Why Can't We Fix Canada First?

Canada spends substantial sums helping people facing humanitarian emergencies around the world. Yet millions of people at home still struggle to afford food, find stable housing or access essential services. The contradiction raises difficult questions about public spending, government accountability and who Canadians believe deserves help.

Years ago, Kimothy Stewart of Fredericton found herself raising two children alone while working two jobs. One was full-time, the other part-time. Even with both incomes, paying for food, housing, heat and transportation was a struggle. Eventually, she turned to a local food bank.

In an account published by Food Banks Canada in October 2025, Stewart described the difficulty of asking for assistance. She eventually returned to school, improved her financial circumstances and became a board member of Greener Village, the organization that had helped her family. Her experience illustrates both the importance and the limitations of emergency assistance. A community organization was able to help a family through a difficult period. But Stewart had been working, and working hard, before she needed that help.

Her circumstances reflect a larger Canadian problem. Across the country, families depend on food banks, people live without stable housing, and some communities continue to struggle with safe drinking water and essential infrastructure. These are conditions more commonly associated with humanitarian emergencies in countries facing war, displacement or disaster.

Canada responds to those emergencies overseas every year, providing financial assistance for food, shelter, medical services, clean water and reconstruction.

That commitment is longstanding and reflects legitimate humanitarian obligations and national interests. Yet the contrast is difficult to ignore when the same fundamental needs remain unmet in Canadian communities. The question many Canadians are asking is straightforward: Why can't we fix Canada first?

The problem is not simply that Canada spends money internationally while people at home need assistance. Canada already commits far greater public resources to domestic programs. The deeper problem is that substantial spending has not prevented millions of residents from experiencing persistent hardship, while responsibility for addressing that hardship is divided among governments and institutions.

The central finding is that fixing Canada first requires more than a different allocation of public money. It requires governments to establish what essential needs remain unmet, explain why existing programs are not resolving them, and demonstrate measurable progress. It also requires clarity about who is included when Canadians speak about helping their own.

That last question may be the most difficult of all.

Understanding the money

The federal government's international assistance figures can be difficult to interpret, partly because the amounts are enormous and partly because several different forms of spending are grouped together.

According to Global Affairs Canada's 2024-25 report to Parliament, federal international assistance totalled approximately $12.5 billion. Of that amount, approximately $961 million was designated specifically for humanitarian action, including assistance in places affected by conflict and natural disasters.

The broader figure included development programs, financial support to Ukraine, contributions to international organizations and certain refugee-related expenditures within Canada. Some support was provided through loans rather than grants.

It would therefore be inaccurate to describe the entire $12.5 billion as cash sent overseas for emergency relief. Still, $961 million is a significant humanitarian commitment. What does it mean in terms an ordinary household might recognize? Using a population of approximately 41 million people for comparison, that annual humanitarian expenditure represents about $23 per Canadian resident, or approximately six cents per day.

This is a mathematical illustration, not an individual tax bill. Government spending is financed through revenues and borrowing, and the financial burden is not shared equally among residents. One billion dollars could also provide a one-time payment of $1,000 to one million people. For households facing an immediate emergency, that money could make a meaningful difference. But a one-time payment does not create an affordable home, secure a reliable income or maintain a community's drinking water system for the next decade.

That difference between immediate relief and long-term security is central to the Canadian situation.

The federal government's 2024-25 financial statements show that Ottawa spent $131.6 billion on major transfers to individuals, including seniors' benefits, employment insurance and children's benefits. Another $105.1 billion went to other levels of government, supporting health care, social services, fiscal arrangements and other public responsibilities.

Provinces, territories and municipalities also raise and spend substantial amounts of their own money on public services. These domestic expenditures cover a much broader range of purposes than international humanitarian relief, so they cannot be compared as though they were competing versions of the same program. Nevertheless, the figures establish an important point. Canada is not withholding all assistance from people at home while financing relief elsewhere. Domestic spending is already extensive. The more revealing comparison is between what governments spend and what Canadians experience.

A family unable to afford food does not measure government performance by the total value of social transfers. Someone sleeping outdoors is concerned with whether appropriate shelter and affordable housing are available. A community living under a long-term drinking water advisory needs a functioning system, regardless of how much funding has been announced. Government budgets explain where money is allocated. They do not, by themselves, establish whether the intended outcomes have been achieved.

The emergencies that never seem to end

The scale of unmet domestic need is documented in several independent reporting systems.

Statistics Canada's Canadian Income Survey, released in April 2026, found that approximately 4.5 million people lived below Canada's official poverty line in 2024. That represented 11 per cent of the population. Nearly 9.8 million people, or 24 per cent of Canadians, lived in households experiencing some degree of food insecurity.

Food insecurity includes households worried about having enough money for adequate food, as well as those forced to compromise food quality or quantity. It is a broader measure than hunger alone. The rate declined slightly in 2024 following three consecutive annual increases. That improvement matters, although the proportion of people affected remained substantial.

Food Banks Canada's HungerCount 2025 recorded approximately 2.17 million food bank visits in March 2025, an increase of 99.4 per cent compared with March 2019. Almost one in five food bank clients was employed. The organization also reported that roughly one-third of its clients were children, and that 70 per cent of clients lived in market rental housing.

Those findings complicate the familiar assumption that food bank dependency results primarily from unemployment. For many households, work and housing are already part of the equation. The difficulty is that their available income does not consistently cover essential expenses. The experience varies sharply by region.

In Nunavut, Statistics Canada reported a poverty rate of 31.7 per cent in 2024, reflecting, among other factors, the high cost of living in the North. In British Columbia, the rate was 13 per cent, while Ontario recorded 12.5 per cent and Quebec seven per cent. The differences matter because the circumstances producing hardship are not uniform. A family in Toronto may be struggling with rent that consumes much of its income. A household in rural Atlantic Canada may face limited employment opportunities and inadequate transportation. Northern communities can confront exceptionally high food costs, limited housing supply and expensive infrastructure requirements. Housing pressures also extend beyond major cities.

The federal government's Everyone Counts 2025 enumeration recorded more than 65,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night across 75 participating communities. Of those counted, 17,620 were in unsheltered locations, including encampments. The count is a snapshot, not a national census of everyone experiencing homelessness. It does not capture everyone staying temporarily with relatives, friends or others because they have nowhere permanent to live. The federal report found that homelessness remained substantially higher than in the 2020-22 reporting period, although the national enumeration had largely stabilized between 2024 and 2025.

In First Nations communities, safe drinking water remains another important concern.

Indigenous Services Canada reported that, as of September 10, 2026, 38 long-term drinking water advisories remained active on public systems on reserve in 36 communities.

The department had also documented 158 advisories lifted since November 2015. The progress is significant, but the remaining deficiencies demonstrate why infrastructure investment must be sustained beyond initial construction. The barriers differ from place to place. Some communities need new systems. Others require operational improvements, trained personnel or dependable maintenance funding. What connects these conditions is their effect on daily life.

Families need food that they can afford. People need safe places to live. Communities need reliable water and essential services. These needs do not become less serious because they develop gradually rather than suddenly.

Why help does not always solve the problem

Canada has mechanisms for responding to domestic emergencies. Through the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program, Ottawa contributes to eligible provincial and territorial recovery costs following major floods, wildfires and other natural disasters.

Public Safety Canada reported in May 2026 that the federal government had contributed more than $9.9 billion through the program since its creation in 1970. Following the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires, for example, federal disaster assistance helped Alberta manage substantial recovery costs. Such programs show that Canada can organize large-scale domestic emergency relief. But a wildfire and a community's persistent housing shortage require different responses. A wildfire has an identifiable beginning, geographic area and recovery process. Damaged infrastructure can be assessed, repaired or replaced. Recovery can take years, but there is generally a defined event against which assistance is measured.

Poverty and homelessness are different.

People can move into stable housing while others lose theirs. Emergency shelters can expand and still experience increasing demand. Food banks can distribute more meals without reducing the financial pressures that bring people to their doors. This distinction is visible in the results of Canada's Reaching Home homelessness strategy. According to the federal government's June 2026 housing progress report, Reaching Home has approximately $5 billion allocated over nine years, from 2019-20 to 2027-28. The program reported that 126,174 people had been placed in more stable housing between 2019-20 and 2025-26. Another 227,165 people received core homelessness prevention services.

Those are substantial services delivered to people facing real difficulties.

Yet federal reporting also showed a 34 per cent increase in chronic homelessness among shelter users between 2016 and 2024, moving in the opposite direction from the program's target of reducing chronic homelessness by half by 2028. The figures do not establish that Reaching Home was ineffective for the people it assisted. They show that successful interventions can occur while broader conditions continue to generate new demand.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has identified one of those broader pressures.

In its 2025 housing supply assessment, CMHC estimated that Canada would need approximately 430,000 to 480,000 new housing units annually over the following decade to restore affordability to 2019 levels, nearly twice the projected pace of construction.

Those estimates primarily concern housing-market affordability, rather than the specific needs of everyone experiencing homelessness. They nevertheless illustrate why housing problems cannot be solved by relief payments alone. Construction requires land, financing, workers, materials, approvals and time. People with very low incomes may also need housing subsidies or specialized supports that additional market supply will not immediately provide.

The constitutional division of responsibilities adds another challenge. Ottawa provides international assistance through federal departments and partners. Within Canada, health care, social services, housing and local infrastructure involve combinations of federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous authorities.

The Constitution Act, 1982, includes commitments concerning equal opportunity, regional disparities and essential public services. But those commitments do not create a single authority responsible for meeting every individual's needs. A person experiencing homelessness may depend on municipal shelter services, provincial health care, federal income benefits and assistance delivered by community organizations. Each institution has its own responsibilities and limits.

This division can accommodate local circumstances, but it also makes accountability more complicated. When someone needs several forms of assistance at once, the gaps between programs can matter as much as the resources within them. There is a significant difference between helping someone through a crisis and changing the circumstances that make repeated assistance necessary. That is a difficult problem for any government to solve. It also demands a more meaningful measure of public spending than the amount announced.

Who do Canadians mean when they say 'our own'?

The financial argument is only part of the debate. When someone says Canada should take care of its own before helping others, the statement can mean several things. It may express concern about inadequate public services, a preference for domestic spending, frustration with the management of government programs or a belief that citizens should have priority for certain benefits. Those positions are not necessarily the same.

A Global Affairs Canada briefing, prepared in February 2026, reported that public opinion research from 2025 found more than half of Canadians preferred reducing or stopping spending abroad in favour of domestic priorities. That sentiment has already influenced the federal budget debate. Budget 2025 outlined reductions of $2.7 billion to the International Assistance Envelope over four years beginning in 2026-27. The reductions are significant, although that funding envelope is not identical to the broader international assistance expenditure total reported for 2024-25.

The existence of domestic priorities, however, does not settle the question of who should receive domestic assistance. Consider the differences among a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, a refugee who has been resettled in Canada and an asylum seeker awaiting a decision. Each can live in a Canadian community. Their legal circumstances differ, and so can their eligibility for particular government benefits. Immigration is also broader than humanitarian protection. Canada admits people through economic and family programs as well as refugee and asylum systems. Questions about program eligibility, public resources and immigration levels deserve evidence-based consideration. But those questions are distinct from whether people in vulnerable circumstances require immediate food, shelter or medical care. Public attitudes reveal some of the tension.

An Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada briefing reported that 56 percent of respondents in an August 2025 survey agreed that accepting refugees placed too much pressure on public services. In the same survey, 44 percent agreed that Canada had a responsibility to accept refugees. These findings show differing views about humanitarian responsibility and domestic capacity. They do not establish why any particular respondent held those views. A person can support refugee protection while believing that housing, schools and health services are under strain. Another may support higher domestic spending while favouring reduced international assistance. There is no basis for assuming that everyone who questions foreign aid also opposes helping marginalized people within Canada. Nevertheless, research suggests that public support for assistance can depend on how recipients are identified.

In a 2024 study published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, researchers Irene Bloemraad, Allison Harell and Nicholas A.R. Fraser examined how race and legal status influenced attitudes toward civil and social rights. Using Canadian survey experiments, they found that respondents were generally more supportive of providing social benefits to citizens than to migrants without legal status. The findings do not imply that all Canadians hold discriminatory views, nor do they establish attitudes toward every category of newcomer. The experiments examined specific scenarios, and the differences associated with race were less consistent than those associated with legal status. They do, however, reveal something important about public perceptions of deservingness. The circumstances of the person seeking assistance can affect how people evaluate the assistance itself.

A family displaced by a wildfire, a worker who loses a job, a refugee seeking shelter and a person experiencing chronic homelessness may each need a place to sleep. Their eligibility for particular public programs may differ. Public sympathy may differ as well. Determining which services governments are obliged to provide is a legitimate policy discussion. Assuming that a person's need is less serious because of their background or circumstances is a separate judgment. There is also evidence of considerable public agreement on the underlying objective of reducing hardship.

In an April 2025 Pollara survey commissioned by Food Banks Canada, 92 percent of respondents agreed that nobody in Canada should have to go hungry. Eighty-four per cent considered reducing hunger a non-partisan priority. Those figures demonstrate broad support for a principle. They do not tell governments how to finance assistance, determine eligibility or address the causes of food insecurity. That is where difficult decisions begin.

Canadians may agree that homelessness should decline while disagreeing over the location of supportive housing. They may support food security while holding different views about income benefits, taxation or employment policy.

For some, taking care of our own means establishing a reliable standard of support for people living in Canada. For others, it implies narrower eligibility or a different division of responsibilities among individuals, communities and governments. An effective public debate must distinguish those positions rather than treating them as one argument.

What would fixing Canada actually require?

The phrase "fix Canada first" has political appeal because it appears to offer a clear order of priorities. But Canada is not one project with a single budget, contractor and completion date.

It is a federation of communities facing different economic, geographic and social conditions.

Even with greater resources, governments could not guarantee the complete elimination of unemployment, illness, poverty or homelessness. They can, however, establish measurable goals for reducing hardship and report progress against them. Food insecurity offers a useful example.

Distributing more food to people in need is an immediate humanitarian achievement. Reducing the number of households that cannot afford adequate food is a broader social and economic outcome. Both matter, but they measure different things. Housing is similar. The number of shelter beds available indicates emergency capacity. The number of people obtaining and retaining stable housing provides a different measure. So does the number of people newly entering homelessness. Reliable drinking water requires another set of measures: infrastructure completed, advisories lifted, qualified operators available and systems functioning safely over time.

The measurements need to reflect the circumstances of the communities involved.

In northern and remote regions, transportation costs and infrastructure requirements are unlike those in large southern cities. In First Nations communities, lasting solutions must respect Indigenous rights, governance and priorities. Governments must also distinguish between an announced allocation, money actually spent, services delivered and changes in people's circumstances. Those differences are fundamental to accountability. If a program reports success because it assisted 10,000 households, the public should also know whether the number of households requiring assistance increased or decreased. If a housing initiative reports the completion of new units, Canadians should be able to determine whether those homes are affordable to the population the program was intended to serve. Where results fall short, explanations should identify the factors involved, whether they include inadequate funding, implementation delays, labour shortages, program design or broader economic conditions.

This approach does not presume that every problem can be resolved through additional public spending. Governments must consider taxation, borrowing, delivery costs and other public responsibilities. It does establish that money committed should be connected to a purpose the public can understand and an outcome that can be evaluated. International assistance should face comparable scrutiny. Financial contributions should be assessed against humanitarian and development outcomes, with recognition of the difficult environments in which those programs operate. The appropriate standard is not whether a program exists or whether its budget is large. It is whether the intervention is making a meaningful difference, what evidence supports that conclusion and what remains to be done.

A question larger than foreign aid

Kimothy Stewart's experience in Fredericton offers one example of why this distinction matters. The food bank that helped her family met an immediate need. She was eventually able to complete her education, achieve greater financial stability and contribute to the organization that had supported her. Her experience does not prove that everyone who receives emergency assistance will follow the same path. Nor does it establish what combination of policies would prevent another family from reaching a similar crisis.

It demonstrates that emergency assistance can be important, sometimes at a decisive moment in a person's life.

Canada has institutions capable of delivering that assistance, at home and abroad.

The harder challenge is reducing the conditions that make it necessary. The evidence does not support the simple claim that Canada has abandoned domestic needs in favour of international humanitarian commitments. Domestic spending is far larger, and governments already finance extensive social, health and emergency programs. But the evidence does support asking why substantial public investment coexists with widespread food insecurity, homelessness and essential service gaps. It also supports asking whether Canadians share the same understanding of who should benefit from the solutions. "Fix Canada first" is an understandable expression of public frustration. To become a useful standard for evaluating government performance, it needs clearer definitions, measurable objectives and a realistic account of the responsibilities involved. The practical test will emerge in the next federal, provincial and municipal budgets and in the reports that follow them.

Canadians can examine whether poverty and food insecurity are declining, whether fewer people are experiencing homelessness, whether essential infrastructure is reliable and whether public programs are delivering the outcomes for which they were funded.

They can also ask their representatives which improvements should be visible locally over the next 12 to 24 months and who is responsible if progress falls short. A country's commitment to helping people abroad and its responsibility to address hardship at home do not have to be competing principles.

The enduring question is whether Canada can demonstrate that the considerable resources already devoted to helping people are producing lasting improvements in their lives — and whether those improvements reach the people who need them.

Reporting and transparency note

This article draws on publicly available Canadian government reports, Statistics Canada data, academic research and published material from Food Banks Canada. The account of Kimothy Stewart and her statements were originally published by Food Banks Canada; they do not represent an original ABSOLUTE interview.