On December 31 of this year, the federal exemption that lets Saskatchewan run its coal plants outside national climate rules will expire. Ottawa can either renew it or let it lapse. Even though renewing the agreement is the path of least resistance, it is also a very costly one: SaskPower’s own internal estimates put the price of keeping that coal fleet running at roughly $26 billion over 25 years, while independent analysts say that the real figure may reach more than $46 billion, with power rates climbing 95 per cent by 2040. Saskatchewan families will have to pay that bill.
Citizens for Public Justice brings a simple test to federal budgets: does this protect the basic rights of everyone living here, and does it care for the world we share? Applying that test to Budget 2026 turned up the same pattern again and again. Federal choices that look thrifty on one line of the ledger cost more somewhere else, and the people absorbing the difference are usually the ones with the least room to absorb it and who have contributed the least to the issues the government is trying to address.
Last year’s budget put 30 per cent copayments and $4 prescription fees on refugee healthcare. Physicians warned that even small fees stop people from filling prescriptions, and that untreated illness comes back as emergency admissions. The minimal and short-term savings may land in a federal column, but the real costs will disproportionately burden provincial hospitals.
Settlement funding has been cut faster than immigration targets have fallen, which slows the language training that helps newcomers find better work sooner.
Healing Lodges run by Indigenous authorities receive 38 per cent less funding per resident than those run by Correctional Service Canada, nearly a decade after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found Ottawa was discriminating against First Nations children through chronic underfunding. This is the first year our submission carries a recommendation from CPJ’s new Indigenous Rights and Justice program, and this is where we believe the implementation of the work of reconciliation could start.
On poverty, Canada keeps paying to administer a patchwork of supports instead of doing what the evidence backs. Reforming Old Age Security so that clawbacks begin at $100,000 in household income would free roughly $7 billion for the Guaranteed Income Supplement and other transfers that reach people who need them.
None of this is a money problem. Canada found at least $10.2 billion for oil and gas subsidies and public financing in 2025. We are asking the government to end that support, tax excess oil and gas profits, and put the money toward something like a Youth Climate Corps, at a moment when youth unemployment sits at 12.6 per cent, almost double the national average.
Our submission makes 14 recommendations across climate justice, poverty eradication, refugee and migrant rights, and Indigenous rights and justice. What holds them together is a conviction that a budget claiming to build a more inclusive and future-ready Canada has to be judged by what it does for the people who are too easily overlooked or scapegoated. Read the summary of recommendations [PDF], or the full submission [PDF]. Then write to your MP before Budget 2026 is tabled and tell them which of these you want to see in it.
