Canada’s new approach to foreign aid does not sit well with the man who created a legislative framework for reducing global poverty.
“We have drifted a long way from my original motivations for aid and altruism,” said John McKay, the former Liberal member of Parliament whose foreign aid reform bill was passed into law in 2008.
“That was about doing the right thing for the right thing’s sake,” he said. “Now we are on the path of ‘What’s in it for me?’”
That path will yield short-term benefits, McKay says, but negative impacts over the longer term.
McKay, who represented the Ontario riding of Scarborough—Guildwood from 1997 to 2025, was responding to comments by Canada’s secretary of state for international development that Canadian aid will now be more focused on promoting trade opportunities for Canada.
“Having development support our trade is key. We are trying to focus on where there are trade opportunities,” Secretary of State for International Development Randeep Sarai told Canadian Affairs in January.
In 2006, McKay introduced a private member’s bill in Parliament about Canadian aid policy. Two years later, the House of Commons passed the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act.
The act requires the Canadian government to prioritize poverty reduction with foreign aid, to consult those who will receive the aid and align it with international human rights standards.
While that law remains in force, there is a new atmosphere in Ottawa today, McKay says.
“Now the question being asked is ‘What’s in it for Canada?’” he said. “It raises an interesting question of who the aid is for.”
For McKay, it also raises the question of whether Canada is breaking that law — and what Sarai will do about it.
“If he isn’t doing what the bill says to do, will he raise that with the prime minister?” McKay asked.
McKay likened the new direction to how Canada used to practice what is called “tied aid.” That is when Canada required that food used for humanitarian emergencies be purchased from Canadian farmers.
Canada stopped the practice in 2008 when it became clear that buying food locally for distribution to hungry people was quicker, cheaper and more effective.
What is being proposed now by the current government is “a more sophisticated version of tied aid,” he said, adding “it was not a good policy … I hoped we had learned from our mistake.”
Canada’s new direction of linking aid and trade will be a challenge for all aid groups, says McKay, but especially for faith-based groups whose scriptures command believers to share with the poor without expecting anything in return.
“Now it is pragmatists who are on the ascendency, asking basically what’s in it for Canada,” he said, admitting to being an “irritating moralist” from a religious tradition.
Ultimately, he said, “the irritating people are right.”
McKay added he is not naïve about the world and its security challenges. But defence, he says, is not the only way to help Canadians feel safe; so are development and diplomacy.
“Diplomacy and development work hand-in-hand with defence,” McKay said, adding it is cheaper to do development than to bomb “everything and everybody into submission.”
Investing in peace
Caitlin McKay, John’s daughter, also weighed in. Caitlin has spent 15 years in the relief and development sector with three different aid groups, and now does social enterprise work for a B.C. company.
While she understands Canadians need to feel secure today, she believes humanitarian aid can help promote that security.
“It’s cheaper to prevent war than to go to war,” she said.
Like her father, McKay is also concerned about how Canada is pivoting towards a “me-first” approach when it comes to aid, calling it “a transactional exercise that doesn’t lead anywhere.”
To those who say the traditional way of providing foreign aid does not provide anything for Canada, McKay cited evidence from the World Bank that shows the long-term economic benefits of aid.
That 2024 research found that every $1 of nutritional aid provides a return of $23 as children grow up healthy, get an education and grow to become consumers.
“The Canadian public and Canadian officials need to realize that altruism still achieves a benefit to Canada, even if it’s not the clearest direct benefit,” she said.
