Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance Pre-Budget Consultations
August 2020
Download the brief (PDF)
The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened our collective focus. Priorities have become clearer and there is a call for change.
The climate emergency – the focus of the 2019 pre-budget consultation – has not gone away. Poverty and inequality have been aggravated. At the same time, long-standing systemic racism and social exclusion have also been brought to light.
These are not new issues, but curiously, the crisis spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic may have created a fresh opportunity to take a deeper look at how we respond.
In Canada, all levels of government have demonstrated a willingness to set aside differences, roll-out financial supports, and develop new regulations. The federal government has demonstrated what is possible with political will. Now, in addition to their solid collective response to the pandemic, they must address these ongoing and overlapping crises: climate change, domestic poverty, racism, and social exclusion.
CPJ recommends that the federal government adopt the following principles to guide the development of Canada’s COVID-19 Just Recovery Plan:
- The Six Principles of a Just Recovery: put health and well-being first; strengthen the social safety net; prioritize the needs of workers and communities; build resilience to prevent future crises; build solidarity; and uphold Indigenous rights.
- Intersectionality: apply an intersectional gender-based analysis (GBA+) to the development, implementation, and evaluations of all policy and budgetary decisions.
- Indigenous Rights: make policy and spending decisions that are consistent with the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- Carbon Neutrality: invest in measures that move us towards Canada’s target of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Download CPJ’s pre-budget brief to read our full list of policy recommendations.
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