What’s the plan? New bill before Senate aims to provide a framework for women’s health
A new bill introduced in the Senate of Canada would, if adopted, require the federal government to create a framework for women’s health. More specifically, the Minister of Health would have one year to create the framework, in consultation with other ministries.
The bill, Bill S-243, was presented by Senator Danièle Henkel in early December, and remains on its first reading.
If the bill passes into law, the framework would touch on numerous areas concerning women’s health. The proposed breadth incorporates everything from improving access to care to promoting healthcare innovations. It envelops a number of different groups and sectors because the objective is “to bring coherence to a system that today remains fragmented,” Senator Henkel told Canadian Healthcare Network.
The bill is structural, explained Senator Henkel. It won’t create any new clinical or research programs or oblige the provinces’ healthcare systems to change priorities. It asks, ‘where is the money going? How is it being used?’ she explained. The framework is meant to help coordinate initiatives from many sectors working to improve women’s health in Canada. There’s also a potential to identify gaps or duplication of efforts.
Senator Henkel worked with a number of groups to put together the bill, including Women’s Health Collective Canada, an alliance of five Canadian health and hospital foundations; Women’s Health Coalition; an advocacy group; IWK Foundation; Partnership for Women’s Health Research Canada, a partnership includes four Canadian research institutions focusing on women’s health and FemTech Canada, a network of companies involved in women’s health technology.
“This isn’t just a health bill, it’s about bolstering the whole ecosystem that is driven by women’s health priority,” said Carmen Wyton, president and chair of the board of directors of the Women’s Health Coalition. Wyton helped draft the bill.
“It’s a very complex bill, and that’s on purpose,” she said.
The bill’s preamble notes that Canada’s economy and society benefits from improved women’s health. Wyton and Amy Flood, executive director of Women's Health Collective Canada, explained that the framework is meant to improve women’s health so they can be productive members of Canada’s economic engine for their whole working lives.
Women’s health is not defined in the bill’s text, but the framework is meant to address the full lifespan, Senator Henkel said. Women's health concerns sex-specific differences in disease prevalence, presentation, treatment and access to care, conversations with Wyton and Flood emphasized. Women's Health Coalition's website notes that women's health issues impact women, trans men and non-binary people assigned to female sex at birth.
The current version of the bill sets out five pillars or themes of the framework—and indeed states the framework must include measures to accomplish the following:
Strengthen investment in health research and innovation
The framework will seek to coordinate research into sex-related differences in health and access to healthcare. “We’re missing data to help physicians do their work,” Senator Henkel said. The bill notes the framework must include measures to “promote pathways for commercialization of health research and innovation.”
Foster collaboration between public and private systems
This is not a promotion of third-party healthcare, explained Wyton, but more a way to boost innovation and collaboration. For example, it could include cooperation with the benefits sector to support women through perimenopause and menopause so they don’t leave the workforce, Wyton said. She also spoke about promoting women-led healthcare companies.
Enhance training and education of healthcare professionals
Senator Henkel noted that educators need more data to understand these sex-specific differences in disease. Sex-specific healthcare education is lacking, Flood said. “They need to be trained better, they need to understand the conditions women face and how disproportionally we’re affected by certain things, how we’re affected differently than men for certain things and I think the whole curriculum needs to be influenced.”
Strengthen primary care and preventative care
While the wording in the bill does not outline what measures the framework should include when it comes to primary care and preventative care, Senator Henkel suggested working with the provinces to look at differences in renumeration for certain medical services.
Deploy targeted solutions to improve access to healthcare for women
This includes measures to improve access to women in rural or remote communities, women in equity-deserving populations, Indigenous women, 2SLGBTQI+ communities and more.
The bill also calls for a regular conference of interested parties to make sure all avenues are accountable, Senator Henkel said. There’s also a requirement to provide a report on the implementation strategy of the framework.
Canada’s federal government previously had a women’s health strategy, created in 1999, but funding the strategy changed with shifts in the political climate.
“We decided a new law made the most sense and the Senator was supportive of that,” Wyton said.
The wording for the bill is based on legislation to establish the National Diabetes Framework. That Act was passed in June 2021 and the framework was prepared by Public Health Agency of Canada and published in October 2022.
Senator Henkel noted that along with the bill, there needs to be political will to move the initiative forward. In late December 2025, the federal minister of Health announced that a new men and boys’ health strategy would be announced in 2026. Flood said this was a sign that “there is an openness to looking at gender variability in health.”
When asked if the bill could increase administrative burden for clinicians and researchers, Senator Henkel said: “It’s not there to create any extra burden. It is only there to tell the federal government it is time to have the coordination, a structure.”
After second reading, the bill will go through the committee stage, the report stage and then a third reading. If adopted, it moves to the House of Commons. The bill must be passed by both houses of Parliament with identical text and format before it can gain Royal Assent.
Women’s Health Coalition is planning a Day on the Hill for Feb. 25 and 26, which will involve more that 250 advocates of women’s health reaching out to parliamentarians and government officials.
The full text of the bill is available on the Senate of Canada’s website.
- Framework for Diabetes in Canada
Canada’s Framework for Diabetes is “a highly relevant and consequential document that continues to shape policy and decision-making across the country,” said Glenn Thibeault, executive director of government affairs, advocacy and policy for Diabetes Canada. In 2023, Public Health Agency of Canada provided funding to Diabetes Canada for their work to sustain and implement the framework nationally. Provinces are creating their own frameworks for diabetes. Manitoba committed $500,000 to implement their framework and Ontario’s legislature voted to develop a framework for chronic conditions. Diabetes Canada is encouraging other jurisdictions to create their own frameworks, Thibeault wrote in an email to Canadian Healthcare Network. “Diabetes Canada continues to serve as a steward of the Framework, advancing its principles through our work on access and equity—particularly in medications, devices, and services. The Framework remains the north star for our advocacy efforts.”
- Frequently quoted numbers on women's health in Canada
Groups interested in Bill S-243 quote a number of facts and figures, but where do the numbers come from?
7%: This is quoted as the amount of federal research money dedicated to women’s health. It is based on a 2025 paper by Toronto researchers looking at CIHR grant abstracts that mention female-specific research.
1997: This is when Health Canada first released guidance on including women in clinical trials of therapeutic products. It has been misappropriated to suggest women were not included in clinical trials before 1997, which is false. The guidance was replaced by further guidance in 2013.
$37 billion: McKinsey Health Institute launched a report in October 2025 on the economic return of investing in women’s health. Narrowing the women’s health gap could put $37 billion annually into the Canadian economy, the report states. This was based on data from the World Economic Forum, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to evaluate disability adjusted life-years (DALY) and a review on 64 diseases affecting women.
24%: the same report suggests that women spend 24% more time in poor health than men.
64: This is Canada’s rank on the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index. The index measures preventative care, emotional health, opinions of health and safety, basic needs and individual health, according to Hologic, a medical technology company. It involved 146,000 people surveyed in 142 countries and territories. Canada’s ranking of 64th is from year four of the index, where data were gathered in 2023 and analyzed in 2024. Canada’s ranking was different in previous years.
More information about some of the numbers is also available from a Nov. 2025 Deloitte report on The Case for Advancing Women’s Health in Canada commissioned by the IWK Foundation.
