Activists for LGBTQ+ rights abroad urge Canada to double foreign aid for minorities

OTTAWA — Global activists for gender and sexual minorities are urging Canada to double its aid spending for LGBTQ+ people abroad, while a gay Liberal MP urges advocates not to lose hope in the face of a global backlash.

“We’re not going away as Canadians on the world stage. We will continue to be allies, friends with communities around the world that need support, that need friendship, that need money, that need encouragement,” said MP Rob Oliphant.

The Toronto MP, who is parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, spoke Thursday at a conference held by Dignity Network Canada, a coalition of Canadian groups advocating abroad for LGBTQ+ rights.

Those groups spoke bleakly about American cuts to foreign aid and attacks on equity programming worldwide, just as repressive new laws abroad take aim at those identifying as LGBTQ+.

Two weeks ago, Ghana’s parliament passed a bill calling for prison terms of up to 10 years for people promoting LGBTQ+ activities. In March, Senegal ratified a law that doubles the penalties for same-sex acts and prescribed jail terms for financially supporting LGBTQ+ organizations.

Oliphant urged activists not to lose hope and noted that minorities have lived through extremely challenging times.

He said that while the world “closed in on” gay men during the HIV crisis of the 1980s, later years saw the spread of marriage equality and widespread acceptance — although transgender people still face discrimination.

“I lost half of my friends in the AIDS pandemic,” Oliphant said. “Coming out of that, we’ve established a better, more sophisticated way of being in our world, creating allies that are standing with us.”

Julia Ehrt, head of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, told the conference that Ottawa should consider doubling its contributions to LGBTQ+ organizations abroad, which currently stand at roughly $15 million a year.

Ehrt said doubling those contributions would still leave them at less than one per cent of Canada’s overall aid funding.

“But that doubling would go a long, long way within our movement. It would actually change the game, in particular if you found other governments to follow suit,” Ehrt said.

Stephen Brown, a University of Ottawa professor specializing in foreign aid and LGBTQ+ people, said doubling that aid would bring it up to roughly 0.33 per cent of Canada’s total aid spending.

He said increasing that funding would help address a global retreat on advocacy for sexual and gender minorities driven in part by the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Activists at the conference expressed confusion over where Prime Minister Mark Carney stands after he said last November that Canada no longer has a feminist foreign policy.

Canadian diplomatic missions abroad still advocate for LGBTQ+ rights when local communities say that push is helpful, through actions like hosting events and making public statements. But Danilo Manzano of the Ecuadorean group Dialogo Diverso said it seems Canada is pulling back from that work.

He said activists meeting this week with officials at Global Affairs Canada have asked why Canada is pulling back.

“They say, ‘What are you talking about?'” Manzano said. “The authorities said that Canada is still being … a strong ally for LGBTQ+ rights in the global south. But the feeling back home, it’s completely different.”

He suggested Ottawa should phone its embassies across South America and communicate that “we’re not changing the values, but we’re changing the priorities.”

Global Affairs Canada director Angelica Liao-Moroz, who oversees Canada’s human rights advocacy abroad, noted that Anand has cited human rights as one of the three pillars of Ottawa’s foreign policy.

“Around the perception that all our efforts are being redirected to defence, to economic prosperity, it’s a difficult debate within the department as well,” she said.

“To me it’s so obvious that human rights cuts across all of our foreign policy. It’s not an add-on, it’s not a trade-off. It should be the frame for all our efforts abroad.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2026.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press