Althia Raj: Mark Carney’s budget is one for the boys - Toronto Star

According to the government’s own gender analysis, the 2026 budget measures will overwhelmingly benefit men, Althia Raj writes.

Prime Minister Mark Carney holds a copy of the 2026 budget in the House of Commons on Nov. 5, 2026.

Althia Raj is a national politics columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @althiaraj

“Where are the girls? Where are the girls?” It was the first thing economist Armine Yalnizyan said to my colleague Susan Delacourt and me outside the budget lockup on Thursday. “You look at the front cover, it’s electricity,” she noted of the photo of transmission lines on the printed budget. “You look inside, where are the humans? All of the humans are men.” 

Yalnizyan, who is an Atkinson Fellow and co-founder of The Care Economy Project, wasn’t wrong. Aside from a photo of the Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team, there are few images of women in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s second budget: the focus is on infrastructure projects, construction workers, Canadian Armed Forces members — and that is literally where the government’s focus is.

According to the government’s own gender analysis, the 2026 budget measures will overwhelmingly benefit men — 79 per cent of measures that are deemed to benefit one gender over another favour men. Sixty measures are defined as benefiting “majority men,” 12 are judged to benefit “predominantly men,” whereas only 16 measures are deemed to benefit “majority women,” and three measures will benefit “predominantly women.” The latter relate to menstruation, gender-based violence, and $15 million over four years to research women’s health.

(Majority is defined as seeming to benefit 60 to 79 per cent of a group and predominantly defined as benefiting that group by more than 80 per cent.)

From affordability measures to more cash for spies, here’s your cheat sheet to Carney government’s second federal budget.