Five things aimed at increasing gender equality in the 2018 budget

Despite commissioning former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins to come up with recommendations, the government is looking toward a “strategy. that deals with the gaps and that doesn’t throw out the system we now have”, said Morneau.

“The investments in research made in the 2018 budget will support a diverse group of emerging researchers to move forward in their careers and to unlock new knowledge for the benefit of Canada and the world”. This time around, groups in the university and research sector are calling the budget a “historic” reinvestment in Canadian science.

Former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins will head up an advisory council to come up with options on how to create a national pharmacare program – a program that the parliamentary budget watchdog has warned could cost $19 billion a year.

The council is expected to report back in 2019, before the next general election is held.

If there is a central theme to Morneau’s budget, it is its focus on gender policies.

“With the EI Parental Sharing Benefit, two-parent families who agree to share parental leave could receive an additional five weeks of leave-making it easier for women to return to work sooner, if they so choose”.

It appears Canada is getting further and further away from having a balanced federal budget. The Conservatives did not post a surplus against until their past year in office.

Sandy Maag is a tax partner in EY Canada’s Private Client Services practice, and is based in Montreal.

But women on average still earn just 69 cents for every dollar earned by men, a situation the government’s initiatives seek to change. The prime minister simply has to have the will to allocate funds to the women and men who have faithfully served our country.

Expect to see new and continued investments in the budget to improve living conditions for First Nations, Inuit and Métis following an emergency meeting in January.

As well, most businesses are owned by men, there are relatively few women in the crucial fields of science, technology and engineering, and the many hours women devote to unpaid work – caring for children and the elderly, doing housework – detract from their ability to pursue paid work.

The budget doesn’t provide the huge boost of more than Can$1 billion a year for the granting councils that Naylor’s report recommended.

Morneau said that we needed to do more to support greater numbers of women in management and leadership positions and added: “And so we are answering the call from members of the Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders, and taking a comprehensive approach to helping women entrepreneurs”.

The budget also includes the single largest investment in fundamental research in Canadian history – Can$1.7 billion over five years.

Canada Foundation for Innovation: $763 million over five years, including $160 million for increased support to Canada’s nationally important research facilities through CFI’s Major Science Initiatives Fund.

There also could be measures for innovation – to adapt for the workforce of the future in a global economy increasingly shaped by automation. Canada’s parliamentary budget officer, an independent watchdog, has forecast that a full pharmacare program would cost C$20.4 billion annually-a sizable addition to a budget that, for the 2017-18 year, includes C$304.6 billion in total program spending.

Canada’s 2018 federal budget, announced on 27 February, will arguably be regarded as a positive step for Canadian science – although not as a big a one as the Liberal government would like it to be.

The Conservatives were already criticizing the budget for out-of-control spending before it was tabled.

This was one of the main focuses of this year’s budget, which was tabled in Ottawa on February 27 by Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

Oddly and incongruously, one policy area of crucial importance to women was nearly entirely absent from the budget: child care.

“Our goal should be to allow every Canadian, of every gender, to grow their take-home pay by keeping more of their earnings”, he said.

Still, the Liberal government has not yet specified what kind of federal funding it has in mind.

In short, there were no major changes for small businesses on the tax front. “If we really care about the lives of women, if we really care about the lives of children, those are the women that our tax dollars need to target”.