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MSF statement on Canada’s 2025 Federal Budget: Cuts to global aid will cost lives
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is deeply concerned by the Canadian government’s plan to reduce funding for international assistance and global health programs – especially at a time when more people than ever need urgent medical and humanitarian support.
In our programs around the world, we’ve already seen first-hand how other recent cuts to global aid have left communities without the care and support they need when it matters most. In some places, MSF is now the only organization left providing essential medical services. In others, people who depend on international assistance for access to food, protection and medicines have nowhere else to turn.
Until yesterday’s announcement of $2.7-billion in cuts to global assistance, Canada has been a global leader in standing up for people in the most vulnerable circumstances – often standing apart from countries pulling back their support for health and humanitarian aid.
Now more than ever, that kind of Canadian leadership is desperately needed. Around the world, people are struggling to survive amid rising levels of conflict, crisis, displacement and disease. This government must not turn its back on people who depend on Canadian assistance for their basic well-being and survival.
MSF is particularly disappointed by Canada’s plans to cut funding for global health programs. Canada has often been a global health leader, increasing its contributions when global needs were rising. But in its budget, the government said it will reduce support “where Canada’s contribution has grown disproportionately relative to other similar economies”. The reality is other wealthy countries – from the U.S. to the U.K to Germany – have already made damaging cuts to their aid budgets, with serious impacts on global health. Canada’s cuts will worsen an already dire situation. As MSF highlighted in our Deadly Gaps report, the real cost of these decisions is paid by our patients and the communities we work with: people who can no longer afford or access the care they need.
It is also disappointing that Canada describes its $2.7 billion reduction in international development assistance over the next four years as “savings.” Let us be clear: aid cuts are not savings – they are choices with real human consequences. We too believe aid funding must be used effectively and have regularly communicated with the Canadian government on ways to get the most impact out of each dollar. But removing these dollars entirely – at a moment when global needs are at a record high – comes at a devastating human cost.
At the same time, the government has, once again, failed to invest in improving access to medicines in Canada and around the world. MSF has consistently urged Canada to put its publicly owned – and currently unused – biomanufacturing facility to work making urgently needed health products that will benefit the public. We’ve also called on the government to make sure federal research and development funding for new medicines and health technologies comes with conditions to help make them affordable and accessible. And we’ve demanded that they do more to get promising Canadian medical innovations to address serious public health concerns from the lab to the patients who need them. Budget 2025 was another missed opportunity. If the COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgence of measles taught us anything, it’s that global health affects us all. When Canada cuts global health funding, it also reduces the benefits of a safer, healthier world for Canadians. Decreasing investment in global health decreases the dividends to Canada of keeping people everywhere safe and healthy. Now more than ever, the world needs more Canadian leadership – not less. This year’s federal budget failed to deliver the support the world urgently needs.
