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I’ve been circling around this question in earlier chapters, but I think it’s time to ask directly: how effective is Canada’s foreign aid?
Each year Canada disburses 8-10 billion dollars worth – about $215 per Canadian – but is this money delivering positive benefits in recipient countries? And how much of it goes to waste?
These are complicated questions. Measuring aid effectiveness at a global scale is almost impossible in practice. And, as discussed earlier, aid is never guided only by charitable intent. It is also shaped by national interests – trade, diplomacy, security, politics – factors that cannot easily be quantified or measured.
On a recent podcast, U.S. Vice President Vance claimed that only twelve cents of every aid dollar reaches the people in need. While this statistic might be supportive or their dismantling of the U.S. foreign aid agency, it has been largely debunked. As I’ve noted in previous chapters (5, 7), aid overheads are a misleading way to judge effectiveness. So, what’s the real story behind foreign aid? And beyond the heated debate over U.S. aid efficiency, is Canada heading in the right direction? Let’s examine the evidence for ourselves.
What is the goal of Canada’s foreign aid?
In 1966, Canadian scholar Keith Spicer highlighted the challenges of Canada’s early foreign aid efforts. He emphasized the deep complexities of aid, arguing that success or failure could never be neatly captured in economic or statistical terms. He was also among the first to note that the underlying goal of aid is not purely charitable, it is shaped by Canada’s own interests at home and abroad.
Going further, he rightly questioned whose perspective should even guide a judgement of success, since donor countries, recipient governments, and the actual people in need often view success very differently. This enduring question – should aid primarily serve Canadian interests, or the recipients’ development needs – remains unsettled, at least among policymakers.
Spicer also showed that Canada’s foreign aid goals have never been clear, historically lacking coherence, consistency, and transparency. Since 1966, successive governments have tried to rebrand the objectives of foreign aid: 1970s–80s (“basic human needs,” “internationalism”), 1990s (“poverty reduction,” “human rights”), 2000s (“fragile states,” “security”), and 2010s–20s (“feminist,” “sustainability”). But, despite the changing language, underlying it all has been the continued conflation with Canadian national interests, leaving the true purpose of Canada’s foreign aid open to debate.
So, if the purpose of foreign aid is a moving target, and one that we cannot even agree on, how can its success be measured?
Does Canada’s foreign aid work?
To even try to assess if Canada’s foreign aid works, we must make the question more manageable. I will do so by focusing on the charitable dimension of aid, which is the core concern of this blog. This means setting aside broader foreign policy objectives – security, trade, or diplomatic influence – to examine whether Canada’s aid actually delivers positive benefits to its intended recipients.
I also believe that, for most Canadians, the purpose of foreign aid is simply to help those in need. Polls support this: 81% of Canadians believe the country should do its fair share to support developing nations. At the same time, Canadians overestimate Canada’s aid spending, believing it accounts for 17% of the federal budget – eight times the actual 2%. This inflated perception of generosity is likely fueled by altruistic messaging from government and media, which tend not to highlight other foreign aid objectives such as trade, market liberalization, or diplomatic leverage.
Given this expectation of charitable impact, let’s evaluate a few specific Canadian aid programs to determine if they deliver the tangible benefits Canadians expect.
Some potential successes
If I were to summarize what I’ve learned from researching this topic, it’s that the global effectiveness of foreign aid has been mixed at best. Most development aid has not been effective in the long term at stimulating economic growth. When it comes to reducing global poverty, industrialization and trade liberalization have by far had the greatest impact. The only aid interventions consistently proven to work are health and humanitarian programs, which focus on directly lifesaving activities.
Canada’s experience is no different. Health interventions have produced some successes, such as the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Initiative, to which Canada contributed $2.85 billion from 2010-2015. Part of the 2010 Muskoka Initiative, this intergovernmental program aimed to reduce maternal and child mortality in developing countries by strengthening health systems, improving nutrition, and expanding access to immunization and essential services. Focusing on high-impact, evidence-based interventions in priority countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the initiative’s internal evaluation reported generally positive outcomes, cost-effective programs, and millions of lives saved.
Another example is Canada’s support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, created in 2002 to deliver prevention, treatment, and care in over 100 countries, primarily in Africa and Asia. Evaluations suggest the fund has saved more than 65 million lives worldwide. With Canada’s commitment of roughly $5.2 billion from 2008–2025, about 3.5 million of these lives can be attributed to Canadian funding. This means that roughly every $1,000 USD provided by Canada saved one life, which is extremely cost-effective compared with some of the most effective charities, such as GiveWell’s top-ranked organizations, which report $3,500-$5,500 USD per life saved. This illustrates the efficiency gains that large-scale, systemic interventions can deliver, achievable only at the scale of governments or major donors.
Outside of health, general humanitarian assistance has also shown positive results. Canada contributed over $5 billion through its International Humanitarian Assistance Program from 2011-2018, providing rapid, flexible funding to crises worldwide, including the Pakistan floods, Typhoon Haiyan (2013), and the Nepal earthquake (2015). The program achieved high impact in saving lives and alleviating suffering, such as containing cholera among the Rohingya and supporting short-term education for Syrian refugees in Jordan. Internal evaluations suggest overall success, though individual project effectiveness would undoubtedly vary across the hundreds of projects funded under this mechanism. Unfortunately, because most data is kept internal by Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and external evaluations are limited, we have no way of verifying these results.
While health and humanitarian aid interventions show promising results, it is worth noting that demonstrating effectiveness is relatively easier for these programs due to the immediacy and measurability of their outcomes.
Some clear failures
Canada has also funded programs that, by most accounts, have largely failed. Notably, its top two foreign aid recipients, Haiti and Afghanistan[1], also happen to be its biggest cautionary tales.
In Haiti, the 2010 earthquake response was plagued by inefficiencies. While these challenges were not unique to Canada, it was a major donor, contributing over $1.8 billion – second only to the U.S. Failures included poor coordination among responding organizations, resulting in waste and geographic gaps; supply chain problems, with inappropriate goods clogging transport channels; and mismanagement of funds, with excessive allocations to foreign contractors and organizations while only 0.6% reached local groups. Evaluations in subsequent years described the continuing aid response as “partial and fragile.” A decade later, Canada’s former governor general Michaëlle Jean, herself Haitian, called the response a textbook example of the “bankruptcy of humanitarian aid.” Looking at the long-term outcomes, it is hard to see much positive impact, as Haiti continues to struggle with poverty, gang violence, political instability, corruption, and aid dependency.
Afghanistan presents another failed aid effort. Since 2001, Canada has provided over $3.6 billion in assistance to Afghanistan yet this response has struggled with widespread waste, corruption, and prioritization of short-term political gains over effective programs. An internal GAC evaluation of Canada’s Afghanistan aid from 2014-2020 highlighted major challenges in achieving measurable results, partially due to limited understanding of Afghanistan’s context and the specific needs of recipient groups. Then there were Canada’s high-profile ‘signature projects’, intended to be visible and demonstrate its role in the region, but which largely ended up incomplete and ineffective.
Stephen Brown, a University of Ottawa professor and expert on Canadian aid programs, sharply criticizes Canada’s foreign aid from 2000 to 2015, arguing that it often prioritized national prestige and economic self-interest over genuine effectiveness.
Recent policy and programs
More recently, Canada’s ever-shifting foreign aid policy goal have been framed around feminism. In 2017, it launched the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), placing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at the center of all programs.
Since this policy has now been in place eight years, it is now possible to begin assessing its effectiveness. One useful resource is a 2023 audit by the Auditor General of Canada, which reviewed development assistance from 2017 to 2022. The audit found major weaknesses in reporting project outcomes, making it impossible to determine whether FIAP objectives were achieved. Canada also fell short on two of its three key spending targets, including the goal of directing 50% of projects to Sub-Saharan Africa – a region where impact could be higher. The audit further criticized GAC for focusing narrowly on gender and age identity factors for recipients, while overlooking other important characteristics, for instance marital status, disability, income, ethnicity, or religion. Overemphasizing gender risks oversimplifying complex identities, misallocating aid, and bypassing the most vulnerable populations.
Some critics go further, calling FIAP a “fairy tale quest to save women and girls,” arguing that it neglects the concrete reforms needed for effective aid. They argue that a root issue is Canada’s aid allocation system, which remains short-term, top-down, politically driven, and more focused on Canadian interests than recipient needs.
A key question emerges from this critique: is Canada’s aid being sent to the places where it can do the most good? We can investigate this question by looking specifically at Canada’s humanitarian assistance, where the government has closer oversight and control over how funds are used – and therefore, I would argue, a greater responsibility to allocate them effectively.
To assess whether Canada has been allocating its humanitarian assistance effectively, we can compare its spending to global humanitarian needs data from the Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO). I examined one year of Canada’s funding – from April 2022 to March 2023, which should reflect needs identified in the 2022 GHO. My analysis shows that Canada’s funding to various countries aligned with GHO needs within 1% in over 60% of cases and within 2% in over 80%, suggesting that Canada’s overall allocation strategy largely mirrors identified needs[2].While I was happy to see this, there were some notable discrepancies. For example, Canada allocated 17.9% of its annual humanitarian funding to Ukraine, even though Ukraine accounted for only 8% of global funding needs and was among the top three funded responses globally by coverage[3]. This disproportionate allocation meant that Canada missed opportunities to support other critical responses that were underfunded, including in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen.
To add one additional criticism of Canada’s recent humanitarian aid spending, as discussed in Chapter 4, there is a concerning trend of increased spending on ‘in-donor refugee costs’, where Canada spends humanitarian aid funds at home in Canada. In 2023, DAC reporting shows 18% of Canada’s total foreign aid went to these domestic costs – more than double what was spent on humanitarian aid abroad. This raises questions about whether Canadian aid is truly addressing global humanitarian needs or primarily serving domestic priorities.
What should Canada do?
With the recent gutting of the American foreign aid agency, USAID, and a global decline in foreign aid funding – partially driven by rising military budgets, Canada seems to be at an inflection point. Should it follow the U.S. on the path of minimizing foreign aid and embracing Secretary of State Rubio’s view that “foreign aid is not charity; it exists for the purpose of advancing the national interests”? Should it redirect its already modest foreign aid budget to more national interests like security? Or could Canada instead take a stand, advocating for continued aid spending and leading reforms to ensure it delivers the greatest charitable good possible?
I believe Canada can be a leader at this moment and refocus its foreign aid on achieving true charitable effectiveness. To do so, I argue that Canada should:
- Clearly define the goals of Canada’s foreign aid, separating charitable objectives from trade and political aims, and justify them from the perspective of recipient communities, cultures, and values.
- Refocus limited aid resources on high-impact interventions, starting with increasing spending on humanitarian assistance and health programs, which currently account for only 6.5% and 6.6% of spending, respectively.
- Commit to allocating humanitarian aid according to a global funding-gap approach, giving higher priority to crises that are underfunded relative to assessed need, thereby maximizing impact and reducing political bias.
- At the country program level, commit to assisting those most in need, rather than certain groups which Canadians feel a stronger moral obligation to assist.
- Share measured data and results more transparently. External evaluations should be frequent, and findings publicly available.
- Stop diverting foreign aid to local refugee costs, where priorities are distorted and impact is reduced.
Canada has substantial work ahead to reclaim its reputation as a global leader in foreign aid. In a time of global uncertainty, it is a dark moment for the sector. But as Bruce Cockburn sings, sometimes you’ve “got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” Canada has the chance to bring some daylight to this fragmented, strained, and disillusioned system.
[1] Excluding Ukraine, where the effectiveness of Canada’s recent large programs are still uncertain.
[2] This analysis is limited since multi-year funding could not be separated as Canada does not publish this information.
[3] The original GHO 2022 had Ukraine’s funding need as only 0.5% of global funding total but the Russian invasion in Feb 2022 resulted in adjustments up to 8% of global funding.