MP Gazan Criticizes $7B Indigenous Funding Cuts

Canadian Member of Parliament Leah Gazan drew widespread attention on April 8 during a press conference in Ottawa, where she criticized the federal government's Budget 2026 for reducing funding to Indigenous services by approximately $7 billion and providing no allocation to address violence against missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. Gazan, a New Democratic Party representative for Winnipeg Centre, recited the acronym MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA in a single breath, stating, "They provided 0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA." The term encompasses Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual individuals, plus other identities.

Gazan spoke alongside leaders from Indigenous women's organizations, who raised alarms over expiring budgets linked to the 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which issued 231 Calls for Justice. Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, president of the National Family and Children's Circle of Indigenous Survivors, noted that her group's core funding of about $840,000 had lapsed at the end of March...