and specialized expertise now sit inside programs that could shut their doors if funding lapses. Rebuilding that capacity, if lost, would take years — and cost lives in the interim.
The Call to Action
Speakers at the Ottawa conference were explicit: they are not asking for new money, but for the renewal and stabilization of existing commitments. They called on the government to move away from a grant-by-grant model and toward dedicated, long-term program funding backed by legislation.
Leaders also noted that Indigenous women-led organizations are uniquely positioned to deliver these services because they operate from within communities, with the cultural competency and lived experience that government agencies cannot replicate. Defunding them doesn't make the need disappear — it just removes the most effective responders.
Federal Response Awaited
As of Wednesday, no formal government response had been issued. Indigenous affairs observers say the next federal budget will be a critical indicator of whether the new government intends to honour Canada's stated commitments to reconciliation and the implementation of the National Inquiry's Calls for Justice.
For the organizations gathered in Ottawa this week, the message was clear: the time for studies and promises has passed. The programs that help keep Indigenous women and gender-diverse people safe need funding that matches the scale and urgency of the crisis — and they need it now.
Source: CBC News. For more information, visit the original report at CBC.ca.
