Canada is fond of publicly branding itself as a progressive aid donor.
“Investing in international development isn’t just about supporting communities abroad … it also strengthens Canada’s global reputation and reflects the values Canadians believe in: fairness, cooperation and shared responsibility,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said at the World Economic Forum in early 2026.
But Canada’s aid contributions are in fact well below recommended levels and dropping.
Ottawa is also increasingly using aid to advance Canada’s economic and political interests — a shift some experts say is difficult to reconcile with Canada’s own development assistance laws.
“We’re bringing [aid] back … to an instrument of foreign policy, both economic and political,” said Brian Tomlinson, founder and executive director of AidWatch Canada, a non-profit that conducts independent research on Canadian aid.
This story is the second installment in a Canadian Affairs series examining the transformation of the global development aid landscape, Canada’s participation in that shift, and what it means for donor countries and aid recipients.
“Canada likes to think of itself as a leader, and it has been historically in some little niche areas, but overall we’re a very average … aid donor,” said Stephen Brown, a professor at the University of Ottawa who studies international development.
“[We] actually do relatively little to be a leader … I think being a true leader would help Canada’s soft power.”
Canada’s aid philosophy
Official development assistance (ODA) is government funding intended to promote economic development and welfare in lower-income countries.
The United Nations has long recommended wealthy countries spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on development assistance.
Canada falls well short of that benchmark.
In 2024, Canada provided roughly US$7.3 billion in official development assistance, equal to 0.34 per cent of gross national income. Canada’s high-water mark for aid was in the 1970s and late 1980s, when spending reached roughly 0.5 per cent of national income.
In November, Carney announced a $2.7 billion cut to Canada’s development assistance during the unveiling of his government’s first budget. At the same time, he committed an additional $2.5 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine.
Canada is now ranked ninth among 31 OECD donors by total volume, but 16th when measured as a share of its economy.
Brown says this places Canada firmly in the middle of the pack.
“In general, we’re very run‑of‑the‑mill donors,” he said.
‘Shadow policy’
Historically, Canada’s development assistance has focused on poverty reduction, global health and humanitarian needs. For example, since 1988, Canada has contributed about $750 million toward the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has helped nearly eliminate the disease.
It has also played a major role in global maternal and child health through a 10-year, $3.5-billion commitment launched in 2010.
More recently, gender equality has been a priority. In 2017, the Trudeau government launched the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), which placed gender equality at the centre of Canada’s aid framework.
That policy is still formally in place, but sources say it is no longer the primary framework guiding aid decisions.
“The FIAP … remains the only formal policy in place that we can refer to regarding overall direction for Canada’s international assistance,” said Nicolas Moyer, CEO of Cuso International, a Canadian non-profit focused on poverty reduction, gender equality and climate resilience.
But Moyer notes that Canada seems to be framing development assistance around “mutual economic benefit,” trade partnerships and private sector engagement.
“We’re getting signals of a national interest-focused lens on decision-making around international assistance,” he said.
Tomlinson, of AidWatch Canada, agrees. The government is operating under an “internal” mutual economic partnerships policy, he said.
“But … it hasn’t been made public … so that makes it all the more difficult to understand exactly where we’re headed,” he said.
In an interview in January, Secretary of State for International Development Randeep Sarai told Canadian Affairs that the department has a “keen interest” in the Indo-Pacific region, Africa and Latin America.
“We have great opportunities there in emerging markets,” he said.
“Having development support our trade is key,” he added. “We are trying to focus on where there are trade opportunities.”
In an email to Canadian Affairs, Global Affairs Canada rejected the suggestion that this focus represents a departure from Canada’s core development objectives.
“We are strengthening partnerships that deliver lasting benefits for Canadians and international partners,” department spokesperson Thida Ith said in an email.
Canada is “using public resources strategically to catalyze greater investment” while continuing to support partner countries’ development priorities, she added.
But Brown calls this unofficial “aid‑for‑trade” policy a “shadow policy” that sits uneasily alongside Canada’s formal legal framework for aid. The Official Development Assistance Accountability Act requires Ottawa to prioritize poverty reduction, consult recipients of its aid, and align aid with international human rights standards.
Former Liberal MP John McKay, the architect of that law, previously told Canadian Affairs that Ottawa’s new emphasis on tying foreign aid to trade goals strays from the law’s mandate.
“What is being proposed now by the current government is “a more sophisticated version of tied aid,” McKay said in March, adding “it was not a good policy … I hoped we had learned from our mistake.”
Brown agrees the direction raises legal and policy concerns.
“If the primary goal is to promote Canadian trade, then legally we can’t really be counting it as foreign aid according to our own legislation,” he said.
Global Affairs Canada also rejected this interpretation, saying its approach remains consistent with the law. All ODA continues to comply with the act, Ith said.
“[A]ny initiatives linked to Canada’s economic partnerships or trade objectives must maintain poverty reduction as their central purpose to qualify as Official Development Assistance,” her statement said.
Others see the shift as a necessary break from traditional aid models.
Vitalice Meja, executive director of Reality of Aid Africa, a Nairobi-based civil society network focused on aid policy, says the current shift away from traditional aid could open space for countries in the Global South to reshape development relationships on their own terms.
“People see this as a crisis. It is not really a crisis. It’s actually a good thing for Africa to … get organized, so that when the dust settles, we can have a … conversation [on] what is the next trajectory of development for Africa,” he said.
“This new iteration removes us from managing dependence and provides a new opportunity for countries of the South, and particularly Africa, to chart a path that leads them to empowerment and transformation.”
Transparency and measurement
Sources also said they would like to see aid dollars used more efficiently and aid outcomes more clearly reported.
Some sources say Canada could improve the efficiency of its aid spending by channeling more funding through multilateral institutions.
Currently, nearly 80 per cent of Canadian ODA is delivered bilaterally through specific countries or projects. The rest flows through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and World Bank, although much of that funding is still earmarked by Canada for particular purposes.
Brown says “true multilateral aid” allows institutions such as UNICEF to direct resources where needs are greatest — and to reduce transaction costs.
“In theory, multilateral [aid] should be better, because as we all pool it, we’re saving in transaction costs,” he said. “If 30 donor countries are separately organizing aid programs [in Congo], that’s not very effective.”
However, Brown acknowledges this approach can make it harder to track exactly where Canadian dollars end up. But enhanced visibility is not always the most useful measure of effectiveness.
He cited as an example sending money to UNICEF to support the development of schools. “I don’t think we need to know which schools [got money from Canada],” he said.
“It’s good for photo ops, but that doesn’t make development any more effective.”
Sources noted they would instead like to see greater transparency of aid outcomes.
Canada received a “good” — mid-tier — score in the 2024 Aid Transparency Index, which measures how transparent governments are about their aid spending.
Tomlinson says Canada’s aid spending can seem transparent because Global Affairs Canada produces large amounts of information. But that does not necessarily make it easy to determine whether aid is achieving its intended goals.
For example, the 2023 Auditor General of Canada report on international assistance in support of gender equality found that Global Affairs Canada was “unable to show how the approximately $3.5 billion in bilateral development assistance … improved outcomes for women and girls.”
The report noted that “24 of the 26 [success] indicators … did not measure outcomes.”
Tomlinson says similar challenges arise with the more recent emphasis on using aid to mobilize private investment.
Governments often say that aid dollars can encourage businesses to invest in projects they otherwise would not undertake, generating additional development benefits. But it can be difficult to measure whether funding achieves these outcomes, Tomlinson notes, because the counterfactual cannot be measured.
“You can’t really measure what would happen in the absence of the official money,” he said.
One way to better measure impact, Tomlinson says, is to stop grouping aid and development under a single ODA number.
In the 2026–27 federal budget, for example, development assistance is embedded within a broader economic and foreign policy envelope, making it difficult to see how aid funding is allocated.
“By just lumping it all as one big metric — ODA — we camouflage … what is actually the changing structure of ODA, and the way it’s being delivered,” he said.
“It’s really important that we protect the original foundations of why we do ODA — reducing poverty and inequality.
“As we move into these different realms, we move away from that agenda.”
