Ottawa/Fraser Valley – The Canadian Museums Association has issued a letter to the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue, expressing grave concerns regarding the 2026 Federal Budget.
“The federal budget has abandoned Canada’s museums. Budget 2025 delivers virtually nothing no cohesive vision for Canada’s 2,700 museums – institutions present in every riding that preserve heritage, educate communities, drive tourism, and employ over 32,000 Canadians.”
The letter outlines the numerous ways the government has failed to acknowledge the importance of investing in museums, and our national heritage infrastructure with particular concern for the following:
Canada Cultural Spaces Fund, which served as an important infrastructure investment, has been gutted to equipment-only purchases.
No resources for Indigenous-led cultural heritage rights or repatriation. This ongoing inaction undermines Canada’s obligations under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.
Zero increase to the Museums Assistance Program (frozen at $6.7M since 2013).
No permanent heritage youth employment funding, only a token 2% increase to the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy (YESS) that fails to keep pace with rising employment costs and provides no expansion of heritage youth positions.
Up to 15% cuts to the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Christina Reid, Executive Director for Heritage Abbotsford in a response to FVN: As expected, when budgets are tight and funding has to be cut, cultural institutions are always some of the first to lose funding. That was expected…at least by me. E.g. Last year, we found out that almost all the funding programs which support UNDRIP and anti-racism programs at HAS were gone. From one day to the next, the federal government had changed its priorities from supporting Indigenous projects to Black and Japanese Canadian projects. In a community that has very little modern black history but no “histroic” black histroy, that means that 50% of available funding is indeed unavailable to Abbotsfordians. Our Indigenous cultural events will be unfunded in 2026, which may mean that 2026 will be the last year we can afford to run them. In 2025, we’ve lost one historic collection, the Metzger Collection, from the community, and the Mennonite Heritage Museum had to lay off staff and cancel all of its programming for most of 2025 after funding failed to appear.
So, we knew 2025 would be tight, and 2026 would be even tighter, and we knew many previously funded Indigenous funding streams (i.e. The ones which make it possible for us to implement UNDRIP in communities) would all but disappear. However, what I didn’t know was that federal funding for (all Canadian) museums has been frozen since 2013.
Look at the letter from the CMA here: https://museums.ca/site/aboutthecma/newsandannouncements/november62025
I’m not even blaming the current government for this, because it’s a reactive budget. What I’m mad about is the reallocating of funding from Indigenous projects to other projects.
It’s ongoing work. Funding should also be ongoing.
I can live with them temporarily gutting jobs training in culture (it’s not like we can afford to hire from CSJ anyhow, since they only fund 50% of a completely untrained student’s wages), but for goodness sake, “Canada Cultural Spaces Fund, which served as an important infrastructure investment, has been gutted to equipment-only purchases.” That effectively abolishes our ability to support sustainable climate action through heritage preservation along with a really quick and green solution to the housing crisis.
Thank goodness HAS operates in a community where the City is so incredibly supportive. Otherwise, we’d be dead in the water.
