Reimaging Canadian Foreign Aid

In 2010, the Canadian government will spend $5 billion on international assistance. Most of that will finance Official Development Assistance (ODA) – what most Canadians would know as foreign aid.

While that level of spending is substantial, it does not make Canada a particularly generous donor when compared to other affluent countries. In fact, Canada’s aid spending relative to our national wealth puts us in the bottom third of the major aid donors who are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Relative to other donors we consider peers and allies, the calibre of Canada’s aid program as a whole has also been judged to be seriously lacking. A May 2010 World Bank study of the quality of foreign aid ranked Canada in 29th place of the 38 donors surveyed.

Why? Why is Canada underperforming and punching well below our weight when it comes to our commitment to foreign aid? And, what changes and reforms are necessary in order to reverse this trend?

These questions have guided a recent project to “re-imagine” foreign aid and development that has been led by the Foundation’s Senior Fellow, Patrick Johnston. The four papers described on this page are the results of this project. They provide a range of perspectives on each of these questions.

The first two papers, by Nilima Gulrajani and Liam Swiss, were commissioned by the Foundation. They were shared with participants in advance of a day long roundtable discussion held at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto in May 2010. The third document, by Lisa Rae and Patrick Johnston, summarizes the key themes emerging from this discussion. The final paper by Patrick Johnston outlines long-standing challenges and barriers to the fundamental reforms to Canada’s foreign aid.

• A New National Project for Canadian Development Cooperation, by Liam Swiss with the assistance of Simon Maxwell
• Re-imagining Canadian Development Cooperation: A comparative examination of Norway and the UK, by Nilima Gulrajani
• Future Directions for Canadian Foreign Aid and Development: Summary of a roundtable discussion, by Lisa Rae and Patrick Johnston
• Modernizing Canadian Foreign Aid and Development: Challenges Old and New, by Patrick Johnston

Many development organizations have long advocated aid reform. But an increasing and diverse set of organizations are now adding their voices to the call for a fundamental overhaul and modernization of Canada’s aid and development program. The Foundation hopes that the papers we have prepared will further the impetus for change as well as inform the discussion about options for restructuring.