The Women’s National Housing & Homelessness Network responds to the federal government’s 2026 Spring Economic Update, calling for gender-responsive housing investments, climate-resilient infrastructure, stronger affordability measures, and coordinated action to address the systemic inequities facing women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people.
On April 28th, the federal government released the Spring Economic Update for 2026, with a focus on skilled trades, labour, housing, and infrastructure. The update states that Prime Minister Carney is “building the strongest economy in the G7”; however, an economy cannot be strong if the socio-economic challenges of women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people are absent from policy and not meaningfully addressed. While we at the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network (WNHHN) welcome the progress that has been outlined, much more work remains.
For instance, while we commend investments such as the $125 million allocation to the Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampments Initiative “to help the most vulnerable women and gender-diverse Canadians access stability and safety,” the creation of gender-responsive spaces remains critical to ensuring such support is safe, accessible, and effective. Our most recent 2026 study on the City of Calgary found that nearly one-quarter of women and gender-diverse participants who accessed shelter spaces reported concerns about safety within these environments. This was alongside over one in ten having reported staying outside in a tent, encampment, or self-built shelter while experiencing homelessness.
These findings help explain why some women and gender-diverse people may choose encampments over shelters, despite the risks of living outdoors, as shelters are not always experienced as safe, trauma-informed, or responsive to their needs. Federal funding must go beyond expanding shelter capacity and ensure that new programs are trauma-informed and gender-responsive in both structure and design, providing the wraparound supports necessary to enable women and gender-diverse people to exit homelessness.
In a similar vein, the Spring 2026 Economic Update also outlines progress on the launch of Build Canada Homes, with a commitment to “supporting thousands of new housing units” to improve housing affordability. However, more ambitious action is required to address gendered homelessness.
Build Canada Homes must demonstrate meaningful targets, measurable goals, and development timelines to assess progress on housing affordability. Affordability itself also requires more precise and consistent definitional parameters.
WNHHN urges the federal government to address these gaps and to allocate 40% of affordable housing targets specifically for women, gender-diverse people, and their families experiencing core-housing-need. This should be accompanied by the development of an enhanced operational framework for Build Canada Homes that is informed by gender-based analysis and the knowledge of Indigenous leaders and individuals with lived experience of homelessness and housing insecurity.
WNHHN also commends the federal government’s commitment to International Climate Finance in the update, and its efforts to increase preparedness for climate impacts in developing countries, including floods and droughts. We also welcome the recognition that climate change disproportionately affects women, girls, and rural communities. Through this initiative, we urge the federal government also prioritize the impacts of climate change and other environmental barriers on their housing and community infrastructure in Canada.
This includes upholding the right to an adequate standard of living for women and gender-diverse people under the National Housing Strategy Act by ensuring that Build Canada Homes avoids high-risk climate zones or incorporates climate-resilient design, while also retrofitting existing housing with measures that reduce harm in climate-affected areas. It also requires ensuring access to safe drinking water and sanitation through the elimination of long-term boil water advisories via sustained infrastructure investment, particularly in First Nations communities. This is critical given that First Nations women, gender-diverse people, and their dependents are disproportionately impacted by housing insecurity, environmental risk, inadequate infrastructure, related negative health consequences – and encounters with child welfare services because of these hazards.
Lastly, the update describes Canadian women’s labour force participation “historically strong,” with women aged 25-54 reaching 85% participation in 2025 – “nearly seven points higher than the US.” While WNHHN recognizes this critical advancement, women across Canada aged 25-54 also continue to earn less than men for the same work – approximately 89 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2025 – which remains a key factor contributing to housing affordability challenges. By comparison, women aged 23-34 in the United States earned, on average, 95 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024.
We urge the federal government to take coordinated, pan-Canadian action to address persistent gender wage inequities by strengthening and enforcing pay equity and transparency measures, working with provinces and territories to close regionally varying wage gaps, and ensuring that income supports and labour policies reflect the housing cost realities faced by women, women-led families, and gender-diverse people.
The 2026 Spring Economic Update sets out an ambition for a stronger economy, but strength cannot be claimed while structural inequities persist. An economy is not strong if women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people continue to experience unequal access to housing, safety risks in shelter systems, and persistent wage gaps that undermine affordability and stability. WNHHN calls on the federal government to move beyond fragmented responses and commit to coordinated, enforceable, and gender-responsive action across housing, labour, and climate and infrastructure policy. Anything less risks reinforcing the very inequities that economic policy seeks to address.