Alison Clement

February 7, 2023

From climate change to the war in Ukraine, the significant global challenges today require strong, united responses from the world’s leading democracies. That is why Canada has an important role to play in promoting and strengthening global human rights, to help provide support to the most vulnerable populations worldwide.

Last year, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s speech in Washington outlined what we’re facing: the rise of authoritarianism and threats to democracy are real. So is the need for a strategic foreign policy by liberal democracies. But without an informed Canadian public, increased policy transparency around how we deliver international assistance and a more innovative approach to how we measure foreign aid effectiveness, Canada’s global brand — and the impact of its assistance — could be jeopardized.

In 1950, Canada first committed to delivering foreign assistance through the Colombo Plan, a strategy across Commonwealth countries that looked to support economic development in South and Southeast Asia. Since then, Canada’s global assistance has grown exponentially and has generally generated positive results. From South Korea and Rwanda to Bangladesh and Tanzania, for over seven decades, Canada has shown its ability to contribute to major economic and social progress.

As the sixth-largest donor country on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), and a record high CAD$8.4 billion budget dedicated for 2022-23, Canada has a long history of global co-operation, development and technical assistance. International support equalled 0.32 percent of Canada’s gross national income in 2020-21, less than half the global Official Development Assistance (ODA) target of 0.7 percent, with the largest funding allotted towards responses in Ethiopia (CAD$216 million), followed by Afghanistan (CAD$199 million), Bangladesh (CAD$197 million), Tanzania ($134million) and Mali ($133million).

In 2017, Canada became the second country, after Sweden, to publish a Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) that puts gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at the centre of its foreign assistance. Prior to the FIAP, from 2010-16, only 1-2 percent of Canada’s foreign assistance was dedicated to advancing gender equality. Since its launch, the federal government has been working towards transitioning 95 percent of Canada’s bilateral international development assistance investments to target or integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

Understanding the nature of aid spending, as well as the concrete results it is wielding, is just as important as knowing how much money is being spent.

The legal and policy commitments to aid transparency in Canada have grown stronger over the last decade. In 2011, Canada officially joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) — a global multistakeholder effort to report aid information to an open data standard. That same year, Canada also joined the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Last year, Global Affairs Canada (GAC), the government agency that leads on implementing Canada’s international assistance, scored 71 percent and ranked 17th out of 50 bilateral donors on Publish What You Fund’s Aid Transparency Index. The Index undertakes a yearly global assessment of donors’ transparency on aid and development finance.

At home, Canada tracks its own progress using performance indicators, alongside indicators that measure advancement on the sustainable development goals (SDGs). There are also other in-house markers at GAC like Project Browser, a tool that hosts downloadable open data files on Canada’s international projects, as well as the production of regular performance and statistical reports, evaluations and audits.

Despite Canada’s growing commitment to transparency, there is still work to be done. Understanding the nature of aid spending, as well as the concrete results it is wielding, is just as important as knowing how much money is being spent. True policy transparency means providing Canadians not only with access to  comprehensive information about our foreign aid efforts, but communicating it in a way that resonates with the general public. This helps Canadians to better understand what its international assistance buys them, why it is critical to continue to be a major international donor and how we know taxpayer money is effectively being spent abroad.

We must move beyond long reports, clunky databases and complicated indicators and datasets. Accessibility means Canadians can understand how our $3.4 billion support to Ukraine is actually working in practice. Or what it really means to champion a gender-focused lens on foreign assistance programming.

Canadian aid is not charity. It is a matter of national self-interest. Helping other countries is also about looking out for Canadians. This warrants the need for the development of a modernized foreign aid public outreach strategy that leverages a number of different media to provide tangible real-time reporting about our international assistance in easily digestible formats. This can provide assurance that Canada’s foreign aid is being spent effectively; but equally as important, that it is reaching and helping those who are most in need.

Alison Clement is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. Alison has an interest in international development, specifically in the areas of advancing the social and economic rights of women.