Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights: Fall Economic Statement 2024: A Testament to the Power of SRHR Advocacy
As we welcome 2025, we want to reinforce our commitment to sexual health and reproductive rights in Canada and worldwide. We will remain steadfast in championing accessible abortion healthcare, universal and free contraception, safeguarding comprehensive sexuality education, and advocacy.
Below are the top stories and wins that Action Canada is proud to have championed in 2024.
This year, we will continue work with regional partners to move forward with Pharmacare in all provinces and territories, open spaces for human rights conversations, and find ways to overcome the polarization that keeps us apart.
We are deeply grateful to have you on this journey with us. Together, we can build a more just, inclusive, and hopeful future.
Fall Economic Statement 2024: SRHR Advocacy Victory
The federal government’s Fall Economic Statement includes a commitment of $50 million over six years to expand the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund, a win for Action Canada’s advocacy efforts. Additionally, $7.5 million will fund new surveys to improve SRH data and policies. We are proud to have spearheaded this effort alongside other advocates and partners. These measures highlight the impact of advocacy on advancing healthcare access for all Canadians.
Action Canada is celebrating the proposal to provide $50 million over six years to the groundbreaking Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund, starting in 2024-2025, with $20 million ongoing, to Health Canada to expand and make permanent the Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Fund. This historic investment will extend the funding commitments made to the SRH Fund in the 2023 Federal Budget. Additionally, this will ensure the sustainability of the long-term integration of SRH within Health Canada. This is a major victory for people of all ages in Canada and sends an important message: sexual and reproductive health is a critical aspect of healthcare in Canada.
The SRH Fund has had an incredible impact on connecting people most likely to face barriers to sexual and reproductive health care to the services they need and has revealed an increasing unmet need for sexual and reproductive health care in Canada. Action Canada has consistently reported a steady increase in calls to our Access Line and demand for our Emergency Travel Fund for people needing travel support related to accessing abortion. This new investment will help sexual health organizations and providers avoid a funding cliff in 2027 that would disproportionately impact marginalized people already facing a lack of access to critical SRH care…
The investment will also enable the sustainable integration of sexual health into Health Canada over the long term and build institutional capacity to lead a whole-of-government approach to improving SRH…
…We are also celebrating the $7.5 million proposal to run new iterations of the sexual and reproductive health surveys within Statistics Canada. With a dedicated SRH team at Health Canada to be interlocutors with other departments, like Statistics Canada, data from these surveys will make way for improvements in sexual health policy and services in the long run. To enhance the evidence base for good sexual health policy, we’re also recommending further investments for the inclusion of a new survey exploring Canadian Abortion Services to inform where health providers are delivering abortion care and to show existing gaps in abortion access in Canada.
Action Canada leads first narrative change campaign fighting polarization
In the fall of 2024, Action Canada launched the Get Offline and Talk Campaign in New Brunswick. Last year, New Brunswick and many regions across the country continued to face significant social and political challenges, creating divisions within our communities. These challenges are amplified by social media platforms that thrive on controversy and conflict. In such a polarized environment, fostering real-life connections and understanding has never been more crucial. This campaign inspired face-to-face conversations, helping us build a more inclusive and empathetic New Brunswick.
Takeaways from Canada’s 10th CEDAW Review
In 2024, the UN’s CEDAW Committee reviewed Canada’s progress on women’s rights. Action Canada highlighted issues like comprehensive sexuality education, access to abortion, forced sterilization, and sex work. While the Committee recognized Canada’s progress, it also identified areas for improvement, such as strengthening its international commitments and human rights mechanisms. Action Canada continues to push for stronger protections and greater inclusion of marginalized voices in decision-making.
Fuel our Pan-Canadian Feminist Campaign!
Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights is banding with the feminist sector to build a stronger movement for gender equality.
SOURCE: Action Canada SRHR News, 17 December 2024.
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Legal challenge on New Brunswick abortion access is over
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) officially dropped the lawsuit after the ban on clinic funding was repealed in November 2024. The lawsuit against the New Brunswick government over access to abortion is finally officially over. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has discontinued the legal action that was intended to force the province to fund procedural abortions in clinics outside hospitals. Before the change, Medicare could only fund procedural abortions in hospitals, and only three hospitals in the province — two in Moncton and one in Bathurst — offered it.
The case was launched four years ago but became redundant on 7 November 2024 when newly elected New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt announced that her cabinet had repealed a section of a provincial regulation that prevented funding clinic abortions. A consent order to discontinue the case, agreed to by the CCLA and the province, was filed with the Court of King’s Bench on 7 January 2025 and approved by a judge on 9 January 2025.
Holt and Health Minister John Dornan said, when the ban was repealed, the province would reclassify the abortion procedure as minor surgery, revise the fee structure for doctors performing it and work with them to make it more widely available.
The consent order ending the case awarded no legal costs to either side in the dispute. It brings to a close a decades-long legal saga that began when the Liberal government of Frank McKenna adopted the regulation in an effort to block Dr Henry Morgentaler from performing abortions in a Fredericton clinic he opened in 1994. It also led to the closure of the excellent freestanding Clinic 554 in New Brunswick that had to close down due to lack of funds (see news reports in ICWRSA Newsletters from 2019, 2020, 2021, archived at https://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/news/?search_text=New+Brunswick%2C+Canada&filtered.
According to Martha Paynter, a reproductive health expert at the University of New Brunswick, the final irony is that 70 per cent of abortions in the province are now done with prescribed abortion pills, meaning there has been a rapidly shrinking demand for procedural abortions (in clinics or hospitals).
SOURCE: CBC News, 13 January 2025