The federal government is expected to table its 2026 budget next month. This annual budget is the single greatest bundle of policy changes passed by the government each year, and this year the federal Finance Committee is recommending that the government recommit to funding abortion overseas and to place conditions on the charitable status of pregnancy care centres. 

Before the government releases its annual budget, it allows anyone to submit recommendations on how they think the government should spend its money. The Finance Committee reviews these recommendations and then publishes its own. The last such report was not good from a pro-life perspective: recommendation 429 recommended that the government “no longer provide charitable status to anti-abortion organizations.” Thankfully, the government did not act on this recommendation in the 2025 Budget. 

But just because the government chose not to act last year doesn’t mean that pro-life organizations are safe. Earlier this year WNAL’s parent organization submitted their own budget recommendations to the government. Among other things, they recommended that the government preserve the charitable status of pregnancy care centres: 

Pro-life pregnancy care centres serve such a function [of relieving needs that commercial enterprises or public institutions cannot meet well]. Pregnancy is hard. Pregnant women need communal support, especially when pregnancy is unplanned. For some women with limited familial or social networks, support comes from a local pregnancy care centre. Approximately 138 pregnancy care centres are registered charities in Canada, including 81 centres affiliated with Pregnancy Care Canada. In 2023, the Pregnancy Care Canada network alone helped more than 48,000 women, providing counselling services, baby supplies, prenatal classes, parenting programs, online resources, and post-abortion care. Such assistance clearly fits the charitable purposes of relieving poverty and other purposes beneficial to the community. All of this assistance is only possible through donations of time and money by Canadians across the country. 
 
Previous calls to revoke the charitable tax status of pregnancy care centres ignore the benefits that these centres provide to women. At root, calls to revoke their charitable status are ideologically motivated attempts to marginalize a pro-life view with which they disagree. 

The pro-abortion made submissions too. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health, and Centre for Sexuality also submitted recommendations, though we don’t know precisely what they recommended.  

Unfortunately, in the battle between pro-life and pro-abortion recommendations, the pro-abortion side won out. The Finance Committee made two abortion-related recommendations to the government. The first was:

Recommendation 36: Reaffirm its 10-Year Commitment to global health and rights by maintaining annual investments. Budget 2026 should also ensure that annual funding is allocated to sexual and reproductive health and rights programming to support access to essential services for women, girls, and LGBTIQ+ communities globally.  

This 10-Year Commitment was part of Trudeau’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, established in 2019 and running from 2020-2030. The goal was to disburse an average of $1.4 billion each year to promote, among other things, “reproductive health and rights.” The Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health documents how Canada has generally met this $1.4 billion goal in recent years and spent millions specifically on “safe abortion services and post-abortion care.” 

For the Finance Committee, this past commitment isn’t enough. Perhaps because they are worried that overseas abortion funding might be one of the things cut in the government program spending review, they want the Carney government to explicitly reaffirm this commitment and continue this funding. 

Unfortunately, there is more. The committee also recommended cracking down on pro-life organizations here in Canada: 

Recommendation 65: Update and expand the Abortion in Canada web portal at Health Canada on at least an annual basis to ensure that Canadians have access to current and comprehensive information. Budget 2026 should also introduce amendments to the Income Tax Act to require greater transparency from anti-abortion pregnancy centres in order to mitigate harm to clients and prevent the misuse of charitable status. 

This isn’t as extreme as the last report’s recommendation to strip away charitable status from pregnancy care centres entirely, but it isn’t new either. Back in late 2024, the Trudeau Liberal government announced that it would introduce legislation to require charities offering pregnancy counselling services to disclose whether they offer abortion and birth control or refer to those services. Thankfully, that legislation never got very far before the 2025 election reset the legislative cycle. 

This new recommendation betrays a radically pro-abortion view. How exactly are pregnancy care centres that don’t promote abortion “harming” women? It can’t be because they provide women with diapers, formula, or baby clothes. It can’t be that they connect new or anxious mothers with mentors to guide them through caring for a new child. It can’t be any of the other beneficial services that they provide women facing an unplanned pregnancy. The “harm” that pro-abortion advocates accuse pro-life pregnancy care centres of perpetrating is their recommendation that a woman not abort her pre-born child. But that’s not harmful in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s the opposite. It’s life-affirming. 

The upcoming federal budget could implement either recommendation, and so our Members of Parliament need to hear from us. Take a moment to send a SimpleMail to your MP asking them to oppose these recommendations. Not only should pregnancy care centres receive the same treatment as every other charity, but funding for abortion overseas should be eliminated.