"A bold diplomatic voice is really crucial," Oxfam Canada executive director Lauren Ravon told a panel she hosted on Parliament Hill earlier this month.

"It's easy to get into a scarcity mindset. We think 'Well, we can't afford it, so let's cut out the work on LGBTQ+ rights, let's cut off the work on abortion and just stick to the life-saving pieces.'"

Ravon was speaking at an event marking International Development Week on Feb. 2.

That week, Randeep Sarai, secretary of state for international development, outlined a push to have aid spending reap more benefits at home, such as by supporting Canadian jobs in building power grids, partnering with private capital and using aid to open up more markets for Canadian exports.

That vision garnered a mix of reactions from the sector, but groups put their own focus on trying to preserve programs targeted at women and gender minorities such as transgender, non-binary and intersex people.

While Ottawa has said it will maintain existing funding pledges in foreign aid, it is cutting back billions, particularly in global health. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said Canada is standing up for gender equality but no longer has a feminist foreign policy.

"Canada's leadership on sexual and reproductive health and rights is working and it matters more now than ever," Frederique Chabot, head of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, said at a Feb. 3 news conference.

She argued that a deliberate, co-ordinated movement by far-right groups and authoritarian governments is trying to undermine global health and human rights.

"Sexual and reproductive health and rights are not incidental in this moment. They are targeted precisely because they sit at the intersection of autonomy, gender equality, science and the role of the state," Chabot said.

The Guttmacher Institute -- an American research group associated with Planned Parenthood -- analyzed the $76.2 million Canada's foreign-aid budget spent on family planning assistance during the fiscal year ending in March 2024.

The analysis found that the spending stopped 2,110 maternal deaths, led to 1.6 million fewer unintended pregnancies and prevented 478,000 unsafe abortions.

It argued that each $10 million drop in Canadian funding results in 277 maternal deaths, 213,000 unintended pregnancies and 63,000 unsafe abortions.

The analysis noted that 70 per cent of global funding for programs like family planning is at risk, particularly as the U.S. expands what critics call "the global gag rule," which bars American funding for groups that advocate to decriminalize or broaden abortion services.

Chabot's group is urging Ottawa to publicly affirm it is sticking with a decade-long commitment on sexual health and reproductive rights, a call echoed by Canadian Partnership for Women and Children's Health head Caitlin Goggin.

"Canada made a conscious policy choice to lead where impact is hardest to secure and easiest to lose," Goggin said.

"Canada's impact on sexual and reproductive health and rights is strongest when it invests in the areas that are most neglected, most contested and most vulnerable to political rollback."

She said that includes funding for those pushing for reproductive freedoms.

"Advocacy seeks to ensure services remain accessible, counters misinformation and assists partners to navigate hostile policy environments. Yet it is often the first cut when budgets tighten."

Part of the challenge is that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has cut funding to anything it deems to be "gender ideology," which aid groups say has included cuts to any programs that reference LGBTQ+ themes and even unrelated aid programming that considers gender differences.

At the Oxfam panel, an executive with an LGBTQ+ organization in southern Africa said that has put into jeopardy decades of progress in gradually getting doctors, police and government officials to understand gender identity and sexual orientation.

"This movement against human rights, unfortunately, is growing," said Roberto Paulo of the organization Lambda in Mozambique. His organization has lost 42 per cent of its budget in one year.

Activists have trained officials to understand terms like transgender or the fact people don't choose to be gay -- but American funding now requires groups like Paulo's to strip projects of almost any reference to LGBTQ+ themes.

"We took more than 20 years to consolidate and to make sure that gender identity, transgender -- that those terminologies can be used, but now for some reason, they cannot be used anymore," he said.

Ravon said it's time for Carney to demonstrate that Canada will stand up for human rights at a time when freedoms are under attack in multiple countries.

"Changes in legislation around abortion, around sexual identity and gender identity -- those things can be threatened in a moment," she said.

"Those are the critical building blocks that we need to continue investing in and they're not the nice-to-haves, they're the must-haves."

Ravon said that includes funding to empower and train civil society so it can change laws and societal views around abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights -- things she said the U.S. should not be allowed to take off the agenda for the rest of the world.

"Social-norm change is not a bean-counting exercise, it's the long game -- and Canada has done that well. And so in this moment of panic let's not forget what we do well, and what is actually effective," she said.

Oxfam argues inequality in Canada and between nations is producing a false mentality of scarcity, saying nations can fund development if the global rich pay a fair share of taxes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2026.