On May 25, the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network was invited to speak as a witness to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance regarding pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2026 budget
Read WNHHN’s Pre-budget Consultation brief here.
Read Stefania’s remarks here:
Madam Chair, members of the Committee—thank you for the opportunity to appear today. My name is Stefania Seccia, and I am the Executive Director of Advocacy and Public Affairs at the Women’s National Housing & Homelessness Network. The people we represent— women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people navigating housing insecurity across this country—deserve to have their experiences heard in rooms like this one. Thank you for making space for it.
We share this government’s commitment to building Canada strong. That genuine strength comes from within. The kind of strength required of a young trans person when they find themselves homeless for being who they are. A mother with two children fleeing violence in search of a safe place to call home. A newcomer navigating the shelter system with no safety net to catch them. A couch-surfer trading sex for shelter.
These are not experiences happening in isolation, they are the direct result of stepping back from ambitious affordable housing investments since the ‘80s and ‘90s—from coops, non-profit development, social, non-market, and deeply affordable housing. Those past governments deferred the problem, and those costs landed somewhere else—in emergency rooms, in shelters, in the child welfare system, and in the criminal justice system—in more expensive and least effective ways to address the core issue. They have become pipelines into homelessness themselves.
I do not envy the position you are in.
But you have an opportunity, albeit an obligation, to make different choices—to invest in long-term solutions that reach the people who need it most. Investing upstream, in stable and deeply affordable housing solutions that are not gender neutral.
This past year, as intervenors in the Neha Review Panel process, we were part of one of the most significant participatory human rights engagements on housing this country has seen. The panel heard from over 500 individuals and groups. We went into shelters, prisons, encampment, and communities. It produced not just data, but a real-time, on-theground account of what housing rights violations look like for women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people across the country. The Neha Review Panel delivered a roadmap of recommendations to address the gendered housing crisis.
Just last week, a landmark court ruling came down in the Ontario Superior Court: homelessness has been recognized as a ground of discrimination in Canada. The court was unambiguous, and in Justice Gibson’s own words he called for, “increased resources from all levels of government and other stakeholders.” Of people experiencing homelessness, he said, “They are us.”
I also want to note this is directly linked to the international agreements Canada has signed where the progressive realization of the right to housing must have “maximum resources possible” to address the issue.
We need a revitalized National Housing Strategy after 2027—one with an accurate definition of affordability, clear targets for ending homelessness. We need Build Canada Homes to be a rights-based delivery system that allocates at least 40% of deeply affordable units to women and gender-diverse people—populations chronically undercounted and underserved. We need the Urban, Rural, and Norther Indigenous Housing Strategy to be grounded in For-Indigenous and By-Indigenous solutions and delivered by those communities. We need sustained federal investment through WAGE to keep the shelter and survivor-serving sector from collapse.
What we need—and what this budget can deliver—are clear timelines, measurable targets, and an unequivocal commitment to end homelessness and housing precarity.
We spent decades getting into this crisis. We won’t get out of it in a single budget cycle, but you can signal that you are done deferring. We are ready to build not just something that lasts, but is accessible, sustainable, and gender responsive.