On International Human Rights Day, the WSSD2 People’s Report for Canada Network is releasing the People’s Report on WSSD 2025 for Canada, a comprehensive assessment of Canada’s record implementing commitments made since the first World Summit for Social Development (WSSD1) in 1995, including the recent Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2) in Doha and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The report delivers a clear message: Canada has the knowledge, resources, and expertise to end poverty, eliminate food insecurity, and advance gender equality—but has consistently failed to align its budgets, policies, and institutions with its international human rights obligations.
“For many decades, Canada has promoted human rights and sustainable development on the world stage while allowing inequality, homelessness, and hunger to deepen at home, since the 1st WSSD in 1995” said Josephine Grey, UN Observer for domestic issues to the WSSD 1995 and co-author of the report. “WSSD2, the SDG’s and our human rights commitments provide a roadmap to make “Canada Strong” and leave no one behind. This report shows how Canada can turn that roadmap into reality.”
The report traces a “thirty-year slide” beginning with the 1995 federal budget—released the same day Canada helped craft the Copenhagen Declaration at WSSD1—which gutted social programs and national standards in the name of deficit reduction and trade competitiveness. Since then, Canada has operated with what the report calls “window dressing”: strong rhetoric internationally, weak implementation domestically.
Key Findings:
Income security and housing: Welfare and disability programs remain below poverty lines while homelessness and encampments have become normalized across the country
Food insecurity: Dramatic increases in food bank use reflect policy choices, not inevitability—inadequate incomes and housing costs are the primary drivers
Gender inequality: Women, girls, and gender-diverse people have borne the brunt of austerity, with particular impacts on lone-parent families and survivors of violence
Missing accountability: Canada lacks the domestic institutions and mechanisms needed to implement economic and social rights, UN declarations like the WSSD, the 17 SDGs and Climate commitments despite decades of recommendations from UN bodies and civil society
A Path Forward:
The report provides detailed, actionable recommendations across SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), and SDG 5 (Gender Equality), with climate justice and inequality reduction as cross-cutting priorities. Recommendations include:
A rights-based pathway to basic income adequacy, starting with immediate measures to lift incomes to the Market Basket Measure plus a dignity margin
Legislated targets for non-market housing and a national plan to end chronic homelessness
A Food Sovereignty Act with binding targets to eliminate severe food insecurity by 2030
Full implementation of MMIWG Calls for Justice and the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence
Creation of a Federal Human Rights Office and independent oversight mechanisms to ensure accountability
“Canada stands at a crossroads,” said Sheila Regehr, co-author. “We can continue the decline of the past thirty years, or we can use this moment of polycrises and geopolitical turbulence to demonstrate real leadership—showing the world that a wealthy, diverse nation can honor human rights not just in speeches, but in the everyday lives of its people.”
The report emphasizes Canada’s unique position, responsibility and opportunity as home to peoples from around the world, with the diversity of expertise and resources needed to model a peaceful, sustainable, and equitable future during turbulent times.
Report Launch:
The WSSD People’s Report for Canada Network will present the findings and invite governments and civil society to get to work on implementing solutions in the report, at a hybrid press conference at the National Press Gallery in Ottawa on December 10, 2025 1pm.
The full report is available at: www.peoplesreportcanada.org
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About the WSSD People’s Report for Canada Network
The People’s Report for Canada Network consists of human rights observers, academic scholars, policy experts, and grassroots activists dedicated to monitoring Canada’s implementation of human rights responsibilities, commitments made at UN summits and accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals.
Media Contacts:
Josephine Grey 416 827 7119 jogreylift@gmail.com
Canadian Observer to the UN World Summit on Social Development, Copenhagen 1995, Human Rights Defender, Board member- Basic Income Canada Network
Tracy Smith Carrier 519 317 4155 Tracysmithcarrier@royalroads.ca
Tracy Smith-Carrier is a (full) professor and the Canada Research Chair in Advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia.